About the project
Guardians of Creation is an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research programme investigating the technical, sociological, organisational and theological paths to sustainable and ecologically sensitive change in the Catholic Church.
The project name comes from the 2019 statement Guardians of God’s Creation, which set out the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales commitment to respond to the ecological crisis.
Guardians of Creation is a consortium of:
- St Mary’s University
- Salford Diocese
- Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, Oxford University
The consortium is also supported by a range of institutions, including:
- The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester
- The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
- The Global Catholic Climate Movement
- CAFOD
Bringing together the resource and expertise of all these organisations, Guardians of Creation has set out to produce a systematic framework for decarbonising the Catholic Church in the UK.
We are looking to deepen our understanding of how to put a Catholic diocese on the path to carbon neutrality, and this collaborative research will tell us what needs to be done and what structures must be put in place to support this. I hope that the findings will assist organisations and institutions beyond the Church both here and abroad.
The Right Reverend John Arnold, Bishop of Salford
Faith groups in the UK, collectively, have a significant property footprint. For the government to meet its legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, the built environment, which is responsible for approximately 40% of UK emissions, will need to decarbonise quickly.
Guidance has been released today for the Catholic Church in England and Wales on accounting methods for net zero carbon. This “Guidance on Catholic Diocesan Carbon Accounting” presents a step-by-step guide specifically for a Catholic diocese, and is the second in a series of planned documents from the ‘Guardians of Creation’ project.
Resources
The Guardians of Creation project is developing a range of resources and guidance that can be implemented by dioceses in the UK, helping them to make decisions on creating strategies and processes, adopting sustainable technologies, financing sustainable projects and communicating to different audiences.
A roadmap has been set out to developed to showcase the resources that will be developed between now and autumn 2022.
View resources roadmap