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European bishops on green cruise call for end to radioactive discharges
Episcopal News Service
Issue:
Section:
2003-152E
Posted: Monday, June 30, 2003
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A group of European bishops and church leaders who took part in a four-day cruise off the Norwegian coast to focus attention on environmental dangers facing the North Sea have called for an end to radioactive discharges into the sea. The demand came as Britain was facing pressure in northern Germany by European environment ministers over the operation of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in northern England.
The cruise from June 22-25 was organized by the (Lutheran) Church of Norway in advance of the 12th assembly of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) which opened in the northern Norwegian city of Trondheim on Wednesday.
The British government on Monday imposed a nine month ban on discharges from Sellafield after traces of a radioactive substance called technetium 99 were discovered in salmon on supermarket shelves.
'The UK government's moratorium on discharges from the Sellafield plant is a positive development, and we urge that it be made permanent,' stated a declaration issued by the church leaders presented at the CEC assembly. The declaration highlighted dangers to the North Sea linked to 'the daunting problems of threatened fish stocks, pollution from land-based activities, petroleum deposits, oil transport, and the consequent threat to local coastland communities.'
Signatories included the Anglican bishop of London, Richard Chartres, as well as representatives of other churches in England, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden. 'We were able to find a common form of words and we need now to turn it into common action,' said Chartres at the presentation of the declaration.
The discharges have become a big public issue in Norway, where coastal communities feel their health and livelihoods are at risk from pollution spreading across the North Sea. Bishops of the Church of Norway last year appealed to their counterparts in the Church of England to help them fight against the waste being discharged into the sea.
Stig Utnem from the Church of Norway said his church had been inspired to organize the cruise by Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomeos I of Constantinople, who has hosted a number of cruises to focus attention on environmental problems, starting in 1995 with one on the Aegean Sea. Bartholomeos, nicknamed the 'Green Patriarch' because of his commitment to environmental causes, joined participants on the trip around Norway's coast, which followed a cruise he had hosted on the Baltic Sea earlier in the month.
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