AN OPEN letter signed by the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams and nearly 50 other distinguished figures and campaigning organisations has called on the Archbishop-designate of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, to make environmental stewardship a “defining mission” of her archiepiscopate.
The signatories include the actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry, the naturalist Chris Packham, the chef and food campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, alongside environmental scientists, theologians, and Christian climate groups.
The letter, co-ordinated by the campaign group Wild Card, refers back to the Church of England’s position as a major landowner. The Church Commissioners manage greater than 100,000 acres.
The letter states: “As the natural world freefalls and the climate crisis accelerates, a lot of us feel powerless to reply. Yet today, as you step into some of the spiritually significant roles within the country, you are taking up a rare responsibility — one with the ability to guide real change. The Church of England has a novel opportunity to take motion to combat the devastating decline of our natural world, not only as an ethical voice, but as one in all the country’s top 10 largest landowners.”
Much of the Commissioners’ estate is “in poor ecological condition”, the letter says.
The Wild Card website, citing research by the creator and campaigner Guy Shrubsole, says that only three per cent of the Commissioners’ land holding is woodland — below the common for UK land as an entire of 13 per cent — and that only two per cent is Sites of Special Scientific Interest, of which only 45 per cent is “in favourable condition”, based on a General Synod answer reportedly given in 2021 by the First Church Estates Commissioner on the time, Loretta Minghella.
The signatories urge the incoming Archbishop to call for the Commissioners to guard 30 per cent of this land for nature by 2030, aligning with the worldwide biodiversity goal adopted by the UK Government and greater than 190 nations. They write: “This goal is a historic national undertaking; it’s going to not be achieved without the Church’s support.”
The Church of England’s investing bodies have disinvested from fossil fuels (News, 30 June 2023), and the General Synod has called for increased biodiversity across church landholdings (Synod, 1 March 2024). The campaigners argue, nonetheless, that these efforts lack concrete and measurable targets for the Church’s single largest landholding: the Commissioners’ estate.
They say that rewilding 30 per cent of the Church’s land would restore an area 90 times the scale of Hyde Park, offering a major contribution to reversing Britain’s biodiversity crisis. A study by scientists on the Natural History Museum found that the UK ranked amongst the underside ten per cent of countries globally for biodiversity, and worst within the G7.
On Friday morning, the letter was handed in to a representative of the Archbishop-designate by Mr Packham, at St Paul’s Cathedral, accompanied by a model ark etched with the names of 105,000 petitioners from the general public, supporting the decision for rewilding.
Last 12 months, the BBC Springwatch presenter stood outside St Paul’s to display a nine-metre scroll, described because the “95 Wild Theses”, in an allusion to the 95 theses of Martin Luther (News, 11 October 2024). The 95 Wild Theses consisted of 95 messages from quite a lot of distinguished figures, including the previous Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
So far, the Commissioners have resisted the decision for rewilding 30 per cent of their land, saying that it shouldn’t be suitable for productive farmland, although campaigners argue that the rewilding could happen on other parts of the estate. Earlier this 12 months, in March, the Commissioners’ head of sustainability for real assets, Paul Jaffe, said: “We are deeply committed to supporting nature through a spread of initiatives. We give attention to sustainable farming practices, collaborate with organisations just like the RSPB and FWAG, and actively integrate biodiversity projects, comparable to woodland creation and wetland restoration, across our portfolio.”
