Interview with Rebecca Duerst, ELCA World Hunger

ELCA World Hunger works with a variety of partners overseas to support smallholder farms and their communities. With funding from a Rick Steves Climate Smart Commitment grant, the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) is introducing more sustainable farming practices, improving water availability, providing carbon-efficient cookstoves, reducing deforestation, and increasing local food security in more than 60 countries around the world.

We spoke with Rebecca Duerst, director of Diakonia for the ELCA, to learn more about the organization's climate change-focused efforts.

What is ELCA World Hunger's mission?

Internationally, we work in relationship with our companion churches and ecumenical partners as they seek to address root causes of injustice and oppression. Hunger and poverty are symptoms of unjust systems and structures. We walk alongside our companions as they seek to push against systemic injustice; it is one way in which we participate together in that mission, seeking restoration of relationships with each other and with creation, life in abundance, and liberation for all people.

Why is addressing climate change important to the ELCA?

Climate justice is clearly an urgent matter of our times. "Developing" countries are more likely to carry the brunt of the effects of climate change brought on by more industrialized countries, meaning many of our companion churches and partners and the communities in which they work bear the burden of its effects. In addition, climate change affects other priority areas of our work, including food security, health, migration and displacement, and gender justice — these cannot be addressed in isolation from each other or apart from climate change. With people at the center, a holistic response is necessary.

Why did the ELCA decide to focus on smallholder farms?

We work through long-standing relationships with companion churches and other partner organizations which are deeply embedded within their communities, many of which are located in rural areas where families rely on subsistence farming for food and income. While almost 80 percent of the world's food is produced on small farms, about half of the world's 800+ million undernourished people live on farms themselves.

Experiencing various shocks — especially when intertwined with systems of injustice at local, regional, and global levels — mean that these families can quickly go hungry, which can further lead to malnutrition and health issues, prevent people from working and children from going to school (limiting income generation and future opportunities), cause farmers to look for work elsewhere (i.e. drive migration and forced displacement), and even incite conflict and violence. Climate change contributes to the perpetuation of these cycles through changing weather patterns that affect the growing season or cause drought and/or flooding, which destroy crops or limit yields.

How is the Climate Smart Commitment grant supporting your work with farming communities?

This grant is being used in a variety of ways, depending on the contextual priorities and solutions identified by our companions. For example, in Senegal, a dairy center project is supporting cattle herders, especially women, to increase milk production in order to generate more for their families and to sell at the market. In India, agricultural innovations, disaster preparedness training, and irrigation improvements are leading communities to take action to become more resilient. From using bio-gas as an alternative source of fuel in rural Vietnam, to drip irrigation and crop diversification for farmers in Cambodia, to improving coffee quality without chemicals and less water in Colombia, this grant is supporting innovative practices that help guarantee food and income for families in the context of climate change.

What can the average person do to help?

Learn, connect, give, act, advocate…do what you can, where you are.