Friends Environmental Working Group 

1998 Annual Report 

Mission 

With awareness of the spiritual roots of our environmental concerns, and 

believing that a healthy earth is basic to all Friends' Testimonies, we 

work to encourage meetings and individuals within the Yearly Meeting to 

learn about and witness to these concerns. 

Accomplishments related to mission include: 

* Approval of a Yearly Meeting minute on transforming our relationship 

with the earth. 

* Participation in NCC Eco-Justice Working Group, its public policy and 

climate change projects. 

* Approval of "Affirmation of Commitment" by twenty-three monthly 

meetings, and use by a 

number of meetings of EWG's "Queries and Advices." 

* Three "open meetings" - in November on "money vs. wealth" with David 

Korten (program and 

attendance excellent), "nuclear weapons and wastes" with Hal Feiveson and 

Ted Taylor (co-sponsored by Abolition 2000 - program excellent, 

attendance disappointing) and in April on "science of climate change" with 

Dr Jerry Mahlman ( co-sponsored by SE Pa Sierra Club - program good, 

attendance good). 

* Visits by members/associates to eight monthly meetings, three quarterly 

meetings, a tri-quarter 

conference, two Friends schools, and two NJ Quaker gatherings. 

* A seminar at Wm Penn House on "Energy and Sustainability" involving 12 

high school students 

and four adults that all participants rated "highly worthwhile." 

* Prospects for collaboration with Friends Committee on National 

Legislation and Friends 

Committee on Unity with Nature to promote a Friends witness on the concern 

for ecological sustainability in national policy; eliciting support for a 

national witness from monthly meetings 

Membership: Four new members have joined EWG this year as regular 

members. Two have 

left. One has resigned to serve on the Peace and Concerns Standing 

Committee.We would have liked: a) better attendance at our February "open 

meeting;" 

b) a better way to 

assure YM Friends are informed about the YM minute and EWG's follow-up 

suggestions. 

Major strengths and weaknesses: As previously reported our strengths lie 

in a small core of 

Friends united in a commitment to lift of the concern for ecological 

sustainability. Our weakness is that so much of what we accomplish depends 

on the time spent by the clerk. 

Plans for the coming year: 

* Publishing and distributing a Quaker Eco-Bulletin on national policy 

from a faith-based 

perspective; working with FCNL and FCUN to establish a Quaker witness on 

national policy. 

* Continuing visits to monthly meetings to share this concern, and to 

urge continuing 

consideration by monthly meetings of our relation to the earth and what 

Friends can do; strengthing a PYM monthly meeting eco-network. 

* Supporting NCC congregational outreach projects on covenant 

congregations and on 

climate change, collaborating with (NJ) Partners for Environmental 

Quality, seeking to develop a Delaware Valley and other regional interfaith 

networks 

* Holding two "open meetings" ( scheduled for 10/3/98 on the "politics 

of climate change") 

* Asking Friends schools to consider the implications of the Yearly 

Meeting minute for their 

operations and program. 

Hopes for the future: that Yearly Meeting will continue to consider the 

concern for ecological 

sustainability, and will begin to consider the economic issues it raises; 

that PYM efforts will help create an effective Quaker witness on national 

policy and contribute significantly to an emerging interfaith witness on 

healing and protecting the earth. 

Respectfully submitted, Ed Dreby, clerk Approved by 

EWG 7/14/98