Across the Anglican Communion, in keeping with the Anglican Fifth Mark of Mission, young people are taking up the call to protect and restore oceans and waterways in their communities. Anglicans are involved in advocacy, both in grassroots initiatives and on international platforms, calling for stronger controls on plastic production.

Young Anglicans in Malawi have been echoing this call for action and, through peaceful demonstrations, petitions and sustained advocacy alongside churches and civil society, they have helped secure a nationwide ban on thin plastics despite fierce resistance from manufacturers.

Thin plastics take years to break down and are extremely difficult to recycle. What is more, they rarely stay where they are dropped: wind and rain carry them into drains, streams and rivers, and on into lakes and the sea. The UN Environment Programme estimates that 19–23 million tonnes of plastic waste leak into lakes, rivers and seas every year, a figure projected to nearly triple by 2040 without meaningful action. Plastic pollution can also cause significant problems for fish, seabirds and other wildlife when they become entangled in plastic waste or mistake it for food.

Charles Bakolo, an Anglican climate advocate from Malawi in the Church of the Province of Central Africa, was part of the Anglican delegation in Brazil at COP30 in 2025. He serves as the Honorary Provincial Environmental Coordinator, is a Green Anglicans Ambassador in Malawi and is known for leading and inspiring young people to join a campaign calling for an end to single-use thin plastics in his country.

Before COP30, Charles told Anglican News, ‘When I witness communities without clean water… I recognise these as profound moral and spiritual failures. Environmental destruction is an assault on human dignity and an affront to the Creator.

‘My work in banning thin plastics in Malawi, coordinating creation care networks, and advocating at global forums is simply faith in action. To love our neighbours means ensuring they have water to drink, food to eat and a habitable planet to call home. Creation care is not an addendum to my faith; it is the embodiment of the Gospel's call to justice, mercy and stewardship.’

The Malawi Creation Care Network calls for a firm ban on thin plastics

Since 2019, the Malawi Creation Care Network (MCCN), which Charles coordinates nationally, has campaigned for the thin plastics ban to be enforced. The network organised nationwide marches and protests, presenting a unified commitment to environmental justice. It engaged young people across churches, schools and universities to lend their energy and passion to the cause, and supported the legal fight to defend the ban in the courts.

In early 2025, after years of appeals and injunctions brought by plastic manufacturers, the courts cleared the final legal obstacle to the ban. This victory allowed the government to finally enforce the ban in a meaningful way and demonstrated that young people with strong faith can bring about change and healing through advocacy.

Announcing the court's decision on social media, Charles wrote, ‘Think about those thin jumbo bags you get at the market. They tear so easily, then get blown around, stuck in drains, or tangled in trees. They are too thin to recycle and nearly impossible to clean up. The ban pushes for stronger, reusable plastics that can actually be recycled.

‘Yes, change is tough. But when I see plastic waste blocking our drainage systems during the rainy season, or littering our beautiful landscapes, I ask myself, don't we, and our children, deserve a cleaner Malawi?’

Protecting the ‘Lungs of the Earth’

This year, the ‘Lungs of the Earth’ call for action and advocacy for the ocean invites all to consider how restoration, resilience and relationships can shape and inform our response to the climate crisis across the Anglican Communion.

Restoration: every river is a road to the sea

‘People ask why a landlocked country should care about the ocean,’ Charles said. ‘My answer is that every river is a road to the sea. What we throw into our drains today flows into our rivers, into the Shire and the Zambezi, and finally into the Indian Ocean. Along the way, it chokes Lake Malawi, whose fish feed millions of our people and whose waters sustain livelihoods along its shores. Protecting the ocean begins with protecting the water at our own doorstep.

‘Restoration starts small and close to home. Church members, students and youth groups are cleaning up drains, riverbanks and lakeshores, and planting trees along rivers to hold the soil and keep our water clean. Every clean-up is an act of worship and a lesson in stewardship.’

Resilience: clean waterways save lives

In addition to his faith-based advocacy, Charles is also a geospatial scientist with Malawi's Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development. His recent research mapped flood-prone areas in Nsanje District in the Lower Shire Valley, one of the parts of Malawi most exposed to flooding.

‘Floods in the Lower Shire are becoming more frequent and more severe,’ he said. ‘When thin plastics clog our drains and river channels, water that should flow away floods homes, fields and roads, and the poorest suffer first. Clean waterways are a matter of resilience and survival.’

Relationships and youth engagement

‘Water security has become an existential crisis as changing rainfall patterns devastate communities that have depended on predictable seasons for generations,’ Charles said. ‘Food security demands urgent attention as smallholder farmers struggle to feed their families amid increasingly erratic weather. And crucially, we must create genuine pathways for youth engagement in climate decision-making, which is why Climate YES (an ecumenical network uniting young environmental advocates) continues to mobilise young African voices who will inherit the consequences of decisions made today.’

‘None of this happens alone,’ Charles added. ‘The thin plastics victory was won through relationships: between churches, students, civil society, lawyers and government, and between Anglicans across the Communion who prayed with us and amplified our voices. When we restore our relationships with one another, we begin to restore our relationship with God’s creation.’

The successful campaign by the Malawi Creation Care Network shows that small, unified actions can make a big difference to how a whole community handles waste. By stopping plastic at its source, hundreds of kilometres from any coastline, Malawians are protecting the rivers and lakes that flow to the ocean, and inspiring others around the world to make tangible changes of their own.

More information

Learn more about the Lungs of the Earth call to action and advocacy to protect and restore oceans and waterways.

See an article about the MCCN campaign against thin plastics in Malawi.

Find out more about Climate YES, MCCN and Green Anglicans.

Read Charles’s research on mapping flood-prone areas in Nsanje District.