Ecological conversion needed now – Vatican

Time is running out, archbishop says

- Design Pics photo The head of the Vatican's permanent mission to the UN says ecological issues should not be seen as marginal.

Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
United Nations

The world needs to undergo an "ecological conversion" or face the consequences of the global life support systems being irreparably destroyed, the Vatican told the member countries of the United Nations.

In an Oct. 25 statement to the UN General Assembly meeting on sustainable development and global climate changes, Archbishop Celestino Migliore stressed that the international economy is directly connected to global environmental health.

Time is running out to make the systemic changes needed, he said.

"The environmental consequences of our economic activity are now among the world's highest priorities," said Migliore, apostolic nuncio of the Holy See's permanent mission to the United Nations.

The world's "economy continues to rest basically upon its relation to nature," and in particular to its impact on the earth's soil, water and climate, the archbishop said.

Viable economy

"It is becoming rapidly ever clearer that if these, the world's life support systems, are spoiled or destroyed irreparably, there will be no viable economy for any of us," the apostolic nuncio said.

He criticized the tendency of national policy makers to view ecological issues as "external or marginal" to economic considerations.

"Environmental concerns have to be understood," the archbishop said, "as the basis upon which all economic - and even human - activity rests."

"The environmental question is not only an important ethical and scientific problem," he said, but one that impacts political, economic, security strategy, developmental and humanitarian issues.

Conversion needed

"In a word, the world needs an ecological conversion so as to examine critically current models of thought, as well as those of production and consumption," Migliore said.

While acknowledging that the international community has placed greater emphasis on developing renewable energy sources, clean technologies and sustainable development strategies, the nuncio said all nations "must do much more to stop and reverse current trends in consumption and pollution."

He added that the Holy See favours efforts at making the Kyoto Protocol effective, using strategies that meet "short and long-term energy needs, protect human health and the environment, and establish precise commitments that will effectively confront the problem of climate change."

The Kyoto Protocol, ratified by more than 160 countries, commits nations to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

While noting the world's continued reliance on fossil fuels, Migliore called for urgent "serious public investment in clean technology," especially "to diminish as fast as possible the impact of air and sea transport pollution and those sectors' continued use of outdated technology."

"Progress is slowly being made in clean technologies in other fields, including even that of car transport: but the time is now ripe for major investment in cleaner air and sea transport technologies before the ecological balance is tipped by culpable neglect," he said.

The Vatican also pointed to the growing problems of water management, desertification and rural degradation.

Noting that now one in six of the world's population is affected by growing desertification and drought, Migliore called for coordinated international "concrete actions to reverse this alarming phenomenon."

Desertification results from degradation of land, primarily because of development and the demands of increased and shifting populations.

Water resources

The nuncio also said the international community needs to do a better job of "governance of water resources." The world faces a problem not of "the lack of sufficient water for human needs," he said, but rather problems of management, infrastructure, technology and finance.

The archbishop pointed to the global rural areas, within which three quarters of the world's hungry reside and which "is being ever more degraded."

"Policy makers cannot continue to treat the rural world as second class," Migliore said. "Agrarian reform and rural development (are of great importance) in combating hunger and poverty, in promoting sustainable development and food safety, in guaranteeing the promotion of human rights."

(© Catholic Online 2006, www.catholic.org)

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