Environmental Crisis is Moral Challenge says Vatican

(30 Oct 07 - RV) The Vatican has told the United Nations that protecting the environment is key to eradicating poverty and promoting sustainable development.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore , the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York, delivered this message yesterday to the Second Committee of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly.

In his speech the Archbishop pointed out that the Vatican’s primary concern is “the importance of grasping the underlying moral imperative that all, without exception, have a grave responsibility to protect the environment and that, at its core, the environmental crisis is a moral challenge”.

He said that it “calls us to examine how we use and share the goods of the earth and what we pass on to future generations. It exhorts us to live in harmony with our environment. Thus the ever-expanding powers of the human being over nature must be accompanied by an equally expanding responsibility towards the environment”.

The Archbishop also noted that “the issue of the environment is directly related to other basic questions, such as energy and economics, peace and justice, national interests and international solidarity”.

He pointed out that, “while we seek to find the best way to protect the environment and attain sustainable development, we must also work for justice within societies and among nations. We must consider how in most countries today, it is the poor and the powerless who most directly bear the brunt of environmental degradation. Unable to do otherwise, they live in polluted lands, near toxic waste dumps, or squat in public lands and other people’s properties without any access to basic services. Subsistence farmers clear woodlands and forests in order to survive. Their efforts to eke out a bare existence perpetuate a vicious circle of poverty and environmental degradation. Indeed, extreme want is not only the worst of all pollutions; it is also a great polluter”.

Archbishop Migliore concludes by stating that “laws are not enough to alter behaviour. Behavioural change requires personal commitment and the ethical conviction of the value of solidarity”.