adminFlora Teckie A Bahá’í Perspective
We celebrated ‘‘World Environment Day’’ on June 5. This is the day to stimulate further awareness on environmental issues and encourage action to protect nature and the planet earth. Currently, we live in a planet with serious environmental crisis such as increase in the number of floods, tsunami, droughts and food and water shortages.
There is need for serious and urgent commitment towards the responsible use and distribution of our resources, and stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climatic system.
Focusing mainly on the material aspects of the environmental crisis, while ignoring its moral and ethical dimensions, would be counter-productive to humanity’s long term well-being.
Rather than asking how to exploit the earth’s resources without due regard to its environment, we should be asking how to live with an ethic of respect, care and justice towards all life and nature.
Need for coherence between the Material and Ethical Dimensions
There is need for dynamic coherence between the material and value-based or spiritual dimensions of sustainable consumption and production and exploring and implementing not only the policy and technical aspects, but the values that influence attitudes and transform behaviours.
Genuine solutions, in the Bahá’í view, will require a globally accepted vision for the future, based on unity and willing cooperation among the nations, races, creeds, and classes of the human family.
Besides, commitment to a higher moral standard and the development of consultative skills for the effective functioning of groups at all levels of society will be essential.
More than 100 years ago Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “Nature in its essence is the embodiment of (God’s) Name, the Maker, the Creator . . . Nature is God’s Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world.”
Human beings are custodians of the environment and have the obligation to ensure that nature is respected and protected as part of a divine trust for which humanity is ultimately answerable.
Need for Co-operation, Justice and Unity
There is need for international co-operation to protect the environment. The local, national and the international are very much linked on the environmental issue.
There is need for justice in utilizing the earth’s resources. Observing justice implies moving from self-interest that dominates our world today to a mode of sharing and caring for our natural resources.
Wise use and care of the environment is dependent on humanity’s unity. The following from a statement of the Bahá’í International Community summarizes some ethical requirements of a sustainable social order, sustainable consumption and production, role of justice and unity and the need for a world federal system to enable mankind to arrange its economic, material and social life with justice for all peoples and reverence towards the earth:
“Progress at the technical and policy levels now needs to be accompanied by public dialogue — among rural and urban dwellers; among the materially poor and the affluent; among men, women and young persons alike — on the ethical foundations of the necessary systemic change. A sustainable social order is distinguished, among other things, by an ethic of reciprocity and balance at all levels of human organization.
‘‘A relevant analogy is the human body: here, millions of cells collaborate to make human life possible. The astounding diversity of form and function connects them in a lifelong process of giving and receiving. It represents the highest expression of unity in diversity. Within such an order, the concept of justice is embodied in the recognition that the interests of the individual and of the wider community are inextricably linked.
‘‘The pursuit of justice within the frame of unity (in diversity) provides a guide for collective deliberation and decision-making and offers a means by which unified thought and action can be achieved.”
Regarding the transformation required towards achieving a sustainable social order, the statement continues saying: “Ultimately, the transformation required to shift towards sustainable consumption and production will entail no less than an organic change in the structure of society itself so as to reflect fully the interdependence of the entire social body —as well as the interconnectedness with the natural world that sustains it.
Among these changes, . . . are: the consciousness of world citizenship; the eventual federation of all nations through an integrated system of governance with capacity for global decision-making; the establishment of structures which recognize humanity’s common ownership of the earth’s resources; the establishment of full equality between men and women; the elimination of all forms of prejudice; the establishment of a universal currency and other integrating mechanisms that promote global economic justice; the adoption of an international auxiliary language to facilitate mutual understanding; and the redirection of massive military expenditures towards constructive social ends”.
Need for addressing extremes of the poverty and wealth
There is need for a principle-based approach to collective decision-making and addressing both extremes of poverty and wealth. Today, over 80 percent of the world’s people live in countries where gaps in income are widening.
While poverty eradication measures have improved living standards in some parts of the world, inequality remains widespread. There are numerous and wide-ranging deficiencies in human well-being both in poor and rich countries.
Nearly 800 million adults cannot read or write, two and half billion people lack basic sanitation, nearly half of the world’s children live in poverty, and nearly one billion people do not have enough to eat.
At the other extreme, a mere thousand or so individuals control nearly six percent of the gross world product.
According to Rio+20 statement of the Bahá’í International Community “these are symptomatic of structural flaws in the economic system and its institutions, and need to be corrected . . . Wealth needs to be acquired and expended by nations in a way that enables all the people of the world to prosper.
Structures and systems that permit a few to have inordinate riches while the masses remain impoverished must be replaced by arrangements that foster the generation of wealth in a way that promotes justice.
In conclusion
A global action for environmental conservation must be rooted in spiritual values and principles in addition to technical and economic considerations. It will require a vision for the future, based on unity, justice and willing cooperation among the people of all nations and backgrounds.
For feedback please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].
Online Reporter