Online Reporter
International Mother Earth Day, observed annually on April 22, is a reminder and a call for action to safeguard and protect the richness of our natural heritage – the planet earth.
Our natural environment is increasingly under threat from man-made perils such as destruction of rainforests, climate change, soil erosion, and plastic pollution.
Climate change, a change directly or indirectly related to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, is now one of the greatest challenges of our time. Addressing such serious environmental problems requires more than just technical solutions. It is essential to address the underlying causes of such problems.
In the Bahá’í view, a global action for protecting the resources of our planet must be rooted in spiritual values and principles, in addition to technical and economic considerations. There is a need for justice in utilising the earth’s resources. Observing justice implies moving from the self-interest that dominates our world today, to a mode of sharing and caring for our natural resources.
The Bahá’í International Community states that a “fundamental component of resolving the climate change challenge will be the cultivation of values, attitudes and skills that give rise to just and sustainable patterns of human interaction with the environment”.
We will always need material resources to sustain civilisation. As we learn how best to use the earth’s raw materials for the advancement of civilisation, we must be conscious of our attitudes towards the source of our sustenance and wealth.
According to the Bahá’í International Community, in its statement to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), “A more balanced attitude toward the environment must … address human conditions as consciously as it does natural ones. It must be embodied in social norms and patterns of action characterised by justice and equity”.
Solutions to address our environmental challenges 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. Such a vision is necessary, because as long as a group of nations perceives its interests in opposition to another, progress will be limited and short-lived.
The wise use and care of the environment, in the Bahá’í view, depends on the acceptance of the oneness of humanity and global unity. It will depend on commitments to a higher moral standard, and the development of consultative skills for the effective functioning of society at all levels.
“In order to progress beyond a world community driven by a largely economic and utilitarian calculus, to one of shared responsibility for the prosperity of all nations”, says the Bahá’í International Community, the principle of oneness of humanity “must take root in the conscience of the individual.
In this way, we come to recognise the broader human agenda, which subsumes those of climate change, poverty eradication, gender equality, development, and the like, and seeks to use both human and natural resources in a way that facilitates the progress and well-being of all people”.
There is an urgent need for international cooperation to safeguard and protect the richness of our planet. The local, national, and the international communities are very much linked through the environment.
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.
The endless acquisition of material goods, caused by greed, aggravates the destruction of the environment.
In one of its statements, the Bahá’í International Community makes the following observation: “The rapid progress in science and technology that has united the world physically has also greatly accelerated destruction of the biological diversity and rich natural heritage with which the planet has been endowed.
“Material civilisation, driven by the dogmas of consumerism and aggressive individualism and disoriented by the weakening of moral standards and spiritual values, has been carried to excess.
“Only a comprehensive vision of a global society, supported by universal values and principles, can inspire individuals to take responsibility for the long-term care and protection of the natural environment”.
Justice in utilising the earth’s resources also implies the need to address the extremes of wealth and poverty, with its clearly adverse impact on the world’s natural resources.
Furthermore, in the Bahá’í view, there is a need for a world federal system to enable humanity to arrange its economic, material and social life with justice for all peoples and reverence towards the earth.
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