4 items

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  Pope Francis and Environmental Leaders Forge Vision for Global Action

  Environmental leaders, activists and advocates gathered with Pope Francis for a two-day Vatican-organized conference with hopes to emerge with a shared vision for protecting our planet. The conference was inspired by the third anniversary of the Pope’s encyclical and was attended by political and religious leaders, scientists, economists and heads of civil society organizations. Inspired by the call for unity and action in the encyclical, UN Environment also introduced their Interfaith Rain-forest Initiative at the conference.
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  WCC Executive Committee: global biodiversity crisis reaches urgent level

  This article from the World Council of Churches discusses the current biodiversity crisis. The majority of land surfaces and ocean areas are significantly modified, and over 85% of the wetlands are gone. The following excerpt notes how this subsequently affects the poor and vulnerable:
  
  "The statement notes that, increasingly, the drive for relentless expansion built into dominant economic systems are endangering the survival of many of God’s creatures. 'Ultimately our significant and adverse impacts on ecology will impact humanity’s own future,' the statement reads. 'Already they are destroying the very basis of sustenance of our income-poor, vulnerable and Indigenous sisters and brothers, who contribute least to the ecological damage for which human beings are collectively responsible.'"
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  Decolonizing Thanksgiving

  "As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the United States, it’s great to think about all the things we can be grateful for. It is good to have a time to pause and reflect, to participate in the seasonality of gratitude for the year’s bountiful harvest, and to gather with family and friends. (We’ll ignore the über-consumerism of the day following Thanksgiving…)
  
  Many of us probably know by now, however, that the story many of us learned in school about the first Thanksgiving is rather inaccurate at best, and racist and paternalistic in many ways, with a focus on the Manifest Destiny idea of the divine mandate for Europeans to conquer the “New World” in the name of Christ and country.
  
  A few questions come to mind (at least my mind), for those of us with European-American roots, such as:
  
  Should we even celebrate Thanksgiving, since it’s so tainted with colonialism?
  What might it look like to “decolonize” our own understandings and our culture?
  How can we do this work in a way that encourages our own folks to partner, rather than making them (our White brethren) feel further ostracized, but while also speaking real truth?
  What can we do this Thanksgiving to begin to reconcile relationships damaged in the colonial era, both human to human and human to this land?"
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  Overpopulation and the Lifeboat Metaphor: A Critique from an African Worldview

  Many scientists have warned that the earth is nearing overpopulation or has already reached its carrying capacity. Garret Hardin proposed the lifeboat ethics metaphor to address this crisis and proper resource distributions. Okyere-Manu comments that this metaphor does not take into account the African political and cultural worldview. Hardin's metaphor is also reliant on inequality which disproportionately affects vulnerable communities.