The Jesuit focus on sustainability in Asia Pacific is gaining momentum. Just two days after the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific’s first sustainability conference, the chief executive officers of Jesuit institutions of higher learning agreed that their network would be the institutional home of JCAP’s sustainability movement.
Small-scale farming and indigenous practices in the uplands of Asia are not very sustainable and a great majority of the youth wants out. Given the marginalisation and oppression that still rule in many of these environments with exploitation by corporate “sustainable” logging and mining firms, armed groups, corporate agricultural practices, infrastructure and seeping globalisation, farming life is not a question of success but of survival.
The ecological crisis, the globalised call for environmental stewardship promulgated in Laudato si’ and the 2015 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris have brought the concept of “sustainability of life” to the fore. These have raised the need for critical reflection on sustainability in the light of the innovative praxis of local communities, particularly the indigenous peoples.
The experience of walking through the forest helped to set the scene of the JCAP Reconciling with Creation Reflection Workshop by immersing us in nature and helping us to reflect on the interconnectedness of all things.
It meant three days with no Internet connection or cellular phone signal, but 35 people from 10 countries within the Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific (JCAP) happily gathered in a rural part of the Philippines for an ecology workshop in early June. They worked together, shared experiences, and developed 60 joint actions for strengthening networks, collaboration and communication as communities of practice.
The environmental problems we face today are complex and the Church’s concern is shared by other faiths. In Islam, for example, we can find some principles of environmental ethics that deal with nature and creation. These principles are: tawhîd (God’s unity), âyat (sign of God’s presence), mîzân (balance), khalifat (God’s vicegerent) and amânat (trust).
Jesuits and colleagues in the Asia Pacific region are gathering in the Philippines next month to discuss and share how transformed lifestyles are moving a more meaningful and effective response to environmental and social concerns in their ministries. The three-day environmental reflection workshop will be held at the Culture and Ecology Centre in Bendum, Bukidnon from June 6 to 10, and is organized by the Reconciliation with Creation programme of the Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific (JCAP).
There are “the cracks in the planet”. As we mark Earth Day today, I am reminded of the startlingly fresh and visionary way Pope Francis called on all – not just Catholics – to be aware of the acute distress of our planet, our “common home” last year. In his encyclical letter Laudato si’, Francis calls us to appreciate our moral responsibility to care for this wounded world even as we rejoice in the marvels of creation, the wonder of human life, the beauty of the stars, the forests and the macro- and the micro systems of our universe.
The Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific is inviting Jesuits, collaborators and friends to participate in a conference on sustainability. Entitled A Call to Dialogue on the Sustainability of Life in the ASEAN Context, the meeting will be held in Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta from August 8 to 10, 2016.
There are things happening in small and distant places around the world that speak out for a more sustainable world. They go unheard in a globalised world, but does that mean they failed? Like the “ooze of oil”*, activities of the youth are slowly and imperceptibly drawing people and nature together.