Close to 40 Jesuits, religious and lay companions from across the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific gathered in Kompong Cham, Cambodia, from 11 to 15 July for the first JCAP meeting on ecology.
Reconciliation with Creation is a JCAP priority engagement and the meeting aimed to build a common understanding and shared approach to environmental issues among the Provinces.
The Jesuits in the Asia Pacific region have initiated a carbon offset scheme to reduce the impact of air travel on the environment. Flights for Forests was presented and approved at the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific (JCAP) assembly in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, in July 2011.
“Air travel is a major contributor to global warming, and since our collaboration in the Jesuit mission requires many of us to fly frequently, we seek to mitigate the damage our trips cause to the environment,” said Fr Mark Raper SJ, JCAP President.
Human and environmental devastation caused by floods in Australia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka and by earthquakes and their aftershocks in New Zealand, Japan and Myanmar is massive. Although Japan has the technology and experience to cope with earthquakes, the latest tsunami defied preparation. The consequent nuclear crisis brought the worst of nightmares into reality.
The third Hulas (the Pulangiyen term for training and formation) batch graduated in Bendum on May 28.
Led by Fr Pedro Walpole SJ, the Hulas initiative reaches out to address the skills and education needs of a growing number of indigenous youth in upland communities in central Mindanao, Philippines. The youth are encouraged to bring their knowledge and learnings into their personal vision and to use these to help sustain their families as well as the broader community in Upper Pulangi.
Flores is an island that has sub‐climates. The mountains in this island are highly volcanic in origin, so water can permeate and infiltrate into the ground effectively. There is good storage capacity but there is no clear understanding of how much water is available on the ground. Volcanic earth has certain nutrients that are valuable but when we get to plant, it may not have the right combination of nutrients and the water needed.
The story begun between 2003 and 2004, when Fr. Bambang Triatmoko SJ was invited to attend a Church gathering of eight bishops and 50,000 youth, in a small village in Bali, Indonesia. From the Church’s perspective, those youth needed to gain more skills aside from the general or basic education they get from their local school. Compared to other region, their youth have very low skilled‐job, which was attributed to low government support to education.
China’s karst landscape stretches through eight provinces in southern China – from Guangxi and Hubei in the east to Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and parts of Tibet in the west. Unfortunately, this has also become the border of poverty, ecology, and opportunity in south-southwestern China. The karst belt is about 500,000 square kilometers with 8,200 million people living. In Yunnan Province, the karst landscape comprises nearly 44 percent of its total land area.
Xavier University has now established its baseline data for solid waste management program. Through the Physical Plant Office (PPO), a trial run was conducted for one week and also during the special event of Xavier Days in order to estimate the different volumes of wastes being produced. Now that some data has been gathered, the challenge is to reduce wastes of 9-18 cubic meter per week by 50% and reinforce waste segregation project in the University.
Projected Activities, 1st Quarter 2011
Fr Pedro Walpole SJ recently attended an international conference in Whakatane, New Zealand on “Sharing Power: A New Vision for Development,” which focused on the needed shift in development paradigm for a sustainable world. On 16 January, he shared with the … Continued
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