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 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).
Asia Pacific has been dubbed the world’s engine of growth, but at what and whose cost?
China has been hailed by the world as an economic success story. Three decades of uninterrupted growth has lifted more than 600 million people out of poverty, and although there are still roughly 150 million people living in poverty in the country, China’s economic success is the envy of the developing world.
As usual it began with a phone call. In the first week of February, a call came through from the staff at the halfway house run by the Ministry of Social Welfare in East Jakarta. A group of people needed some spiritual counsel. The people were Indonesian migrant workers who had been deported from Malaysia. The next day, a group of volunteers who call themselves Care for Migrants Network of the Jakarta Archdiocese visited the shelter and organised a common counseling session and a mass because most of the deportees were Catholic.
Sustainability is a hot word today among scientists, economists, politicians, religious leaders, and others especially concerned with humanitarian values. It has been linked to economics, ecology, social welfare, social justice, gender equality, financial security, conserving energy, eradicating poverty, and, of course, finding meaning in life. And it is a topic of concern for the Jesuits engaged in dialogue with Buddhists.
Go, set the world on fire! On January 3, 70 young people, set out to do just that in their home countries – Cambodia, Korea, Myanmar, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Indonesia – after nine days spent in the first Magis JCAP, held at Omah Petroek in Kaliurang Yogyakarta.
This August will see an estimated 100 Jesuits, collaborators and friends converging in Indonesia to reflect, discuss and explore actions on sustainability of life in the ASEAN context. The meeting will be the largest collaboration across sectors in the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific in recent years.
The first Magis event for the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific begins in a month. On Boxing Day, youth from seven provinces and regions in the Conference will converge in Yogyakarta for the nine-day workshop. Organised by the newly formed JCAP Youth Ministry team, Magis JCAP will help encourage Ignatian Magis formation in Asia Pacific. It is patterned on the Magis formation programme that the Jesuits in Indonesia have been running for youth since 2008.
On March 19 around 100 people congregated in Wisma Hijau, Depok, Indonesia to celebrate my 50 years of service with Bina Swadaya (self-reliance development). This is a charitable organisation based in Jakarta which runs 17 companies whose profits go to various social projects. It owes its foundation to a Jesuit priest, Fr John Dijkstra.