Care and protection of Mother Earth
WE WILL be marking Earth Day on April 22, as a reminder of the need to care for and protect Mother Earth, and for a more appropriate and equitable use of our natural resources.
Environmental challenges, such as climate change, deforestation, decreasing biodiversity, soil erosion and plastic pollution, are global problems.
As individuals and communities, we need to take responsibility for addressing such problems and in the protection of Mother Earth.
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.”
The wise care and protection of the earth, in the Bahá’í view, will require a globally accepted vision for the future, based on unity and willing co-operation among the nations, races, creeds and classes of the human family.
Wise care of the environment will depend on our unity as humanity, and justice towards all. It will depend on commitment to a higher moral standard, and the development of consultative skills for the effective functioning of society at all levels.
According to a statement of the Baháí International Community, “for progress on the international stage to be sustainable, it must take place within a framework that promotes the attainment of progressively higher degrees of unity of vision and action,” and that, “the mere collaboration of self-interested actors in a multilateral enterprise does not ensure favourable outcomes for the community of nations as a whole. As long as one group of nations perceives its interests in opposition to another, progress will be limited and short-lived”.
Resources must be directed away from those activities and programmes that are damaging the social and natural environment, and instead, efforts be made towards the creation of systems that foster co-operation and mutualism.
Justice and fairness in using the Earth’s resources requires that we move away from the ideology of self-interest that is dominating our world today, to a mode of sharing and caring for our natural resources.
It also implies the need to address the extremes of wealth and poverty, with its clearly adverse impact on the earth’s natural resources.
According to a statement of the Baháí International Community, “Wealth needs to be acquired and expended by nations in a way that enables all the people of the world to prosper. Structures and systems that permit a few to have inordinate riches while the masses remain impoverished must be replaced by arrangements that foster the generation of wealth in a way that promotes justice.”
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 wealth and sustenance.
We are custodians of the Earth and have the obligation to ensure that nature is cared for and protected as part of a divine trust for which humanity is ultimately answerable, remembering that future prosperity and the peaceful co-existence of peoples will greatly depend on access to and conservation of the Earth’s resources.