We are facing extinction

On the occasion of the third anniversary of Laudato Si’, the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development organised an International Conference on the 3rd Anniversary of Laudato Si’: Saving our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth from July 5 to 6.

Jul 14, 2018

By Joshua J. McElwee,
On the occasion of the third anniversary of Laudato Si’, the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development organised an International Conference on the 3rd Anniversary of Laudato Si’: Saving our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth from July 5 to 6. The Vatican event, which Francis addressed July 6, is being organised in three consecutive parts: examining the current state of global environmental concerns, discerning the best actions to take and inspiring a “massive movement” to care for the Earth.

Each of the parts involved plenary sessions and small group meetings, leading to drafting of “action plans” for several upcoming world meetings, including the October annual sessions of the International Monetary Fund (or IMF) and the World Bank and the December session of the UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP24. The meeting represented one of the strongest calls for action from the Vatican to world leaders since the publication of Laudato Si’, which Francis has said he wrote with hopes of influencing the discussion that eventually led to the 2016 Paris Agreement, in which 195 countries committed themselves to acting to stop climate change.

One of the organisers for the conference said the Vatican recognises that the global political environment has changed significantly since the 2015 publication of the encyclical, and that it now needs to push more concertedly for action.

“The political environment is tougher,” said Fr Augusto Zampini Davies, an Argentinian who directs development and faith issues at the Vatican dicastery. “But precisely because the environment is tougher ... we should work harder in collaboration with lots and lots of people.”

“We need to convey all this good energy. ... We want to create a synergy that can bring an explosion,” said Zampini. “The Church wants to help the international community to have a good discussion and a good proposal for action at COP24.”

The conference started off with brief presentations from five young people from different continents.

Jade Hameister, a 17-year-old Australian who is the youngest person ever to ski both the North and South Poles and to cross the polar ice cap on Greenland, said that during her visit to the North Pole the sea ice was so thin in sections that there were areas of open water where there never had been before.

“I call on the United Nations Climate Change Conference ... to put aside our differences and to think and act as one species facing an extinction event of our own making,” said Hameister. “For the first time in the history of our species, we have one common threat against which we must all act as one.”

Macson Almeida, a young man from India, said he and other young Indians are looking to the future “with anxiety,” knowing their country is likely to be among those most impacted by abnormal climactic events.

“I urgently appeal to those responsible to quicken the pace to climate negotiations,” said Almeida. “Every year we spend negotiating, we are losing out on time.”

Turkson said the Vatican was hosting the event with the help of a number of other organisations, including Global Climate Movement, Caritas Internationalis, The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, or CAFOD, and Global Solidarity Fund.

(This article first appeared on NCRonline.org, the Website of National Catholic Reporter, and is being used with permission)

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