Note: We continue the reprint as a series of the Holy Father Pope Francis encyclical Laudato Si (On Our Care for Our Common Home).
Global inequality
THE human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation, unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation.
In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: “Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.” For example, the depletion of fishing reserves especially hurts small fishing communities without the means to replace those resources; water pollution particularly affects the poor who cannot buy bottled water; and rises in the sea level mainly affect impoverished coastal populations who have nowhere else to go. The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor, in conflicts sparked by the shortage of resources, and in any number of other problems, which are insufficiently represented on global agendas.
It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems, which especially affect the excluded. Yet, they are the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days, they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question that gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile.
This is due partly to the fact that many professionals, opinion makers, communications media and centers of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. They live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population.
This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses that neglect parts of reality. At times, this attitude exists side by side with a “green” rhetoric. Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure, which makes economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive health.” Yet, “while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development.”
To blame population growth, instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption. Besides, we know that approximately a third of all food produced is discarded, and “whenever food is thrown out, it is as if it were stolen from the table
of the poor.”
Still, attention needs to be paid to imbalances in population density, on both national and global levels, since a rise in consumption would lead to complex regional situations, as a result of the interplay between problems linked to environmental pollution, transport, waste treatment, loss of resources and quality of life.
Inequity affects not only individuals but entire countries; it compels us to consider an ethics of international relations. A true “ecological debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time. The export of raw materials to satisfy markets in the industrialized north has caused harm locally, as, for example, in mercury pollution in gold mining or sulphur dioxide pollution in copper mining. There is a pressing need to calculate the use of environmental space throughout the world for depositing gas residues, which have been accumulating for two centuries and have created a situation which currently affects all the countries of the world.
The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa, where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved devastating for farming. There is also the damage caused by the export of solid waste and toxic liquids to developing countries, and by the pollution produced by companies which operate in less-developed countries in ways they could never do at home, in the countries in which they raise their capital: “We note that often the businesses which operate this way are multinationals. They do here what they would never do in developed countries or the so-called First World. Generally, after ceasing their activity and withdrawing, they leave behind great human and environmental liabilities, such as unemployment, abandoned towns, the depletion of natural reserves, deforestation, the impoverishment of agriculture and local stock breeding, open pits, riven hills, polluted rivers and a handful of social works, which are no longer sustainable.”
The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned. In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.
The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership that is structurally perverse.
The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development.
The poorest areas and countries are less capable of adopting new models for reducing environmental
impact, because they lack the wherewithal to develop the necessary processes and to cover their costs. We must continue to be aware that, regarding climate change, there are differentiated responsibilities. As the United States bishops have said, greater attention must be given to “the needs of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable, in a debate often dominated by more powerful interests.” We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference.
True to its mission of answering to the cry of the poor, CFC Ancop Global Foundation Inc. strengthens its partnership with Caritas Manila to help fund the education program Youth Servant Leadership and Education Program.
We recently signed with Jaime Ilagan, president of CFC Ancop, an expanded memorandum of agreement since our organizations have been partners since 2013 in educating poor but deserving youth. With education as the main thrust of both organizations in their social-development goals, Caritas Manila’s Youth Servant Leadership and Education Program (YSLEP) and CFC Ancop’s Child Sponsorship Program (CSP) are a perfect match in their respective mission of poverty reduction in our country.
The strengthened partnership allows scholars to finish college in the identified communities in Pasay City and calamity-stricken areas in Leyte, Western Samar and Compostela Valley. In providing financial assistance to these poor but deserving youth, values formation is very much part of YSLEP and CSP. Under this partnerhip, CFC Ancop will pave the way for the parents of the scholars to participate and attend the various activities of Couples for Christ.
YSLEP is not just scholarship, but leadership. The youth scholar beneficiaries of Caritas Manila’s YSLEP undergo various values-formation modules and leadership workshops, which center on three core values of self-discipline, moral integrity and social responsibility. There are over 5,000 youth nationwide under Caritas Manila’s YSLEP.
With studies proving that attaining a college degree reduces the Filipino household’s poverty incidence by 98 percent, there are more youth who need your help! To donate to Caritas Manila’s YSLEP, please visit www.caritasmanila.org.ph or call our DonorCare lines at 563-9311, 564-0205, 0999-7943455, 0905-4285001 and 0929-8343857.
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For comments, e-mail caritas_manila@yahoo.com. For donations to Caritas Manila, call 563-9311. For inquiries, call 563-9308 or 563-9298. Fax: 563-9306.