The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippine (CBCP) on Tuesday issued a pastoral letter urging the faithful to spearheard “radical” efforts to address the “climate emergency.”
In a nine-page message signed by CBCP President and Archbishop of Davao Romulo G. Valles, the country’s prelates raised concerns on how the Church’s numerous previous appeal for the respect of the environment in the last 30 years remain unheeded.
The most recent of which of that of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si‟: On Care for Our Common Home, which connects declining biodiversity to poverty.
“The poor in the rural areas are directly dependent on biodiverse resources for food, fuel, shelter, medicine and livelihood,” CBCP said.
“When these resources or their environment are subjected to pressures that exceed their capacity to be resilient or to bounce back to their original state, imbalance in the ecosystem is created, leading to degradation,” it added.
Such “pressures” may come in the form of extractive mining operations, building of dams and the use of coal power plants.
The last one, CBCP said, is also of main contributor to the climate change due its large emissions of green house gasses leading to a warmer global climate, which will threatened the lives of thousands of people.
“The climate crisis has thus far claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people, and brought about tragic devastation in many parts of the world. This climate crisis is bound to get much worse in the years ahead,” CBCP said.
This, CBCP said this make such activities, which contribute to the destruction of the environment, an “ecological sin.”
It noted it is the role of everyone, especially members of the Church, to contribute to addressing the said crisis since it is for the “common good” through restitution by doing concrete steps to address it.
For its part, CBCP said its diocesan and parish ministries to generate awareness on environment protection by exercising waste segregation; planting trees; resisting destructive mining and “dirty” energy such as coal; promotion of sustainable agriculture; protection of bodies of waters; the use of sustainable sources of energy like solar and wind in homes and institutions (dioceses, churches, schools, seminaries).
CBCP these initiatives will be promoted by their “ecology desk” in all diocesan social action centers.
The bishops also agreed not to allow the financial resources of Catholic institutions to be invested in favor of coal-fired power plants and mining companies.
“Divestment from such investment portfolios must be encouraged,” they stressed.
“Today, guided by Pope Francis‘s encyclical, Laudato Si, we again call on everyone to care for the earth and for the poor and embrace integral ecology for the sake of our common home,” CBCP said.