Ecological responsibility

The Earth is sacred. All of creation has its own intrinsic value. We have a responsibility to protect and cherish the Earth’s ecological diversity, beauty and life-sustaining systems. Together, we must care for and protect our common home for future generations.

Ecological responsibility

The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.
― Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 49

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.
― Pape François, Laudato Si, 49

The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole.
― Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 48

Example in action:

God’s creation is given to all to be enjoyed by all. But climate change, caused our production and consumption habits, threatens human, animal and plant life around the world.

Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada supports grassroots partners working for ecological justice in a variety of ways, like promoting climate-resilient farming, defending fragile bioregions and resisting destructive extractive industries. While climate change affects us all, its worst effects are borne by those who are least responsible for it. That makes our partners’ work with the most vulnerable communities especially important.

Canada has additional responsibility because of its special relationship to industries that have a long history of human rights and environmental abuses. A majority of the world’s mining corporations are headquartered or raise capital in Canada. Communities harmed by Canadian mining in the Global South find it immensely difficult, if not impossible, to pursue justice in Canadian courts. That is why our members have been advocating since 2008 for ways of holding Canadian corporations accountable and giving the communities they harm abroad a way of seeking justice in Canada.

Our economic systems can no longer be considered as separate from the environment and human beings. We cannot pursue infinite economic growth on a finite planet. We must reject solutions that leave out the poor. To respond to the call of God to care for creation, we must build people-led, ecologically sustainable alternatives.

Ecological responsibility