Statement on Earth Day celebration
Human life depends on the well-being of the planet and all of its inhabitants. The more we disturb biodiversity, the more we put our lives and health in danger.
A study conducted by the Harvard Medical School said that “when we develop an infectious illness, we tend to believe that we caught it from another person, who in turn caught it from someone else, and that germ that made us ill had never resided in any species other than our own.”
The study revealed that this belief is false more times than not. “For most human infectious disease – some 60 percent – the pathogen has lived and multiplied in other organisms before having been transmitted to people,” the study said.
Today, as we celebrate Earth Day, we must expand the COVID-19 pandemic narrative beyond health and economic issues. We must look at environmental destruction as the root cause of the global pandemic. Humans take wildlife out of their natural habitats and exploit finite resources. Human activities – destructive extraction, coal projects, large-scale logging, mono-cropping plantation, among others – destroy biodiversity as if we are not part of it.
The COVID-19 pandemic not only calls for a deep social and structural conversion but for a very intimate ecological conversion and change in our ways toward the environment. Our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is in the hands of us all but to prevent more pandemics and crises in the future will depend on how we take care of Our Common Home.
Our remaining forests and biodiversity are continually being threatened by extractive mining operations and the building of dams. Respect for God’s creation is disregarded when irresponsible mining practices are allowed to continue. Land and life are desecrated when almost two-thirds of the ancestral domains of indigenous peoples and more than half of protected and key biodiversity areas are directly threatened by mining applications and operations. Despite shreds of evidence against 26 mining operations ordered closed or suspended last February 2017, not one mine has stopped extracting because of technical administrative loopholes. Social justice is not served when only the few mining companies, many of which are also owned by political leaders, reap the benefits from mineral extraction.
Another problem related to mining is the phenomenon of our country’s growing dependence on fossil fuel-based energy, such as coal. There are at least 23 existing coal-fired power plants operating across the country; 28 more may be operational this year. To support and sustain this dependence, a huge number of coal power plants involved in extensive coal extraction has to be put in place. Thus, coal mining projects have been allowed to increase to 186, including small-scale ones. Worse is, most of these coal projects are located within the vicinity of communities of indigenous Filipinos and are supported by rich ecosystems and biodiversities.
The burning of coal and other fossil fuels and the destruction of nature are natural consequences of extractive mining. Needless to say, these industries are pursued primarily for profit accumulation and rarely, if at all, in response to peoples’ needs. This is the root cause of the continuous escalation of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere which, in turn, is causing the climate crisis.
The prevalent anthropocentric and utilitarian perspectives tend to negate our ethical role of responsible stewardship and deny the reality that humans are part of nature. We need a paradigm shift in order to reestablish our sacred relationship with nature. Pope Francis in the Encyclical Laudato Si underlines that: “Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” (Laudato Si, #139).
A paradigm on ecological conversion needs to usher in a new awareness: that the earth and all of nature is our common home. We are part of nature and we need to respect and protect our home – the entire ecosystem, the habitat and biodiversity of the planet. As Rachel Carson reminds us: Man is part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
Father Edwin Gariguez
Executive Secretary
National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA)/ Caritas Philippines
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines
