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CNS Story:
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VATICAN-ENVIRONMENT Oct-30-2007 (350 words) xxxi
Vatican official warns ecological damage has biggest impact on poor
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A Vatican official warned that ecological damage has the greatest impact on the world's poor, who are caught in a "vicious circle of poverty and environmental degradation."
Addressing the United Nations Oct. 29, Archbishop Celestino Migliore emphasized what he called the "moral imperative" to protect the environment even while promoting economic growth.
The duty to protect the environment "must not be sacrificed on the altar of economic development," said the archbishop, the Vatican's U.N. representative.
"My delegation believes that, at its core, the environmental crisis is a moral challenge. It calls us to examine how we use and share the goods of the earth and what we pass on to future generations," Archbishop Migliore said. A copy of his text was released at the Vatican.
The issue of ecology should not be seen in isolation from other social and justice questions, such as poverty, he said.
"We must consider how, in most countries today, it is the poor and the powerless who most directly bear the brunt of environmental degradation," he said.
"Unable to do otherwise, they live in polluted lands, near toxic waste dumps, or squat in public lands and other people's properties without any access to basic services," he said.
Subsistence farmers are forced to clear woodlands and forests in order to survive, exacerbating the environmental harm. In this sense, he said, dire poverty is "a great polluter."
Archbishop Migliore said, however, that "all is not gloom" when it comes to the environment. For one thing, he said, predictions of disastrous consequences of climate change have awakened individuals and countries to the urgency of caring for the environment.
Such awareness now must be translated into public policies that are able to stop, reverse and prevent environmental deterioration, he said.
He added that laws and national policies are not enough to alter behavior regarding the environment. Behavioral change requires personal commitment and the ethical conviction of the value of solidarity, he said.
END
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