Furthermore, damage done to the environment itself is often not acknowledged to be part of the devastating impacts of war - Photo: canva.com
The International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, continues to gather momentum as the global community comes to grip with the relationship between mounting pressures on the environment and the risk of armed conflict.
The United Nations Environment Programme reports that over the last sixty years, at least 40 percent of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of resources including timber, water, fertile land, precious metals and oil. These conflicts often relapse, plunging vulnerable communities into deepening poverty. Furthermore, damage done to the environment itself is often not acknowledged to be part of the devastating impacts of war.
Columban Missionaries have a long tradition of ministry in countries where poverty, the violence of war and environmental injustice is prevalent. Columbans work collaboratively to support sustainable development, challenge unjust structures and promote peace.
Industrial patterns of production and consumption are among the direct causes of environmental destruction. However, more than pointing to changes in human behaviour on the environment in recent decades alone, current economic systems result in unfair distribution of resources.
Columban Leader, and Peace, Ecology and Justice Coordinator in Australia, Fr Peter O’Neill, has worked for many years at home and in Taiwan to advocate for the labour rights and equal protections of migrant workers. Fr Peter is an active member of the Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH) and meets with workers who have been forced to leave their homelands due to the combined impacts of conflict, poverty and environmental destruction.
The natural environment in countries who experience the most poverty is depleted in the process. Coupled with the impacts of increasing climate change, this can result in the forced migration of peoples, diminishment of rights and human trafficking. Columban Leader, and Peace, Ecology and Justice Coordinator in Australia, Fr Peter O’Neill, has worked for many years at home and in Taiwan to advocate for the labour rights and equal protections of migrant workers. Fr Peter is an active member of the Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH) and meets with workers who have been forced to leave their homelands due to the combined impacts of conflict, poverty and environmental destruction.
Pope Francis, in his 2015 Encyclical letter Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home, urges us to draw on the deepest convictions about love, justice and peace, and to develop prophetic and contemplative lifestyles that foster equality and harmony with all creation (# 200 and 222). The underlying themes of social justice teaching exemplified in the Pope’s Encyclical, resonate with universal goals for humanity. Militarism and the development of arms, including nuclear weapons, undermine international efforts towards developing a just society for all.
The Laudato Si’ Institute, a work of the Jesuits in Britain, prepared a report in March 2021 called ‘The Wailing of God’s Creatures.’ The report states humans are part of the web of life and utterly dependent on it, but our “increasingly technology-dominated lifestyles might mistakenly suggest otherwise. The use of science and technology must be restrained by sound ethics.” Pope Francis, in his Encyclical Laudato Si’ says it this way, “interdependence motivates us to ensure that solutions that are proposed from a global perspective and obliges us to think of one world with a common plan” (#164).
Sr Caroline Vaitkunas RSM, Peace, Ecology and Justice Team member, Columban Mission Centre, Essendon.
