The cry of the Earth
Biodiversity, climate change and COP26
The rich diversity of life reflects God’s goodness and creative exuberance. When biodiversity is diminished, climate change is accelerated. This is why the biodiversity summit in Kunming next spring and the forthcoming climate summit in Glasgow next month are so vital
Catholic theologians and religious leaders have been caught off
guard. While the message that anthropogenic climate change is putting
the future of humanity in peril is finally sinking in, we have been
slower to recognise the dire threat posed by humanity’s destructive
impact on biological diversity.
Next week, the official opening
of the UN Biodiversity Conference takes place online, and there will be
face-to-face meetings in Kunming, China, next spring, to finalise a new
global biodiversity framework. But concern for biodiversity is not just a
matter for scientists and political leaders. It is a profoundly moral
and spiritual issue. The loss of species and genetic diversity and the
damage to ecosystems ?are not only affecting other species; they are
also destroying human health. Biodiversity is about justice for the most
vulnerable, both human and creaturely. The loss of biodiversity is
intricately linked to climate change, destabilising the global ecosystem
with devastating consequences: it reached the emergency “red” zone long
before the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change started to
speak of “code red for humanity” in August this year. Time is running
out to make the changes needed not just for human survival but for the
sustainability of other creatures and all life systems on earth.
Ignorance breeds indifference, but knowledge without values is blind.
As Pope Francis and his two predecessors have recognised, we are living
through a crisis that is social as well as ecological. Communities,
especially the poorest and those on the margins, are already suffering
the bitter consequences of an eroding biodiversity: millions of people
are losing their livelihoods, food and water are becoming increasingly
scarce, climate change is accelerating, and weather patterns are far
less predictable. And it will not be long before the impact is felt by
everyone. For decades, eco-theologians have stressed the responsibility
of humankind to care for creation. Destroying the earth destroys a gift
that has been entrusted to humanity. A fundamental aspect of Christian
theology is that “creation” signals the ultimate origin of the earth and
its creatures in God’s love. The rich diversity of life reflects God’s
goodness and creative exuberance. Deep incarnation implies Christ’s
solidarity with the suffering earth and its potential restoration. If
humanity is called to become co-creators in the image of God,
indifference to creation is simply not an option. As Pope Francis says
in Laudato Si’, ecological virtues are an essential aspect of Christian
discipleship.
Biodiversity acts like a prism for what biologists
and conservationists choose to value in the natural world. The variety
of life and its complexity of forms are worthy of both scientific and
socio-political attention. Biodiversity means richness or variability
within a species, as well as variety between different species or, in
some definitions, “ecosystem diversity”. The loss of biodiversity and
climate change are closely connected: climate change contributes to
biodiversity loss, while rich biodiversity has the capacity to stabilize
the climate.
Climate change was a driver behind most of the
five mass extinction events over the past 540 million years. In one, 90
per cent of all organisms were eliminated and life on earth almost came
to an end. Today, humanity is driving species to extinction hundreds of
times faster than would happen naturally, due to deforestation,
industrial forms of agriculture, hunting, overfishing, pollution and so
on. We are reaching what biologists are calling the sixth great mass
extinction event, this time caused by human agency. The Living Planet
Index (LPI), which tracks global averages in populations of vertebrate
species across different habitats, is an authoritative measure of
overall global biodiversity; it dropped by 68 per cent between 1970 and
2016. Such data disguise even larger problems. Invertebrates comprise a
far greater portion of the biosphere than vertebrates. They are
important for the food chain, providing energy for birds, reptiles,
amphibia and fish. Insects play a vital role as pollinators in plant
life and agriculture. Over the past 50 years, insect diversity has
declined continuously, reaching dramatically low levels in some regions.
About 40 per cent of all insects may become extinct over the next few
decades. Forests and their rich biodiversity, the “lungs” of the planet,
are particularly susceptible to external pressures, and tropical
forests have suffered the most. By June 2020, deforestation in Brazil
alone had reached more than 11,000 square kilometres every year, an area
almost the size of Yorkshire.
What are the reasons behind such
catastrophic changes? The Living Planet Report shows that loss of
habitat is the main driver of loss in species and population numbers.
This is mostly due to a change in land use for residential, agricultural
and commercial reasons. Invasive species outcompete native species.
Mass-produced monocultures reduce biodiversity, make plants more
vulnerable to disease, and reduce insect populations. At the same time,
the demand for cheap food drives the industrialisation of agriculture.
Farmed poultry makes up 70 per cent of all birds on the planet, with
just 30 per cent being wild. Just 4 per cent of all mammals are wild
animals; 36 per cent are human and 60 per cent are domesticated
livestock, mostly cattle and pigs.
Climate change contributes to biodiversity loss. This has a
spiralling positive feedback effect, so biodiversity loss contributes to
climate change. For example, agricultural practice reliant on
monocultures and industrialised forms of farming destroys the ability of
the living soil to absorb carbon. Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and
National Geographic explorer-in-residence, has argued in The Nature of
Nature: Why We Need the Wild and in talks and lectures elsewhere that
protecting the forest generates its own healthy ecosystem: “The Congo
Basin forest in West Africa [is] one of the richest and most valuable
ecosystems on the planet. One reason the Congo Basin ecosystem is so
rich is that it gets such heavy rain. And here’s something fascinating
about that rain: the forest itself creates it.” The consequences of
cutting down the forest are that it will quite literally dry up the
water supplies for millions of people: “If we cut down that forest, that
cycle will break. The rain will no longer fall in such abundance. That
means no more water – or food – in Ethiopia. That’s 125 million people
now, probably double that by 2050. And the Ethiopian highlands provide
the water for most of the Nile. Enter Sudan and Egypt, with an
additional 138 million people, and growing.”
Pope Francis points
out in Laudato Si’ that the earth and its peoples are deeply
interconnected; if we destroy the earth, it is the poorest people who
will suffer. We don’t have a choice between paying attention to either
conservation or poverty – the two are intricately bound up together.
Healthy forests and ecosystems rich in biodiversity harbour less disease
and shed fewer viruses. As Sala indicates, the origin of Covid may be
related to the disruption of natural systems of biodiversity: “As we
humans venture deeper and deeper into what was once wild we not only
disrupt ecosystems but also come into contact with stressed animals
shedding viruses. Farms intrude upon forests, and loggers and miners
push into pristine ecosystems. That increases our chances of being
exposed to new diseases for which we have no immunity. A healthy natural
world is our best vaccine. But our broken relationship with nature is
costing the world too much unnecessary loss of human life, plus
trillions of dollars in economic losses.”
In this language of “a
broken relationship” there is an implicit theology. It is as if
scientists are finding the words for something theologians are still
groping towards, a recognition that in the breakdown of the relationship
between humanity and the natural world – often driven by avarice and
neglect – there is mortal sin, a breach between humanity and the Creator
of Life. Humanity must care for creation – yet still there is a
reluctance to do it, and still there is ignorance – or denial – of its
importance. Wild places rich in natural biodiversity are part of
humanity’s “life support system”: they generate the oxygen we breathe;
they produce the food we need and clean the water we drink, and they are
capable of absorbing half of the carbon dioxide we put into the
atmosphere. The intertangled nature of human lives and ecologies renders
the protection of biodiversity an issue of social justice and of life
and death.
It will take truth-telling, discernment and the cultivation of the ecological virtues to agree and implement the radical changes that are needed. This is why the climate summit in Glasgow next month and the biodiversity summit in Kunming are so vital. Working towards a zero-carbon economy and to radical changes in our structures and institutions and in our individual lives is not just a social or political option, but a sacred pragmatic duty. Indigenous peoples have for millennia recognised the close interdependence of human lives with those of other beings. Perhaps the rest of us will finally listen and wake up to the truth of this insight. If we do not, it will soon be time to write life’s obituary.
Celia Deane-Drummond is Director of the Laudato Si’ Research Institute (LSRI) and Senior Research Fellow in Theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
• LSRI has published “The Wailing of God’s Creatures”, an open access report on Biodiversity, in collaboration with Cafod, CIDSE, and GCCM: www.tinyurl.com/56r7748b
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