Protecting Nature: UN Biodiversity Summit gets underway

Alongside the climate crisis, biologists estimate that we're driving species to extinction at a rate of 100 to 1,000 times their usual rate. "We have no such right" says Pope Francis in Laudato Si' (#33). The UK is in the bottom 10% of countries for biodiversity loss, having lost nearly 50% on pre-industrial levels.

As well as the UN COP26 Climate Summit in November, the UN's COP15 Biodiversity conference is about to start. It will be in two parts: 11-15 October online and then governments will meet face to face April-May 2022 at Kunming in China. COP15 is shorthand for the 15th meeting of the "conference of the parties" to the Convention on Biological Diversity - a treaty adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. COP26 is supposed to protect the global climate. COP15 has the equally vital task of conserving natural life so it can be used sustainably and fairly.

St Columban's Missionary Society is one of the faith groups engaging with COP15. St Columban, the sixth century Irish missionary, preached that "if you want to know the Creator, look at creation." Thanks to generations of scientists, as well as artists, activists, and frontline communities, we are now beginning to understand that creation is defined more by the "community of life" rather than by any one species or ecosystem. Losses of crucial ecosystems like rainforests and wetlands, as well as animal species, have accelerated even as governments, businesses, financiers and conservation groups seek effective ways to protect and restore more of the Earth's land and seas.

Biodiversity is the stunning variety of life on Earth. Most of the world's faiths understand that the wellbeing of every member of creation is interconnected. But despite this growth in our scientific and religious understanding, human destruction of the natural world continues. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimated "that a million species of plants and animals risk extinction within a matter of decades; that almost three quarters of land and 66% of marine environments have been significantly altered by humanity and that more than 85% of wetland areas have been lost."

The Columban Mission Society takes the view that humanity must be guided away from its Earth-killing lifestyle towards a more holistic and sustainable one. Its missionary experience has taught as that all creation forms one Earth community. We need an economic and social order that collaborates mutually with the whole of God's creation as well as a spirituality of care and relationship. People depend on nature, from oceans to wildernesses, to supply clean air and water, and to regulate rainfall that is vital for growing food crops. If too many ecosystems vanish, their basic life support services can falter, scientists warn.

Because plants absorb planet-heating carbon dioxide to grow, better protecting or expanding natural areas is also one of the cheapest and most effective ways to slow climate change. The summit hopes to set both long-term goals for mid-century and shorter-term targets for 2030 and, crucially, push for these to be enshrined in national policies. Targets may also be set to eliminate harmful agricultural, fishing and logging subsidies, and repurpose that money to benefit nature, an additional way of raising needed cash.

The Columbans are joining with international partners - including the Vatican Dicastery for Promotion of Integral Human Development, the Laudato Si' Movement, Union of Superiors General (USG), Union of International Superiors General (UISG), and national and local faith partners to have a robust voice calling for the care and protection of all life on the planet.

LINKS

Convention on Biological Diversity - www.cbd.int/

Healthy Planet, Healthy People petition, which incorporates biodiversity and climate change - https://thecatholicpetition.org/

'The Wailing of God's Creatures - Catholic Social Teaching, Human Activity and the collapse of Ecological Biodiversity' is a recent report by the Laudato Si' Research Institute of Oxford University on behalf of CIDSE, Cafod and the Global Catholic Climate Movement. www.cidse.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/THE-WAILING-OF-GODS-CREATURES-1.pdf

Columban Biodiversity Podcasts: Jubilee for the Earth - https://columbancenter.org/jubileepocast

The Death of Life by Fr Sean McDonagh

A 2005 plea by a Columban eco-theologian for action to save the 11,000 species under threat of extinction. The author considers the many habitats currently under threat of destruction, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests, as well as the different types of species threatened. He then looks at the position of the church on these issues.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/4373256-the-death-of-life

Biodiversity Prayer

Lord, we praise and thank you for the beauty and goodness of creation around us. Help us to reverence all of creation, respecting the rights of all species, and the integrity of the elements.

Your plundered earth, with its rich variety of endangered species, is crying out for healing. Help us to be instruments of that healing, O Lord, and to redeem the harm we have done to the planet.

Help us to hear the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, and together with all people of good will, work together to find ways of protecting and caring for creation - ways of preventing the destruction of habitats and soil, and of saving species from extinction. Rain down your Spirit of wisdom upon us for this crucial work; through Christ our Lord. Amen

Columban JPIC, Philippines