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We live in a planet with serious environmental challenges, such as plastic pollution, deforestation, increase in the number of floods, droughts, and food and water shortages.
Climate change – a change directly or indirectly related to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere – has become a serious matter of concern.
Earth Day, marked on 22 April, is a reminder of the need for an urgent commitment towards the wise and responsible use and distribution of the earth’s resources, and stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climatic system.
We, as human beings, are custodians of the earth and have the obligation to ensure that nature is respected and protected as part of a divine trust for which humanity is ultimately answerable.
More than 100 years ago Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, wrote: “Nature in its essence is the embodiment of (God’s) Name, the Maker, the Creator ... Nature is God’s Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world”.
Solutions to protect the earth, in the Bahá’í view, will require a globally-accepted vision for the future, based on unity, justice and willing cooperation among the nations, races, religions and ethnic groups. Furthermore, commitment to a higher moral standard will be essential.
According to a statement of the Bahá’í International Community, a “fundamental component of resolving the climate change challenge will be the cultivation of values, attitudes and skills that give rise to just and sustainable patterns of human interaction with the environment,” and, “As consciousness of the oneness of humankind increases, so too does the recognition that the wealth and wonders of the earth are the common heritage of all people, who deserve just and equitable access to its resources”.
There is a need for transformation in our attitudes and actions towards the earth – the source of our sustenance. Focusing mainly on the material aspects of the environmental crisis, while ignoring its moral and ethical dimensions, have not been able to address our current environmental challenges.
Rather than asking how to exploit the earth’s resources without due regard to its environment, we should be asking how to live with an ethic of respect, care and justice towards all life and nature.
Moreover, resources must be directed away from those activities that are damaging to both the social and natural environment, and instead efforts be made towards the creation of systems that foster mutualism and cooperation.
It is the Bahá’í view that “Setting humanity on a more sustainable path to the future involves transformation in attitudes and actions”.
It will depend on our unity as humanity.
The need for a balanced attitude towards the earth’s natural resources cannot be over-emphasized – bearing in mind that the future prosperity and the peaceful co-existence of people’s will depend on access to and conservation of, the earth’s resources, abundantly provided to humanity by the Almighty Creator.
- Flora Teckie is a professional architect, a Bahá’í Faith follower, and spiritual columnist.
