Realising That We Are Mother Earth: A Renewed Moral Vision for Dealing With Climate Change - COP 17

Photo by Mthabisi Philli

About our steadily warming world, delegations to December’s Durban climate talks, COP17, are assembling their thoughts for packing into ten thousand wheelie bags stuffed with documents. They are contemplating the next inter-sessional preparatory talks and the infinite and impressive technicalities of the climate negotiations. Their heads are steeped in a soup of acronyms, technicalities, legal manoeuvrings and negotiation tactics, and how close their hotel will be to the talks.

But for how many of these delegates are the burning questions for COP17 – what is the right thing for us to do; what is the good and moral thing for us to do; how can we secure a just outcome for not just some but all of the world’s peoples?

It is hard to know the answer to this question. The delegates who assemble to represent their countries in the climate talks are just that: delegates: representatives, with little effective personal moral agency. They do not decide the outcomes of the talks, other than within a very narrow band of technical decision-making. They may have power to come up with new acronyms – but they have little power to ensure that those acronyms translate into something resembling justice.

For the outcomes of the talks are decided by far greater forces – judgments of national self-interest, political pressures hopefully determined in democratic elections, immense pressures from corporate interests and several billion consumers, and the overwhelming momentum of our contemporary ideologies of crude economic growth and consumerism: the belief that a society is not developing unless it is growing, and that increased consumption increases happiness.

The real agency to affect the talks lies with the countries and people that are represented there, and it is amongst the ordinary people of the world that this change must begin.

Watching the talks with awe, hope, anger and horror will be a host of observers and activists, some with a very clear purpose in attending, some in the hopes that their presence will somehow make a difference, and some just wandering about in barely disguised bewilderment at the scale of the COP phenomenon, wondering how to make a dent on this intricate and apparently impregnable armoured machine.

Amongst those wondering if they can make a dent will be many delegates from African faith communities, some from the organisation I work for, the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), which aims to inspire all faith communities in Africa to assume full responsibility for the environment in the understanding that this is a matter inseparable from social justice.

Unfortunately, Africans as we know are amongst the very least influential people at the climate talks, partly for lack of political weight, but also for lack of resources and acumen. African climate negotiators are woefully under-resourced, rarely allowed to remain long enough in their posts to gather meaningful experience, and all too often have little political backing from their governments.

But the hope of faith communities is that we can appeal to the hearts of the technocrats and politicians who are at these talks. If they are active members of faith communities, then they have a moral duty not just to their political masters and constituents, but to the greater community of life, to care for and nurture “creation”.

Of course, a sense of moral responsibility is by no means the exclusive province of people of faith – we hope and believe that many secular people of conscience will be sympathetic to our essential message.

Expanding compassion through expanded knowledge

How have we set about this venture, of restoring a moral dimension to the essential language of climate change? Firstly, we are mobilising faith leaders across Africa to understand the full scale and urgency of the crisis.

Of course, the faith communities have barely begun to awaken to this issue, and so we are examining our own creeds and beliefs, even as we call on others to do the same. Many in the faith communities acknowledge that we too have a great deal to answer for [2]:

We tended to see the universe as a place given to us to live in and a storehouse filled with things for our use, “natural resources” like food, fuel and building materials... We tended to see ourselves as the lords and masters who had been given the right to dominate, subdue and exploit all of what we called “nature”. Some even saw this world as nothing more than a stepping-stone on the way to heaven.

The first condition for a moral renewal must be knowledge. One cannot appreciate the need to take moral responsibility, if one is not first aware of the consequences of one’s actions.

Building awareness of climate change in faith communities

SAFCEI has, with our partners, this year convened three conferences for faith leaders on climate change, in Lusaka, Nairobi and Durban. In Kenya, we resolved, in part, that [3]:

Firstly, economic and political processes have to be based on ecological principles, and not vice versa. There can be no infinite economic or population growth on a finite planet.

Secondly, there is a profound need for a renewed moral vision for the future of humanity and indeed of all life. We debase human beings by seeing them only as economic instruments, and debase the sanctity of life by commodifying it.

We must realise that well-being cannot be equated with material wealth. The quality of life is not dependent on the quantity of material things or growth measured by GDP.

Instead, our standard of living depends on our standard of loving and sharing. We cannot sustain a world dominated by profit seeking, rampant consumerism and gross inequalities, and an atmosphere of competition where the powerful take advantage of the weak without caring for the well-being of every form of life. Development cannot be sustained if the affluent project themselves as examples to be copied by everyone else, and if the poor model their lifestyles on such examples.

These insights draw from the rich moral and spiritual traditions on our continent and elsewhere in the world. Despite the historical violence and disorganisation that Africa has suffered and inflicted on itself, these insights have been transmitted to us by our ancestors who believed in the harmony of vital forces, between human beings and the rest of creation.


One of the most poignant parts of this statement observed that:

In our African spiritual heritage and our diverse faith traditions, trees, flowers, water, soil and animals have always been essential companions of human beings, without which life and being are inconceivable.


Where does a renewed moral vision for climate change begin? The Buddhist leader and peace activist Daisaku Ikeda has written that being a global citizen requires of us [4]:

The wisdom to perceive the interconnectedness of all life and living. The courage not to fear or deny difference; but to respect and strive to understand people of different cultures, and to grow from encounters with them. The compassion to maintain an imaginative empathy that reaches beyond one’s immediate surroundings and extends to those suffering in distant places.

Once we have grown in knowledge, either of the consequences of our actions for others, or of their actions for us, it is vital that we develop this “imaginative empathy”, the kind of empathy that allows us to respond as deeply to the suffering of Kenyan nomads and of Mozambican flood victims as we would if they were our own neighbours. It is this kind of empathy that we hope to inspire in those undertaking the talks in Durban.

Belief in material progress has become a religion in itself

While many understand religion in a fairly narrow sense, as referring to the mostly theistic established and recognisable creeds, one can also understand religion in a broader sense, as being the beliefs that dominate our lives and in which we place our hopes for redemption and happiness.

Using this broader definition, the historian Arnold Toynbee identified the dominant faiths of the twentieth century as being “the belief in the inevitability of progress through the systematic application of science and technology, nationalism, and communism.”

Even the godless, in other words, put their hopes in something. Toynbee identified national, communism and technology-driven progress as the great creeds of our era. These are the religions of the secular. And in fact, although people in faith communities may give lip service to God, often they too are also effectively beholden to the idols of materialism. (This phenomenon is evident in the growth of the “prosperity gospels”, churches that vigorously encourage the pursuit of wealth, showing how Christianity has often absorbed, rather than challenging, the credos of capitalism.)

If we are to update Toynbee’s list today, arguably we must include the creeds of economic growth and consumerism – creeds which unfortunately go unchallenged in the deliberations of the UNFCCC.

Which raises the obvious question – in what then should our societies give our hope? Where should our deepest values reside?

We must now cease to see the world we inhabit as dead, inert, a collection of objects that we have a right to heedlessly mine, exploit, process and use. We must realise that even without resorting to mysticism, it makes sense to see the Earth itself as part of our own bodies, and we as being part of the body of the Earth. Our bodies do not begin and end with our skins – we are intricately, deeply and profoundly connected to our environment, from the air we breathe and the food we eat, to the social bonds and engagements that are essential to our psychological wellbeing.

Surrendering to our insignificance, recognising the rights of other living beings

SAFCEI was honoured this year to have as speaker at our AGM the environmental lawyer Cormac Cullinan, originator of the concept of “wild law” and a leading thinker in the field of earth jurisprudence. Cormac, though little known in South Africa, has consulted to the governments of Ecuador and Bolivia, and recently addressed the UN General Assembly on these issues. He was the lead drafter of the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which was written during the March 2010 Cochabamba Climate Change Conference, convened by the Bolivian government in response to the failure of the UN’s Copenhagen conference.

That declaration is profoundly influenced by the worldview of indigenous peoples, a view, which, it should be noted, has proved to be far more sustainable than the views of technological culture. In September 2008, as he recounted, Ecuador gave rights to nature; this year in that country there was a case giving rights to a river, arguing its right to flow.

Cormac noted that, “It is true to say that, ‘I am Earth and Earth is me.’ Religious writers have pointed out that the human being can only be fulfilled as part of the greater whole. This idea is very strong in African philosophies. Your full humanity can only unfold through your relationships with others.”

Why ‘Mother Earth’?

It seems we need a revolution in our cosmology every bit as dramatic as the Copernican Revolution that taught humanity that the Earth revolves about the Sun, and not vice versa. For though we may realise intellectually that the world does not revolve around us, in fact we have yet to stop conducting ourselves as if we are the most important beings in the cosmos, taking absolutely for granted our rights to use and abuse other living creatures and the planet itself.

The phrase “Mother Earth” is an uncomfortable one for many of us raised in the Western scientific-mechanistic tradition, where “anthropomorphism” is considered to be ridiculous. Yet our tendency to see the world as a “collection of objects”, rather than as a “communion of subjects”, to use the words of the ecological mystic Thomas Berry, has brought us to the brink of planetary ecological crisis. One does not have to believe that the Earth is literally sentient to recongise that there are profound lessons to be learnt from those indigenous peoples who approach the natural world with gratitude and humility rather than arrogance and entitlement.

What would a world that followed such a Copernican revolution of human hearts look like?

We’d understand that, as Buddhists believe, that we cannot separate ourselves from our environment, that we are one with it. We would understand that, as Cormac observes, it sometimes makes about as much sense to build a mine as it would for our own brains to decide to mine our livers.

We’d slow down, use less energy, pay more attention to detail. We’d accept the rhythms and ways of nature more, and spend less time fighting them. Our fundamental urges would be about how to make a contribution to the whole, and not about how to secure our own selfish needs. We would end the exploitative economy, and turn our technology away from consumerism towards building a restorative economy, seeing our Mother Earth not as a sterile source of resources, but as a great garden to be tended with love and imagination. We'd see animals not as creatures to be eaten or patronised or wiped out, but as companions with their own rights and dignity as species. We’d learn to “consume less and share better”, replacing an extractive exploitative economy with a restorative economy.

It is still our hope that nations and negotiators will adopt a more principled, less selfish approach to their immense responsibilities. But even putting aside the self-interest of particular nations, at a deeper level, the chances of any agreement are compromised by the profoundly contradictory forces we are currently attempting to reconcile: growth and sustainability. It is doubtful that any agreement, for example, that endorses endless economic growth is worth having.

So it might even be good if the UN process were to collapse in Durban. A collapse would force people to look at alternatives to a process that is currently deeply embedded in a failed, dehumanising, exploitative technocratic worldview.

In apartheid South Africa, Cormac points out, “it was argued by whites that apartheid is established by laws, and you must work within parliament to overturn those laws. But of course that approach couldn’t work because most people couldn’t participate. The game was rigged, and eventually people had to work around it. I think that’s what’s happening at international level.”

Real spirituality is not about theology and ritual, nor is it separate from the affairs of ordinary life – it is deeply embedded in them. The deepest kind of moral renewal would be an absolute revolution in the way we live that is quite distinct from and transcends any particular religious faith. It would be realising that we are one with the Earth, and the universe that holds us, and living as if this were true. In the context of such a realisation, perpetuating climate change would be unthinkable.

David Le Page is a sustainability writer, Buddhist and part-time assistant director at the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), writing in his personal capacity.