Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Reid

Book review of Joseph Camilleri and Deborah Guess (eds): Towards a Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace: Navigating the Great Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 363 pp.


2020 ◽  

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential


Author(s):  
Hanna Dewi Aritonang ◽  
Bestian Simangunsong ◽  
Adiani Hulu

This article addresses the issue of conflict between religious communities that cause enmity amid society. Hostilities must be overcome and resolved in accordance with the call of Christianity to live in love and peace. The study used the qualitative paradigm as the method of the research and the descriptive-analyses as the writing method by describing the research problems based on data collected from related publications.One of the powerful messages of Jesus's teaching is "Love your enemies." It’s one of the greatest challenges in life. Jesus Christ gave an important doctrine about loving the enemy because love is more powerful than evil, hurtful deeds. Loving the enemy means canceling hostilities and violence, but instead, it promises acceptance of each other. The title of this study is "love your enemies": A Christian Response to Embrace Others. As the title of this study is "love your enemies," the reason for the selection of this article is because the author sees that "loving the enemy is a commandment from God that must be obeyed. This research question emphasizes how to realize "loving the enemy" amid hostility. This paper argues that Jesus's command to love the enemy is a proper Christian lifestyle choice in the midst of hostility. We use CS Song thoughts, which elaborated with other scholars' views on theology, loving, and embracing others. The purpose of the research was to gain understanding and build a theological reflection on Jesus' commandment to love the enemy. In this article, we first briefly discuss the portrait of life among religious people in Indonesia. Secondly, we discuss the conflict between religious people in Indonesia. Finally, we apply the command of Jesus to love our enemy as a Christian lifestyle in the midst of hostility to construct harmony amid hostility. We propose the command of Jesus to ‘love your enemy’ as a response to establishing sustainable peace by embrace others. Finally, the Christians must become a loving community because God so loved us, and we also ought to love and embrace others.


1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-57
Author(s):  
Robert A. White

This paper takes a broad macroevolutionary approach to our changing relationship to Nature in light of the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith. It suggests that humanity is perhaps, after all, not a delinquent species running out of control but is at the very centre of a vast growth process clearly approaching a tremendous transition. Drawing on the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith as well as on emerging knowledge in physics, ecology, and psychology, it suggests humanity is in a process of evolving consciousness that is leading to the birth of a new planetary culture. This process subsumes the development of a mature cooperative relationship between humanity and the ecosphere that gave it birth. This examination and synthesis will be accomplished in two parts. In the first part the basic attitudes to Nature that are contained within the Bahá’í writings will be explored and explicated. The second part will examine how the emergence of an ecological consciousness is linked to basic principles of the Bahá’í Faith. These principles will be related to tenets for an ecological society being advanced by contemporary social commentators. Implicit throughout is the Bahá’í view of the balance and cohesion of material and spiritual realities in approaching every question, whether it be environmental policy, agriculture, development, health, or peace. All areas of human endeavor are interrelated and require an integrated understanding of human purpose. This paper lays no claim to being an authoritative Bahá’í position and should be regarded as a preliminary attempt of one mind to grasp some of the deeper meanings latent in the voluminous writings of the Bahá’í Faith. Through this attempt it is hoped the reader will be led to a deeper understanding of current environmental dilemmas and will be offered a vision of profound change for which the current crises may be viewed as "forcing functions." As idealistic as this may seem, in this day only the visionary is pragmatic.


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