scholarly journals Pope Francis, climate change and the environmentalism of the poor

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Marina Malamud
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
America Latina

"Estamos al borde del suicidio. Espero que los gobiernos tomen en serio el cambio climático o no habrá generaciones futuras", dijo el Papa Francisco al Vatican Insider en noviembre de 2015. El compromiso personal del pontífice con el medio ambiente y cómo afecta a las sociedades de bajos ingresos no debe pasarse por alto. El evento histórico de un Papa jesuita de América Latina que plantea la cuestión del cambio climático inducido por el hombre puede introducir un nuevo equilibrio en la agenda política mundial. Desde un enfoque cualitativo centrado en el análisis del discurso y encuestas de opinión actuales, exploramos la relación entre medio ambiente y crecimiento económico. Una posible conceptualización de la posición del Papa se puede asociar con el ecologismo de los pobres. Este enfoque se basa en prerrogativas de justicia ambiental como una respuesta al intercambio económico desigual entre las naciones. América Latina está particularmente expuesta a las consecuencias del cambio climático y eso afecta la existente estabilidad política volátil y las perspectivas de desarrollo sostenible. Se argumenta que el cambio climático supera las posiciones científicas y económicas; es en última instancia una consideración moral.

Laudato Si

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-55
Author(s):  
William N. Holden ◽  
William O. Mansfield
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Abstract This article examines the highly influential Papal encyclical Laudato Si issued by Pope Francis in June 2015. The scientific basis behind climate change is discussed, as are the consequences of climate change, which will be disproportionately borne by the poor countries and poor peoples of the world. The Pope’s prescriptions for coping with climate change are reviewed and the article concludes with a discussion of how Laudato Si exemplifies the simultaneous, and frequently intersecting, themes of protecting the environment and protecting the poor in Catholic social thought. In many ways, Laudato Si is the product of the church of the poor confronting climate change.

scholarly journals A Moral Language for Our Time? Human Rights and Christianity in Historical Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Rachel Johnston-White
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor

On 3 October 2020 Pope Francis issued his third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. Signed in the symbolic location of Assisi, home of St Francis, the encyclical represented the pope's response to the fears and anxieties wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the burning injustices of racism, global inequality and climate change. The encyclical explicitly invoked human rights, criticising the ways in which, ‘in practice, human rights are not equal for all’. As nations and societies succumb to ‘disenchantment and disappointment’, ‘the temptation to build a culture of walls’ to keep out the ‘other’ grows ever greater. The antidote, Francis insisted, is a ‘culture of encounter’ in which it is again possible to ‘rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters who orbit around us’. Priority, too, must be given to ‘the dignity of the poor’ and ‘respect for the natural environment,’ rather than the privileges of the affluent to continue to amass wealth at all costs. Only then – by aligning human rights with the global common good – can rights become truly universal.

scholarly journals Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ Call to Ecological Conversion: Responding to the Cry of the Earth and the Poor—Towards an Integral Ecology

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 136-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana M. Porras
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Integral Ecology

The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

“Occupying” Our Social Imagination: The Necessity of Utopian Discourses in an Anti-Utopian Age

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 152-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Webb
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political System ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Willful Blindness ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
Occupy Movements

AbstractWe are in the depths of multiple catastrophes that Western society is seemingly unwilling and unable to address: growing inequalities between the rich and the poor, a willful blindness to climate change, and a political system mired in uncompromising and ever increasing extremism. However, there are no reality transcending dialogues, no new social imaginaries to drive change—our own dystopic reality has no utopian response. The greatest importance that the Occupy movements may play in spurring social change and revolution is their success at bringing radical discourses into mainstream society. Occupy not only occupied fixed public locations, but also occupied our social imagination.

scholarly journals Dwelling, Dispossession, and “Slow Violence” in the Time of Climate Change The Representation of Refugees in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Pilia
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human History ◽  
Amitav Ghosh ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
The Sundarbans

In this essay, I will analyse the crucial issues of dwelling and dispossession concerning refugees in the novel The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. Political and environmental displacement is addressed within the framework of ‘slow violence’ as proposed by the landmark work of Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011). With the intention to define the Morichjhãpi refugees as a foreshadowing of the climate migrations involving the lives of the subalterns in South Asia, as argued by Brandon Jones (2018), the essay provides a historical background of the Morichjhãpi Massacre and studies the forced eviction narrated in the novel through the pages of Nirmal’s diary. Together with Kusum, the Marxist professor experiences the tragedy of the subalterns in the ever-changing ecosystem of the Sundarbans, bridging the gap between environmental and postcolonial categories while providing fruitful insights within the notions of human history and ecological deep time.

scholarly journals FAZER TEOLOGIA DESDE A AMÉRICA LATINA

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (105) ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Agenor Brighenti
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Semantic Scope

Num contexto de crise da modernidade, novos desafios se impõem – a nova racionalidade, o mundo da insignificância e o pluralismo cultural e religioso, com implicações para a semântica e a sintática da teologia. Ainda que tenham adquirido amplitude mundial, nem por isso se manifestam com a mesma intensidade e da mesma maneira em âmbito local. No âmbito da semântica da teologia, os novos desafios obrigam a um alargamento do conceito de teologia, a uma relação inter e transdisciplinar com as demais ciências, a ser uma prática teórica relevante para os pobres e a autocompreender-se desde a pluriculturalidade e a plurirreligiosidade. No âmbito da sintática da teologia, os novos desafios exigem um novo paradigma teológico, que permita integrar em seu discurso as novas perguntas emergentes, no horizonte de uma ‘terceira ilustração’, que tem no pluralismo, não um ponto de partida, mas um pressuposto.ABSTRACT: In the crisis context of modernity, new challenges are imposed – the new rationality, the world of insignificance and the cultural and religious pluralism, with implications for the semantic and the syntactic dimensions of theology. Although these challenges have acquired world amplitude, they are not so evident with the same intensity and in the same manner at the local level. In the semantic scope of theology, the new challenges compel a widening of the concept of theology to an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary relation with other sciences to be a theoretically relevant practice for the poor and to self awareness from the multicultural and multireligious dimensions. In the syntactic scope of theology, the new challenges require a new theological paradigm that allows the integration of new emerging questions in its discourse, on the horizon of a ‘third illustration’, that has in pluralism, not a point of departure but rather a presupposition. 

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