Global observances of Earth Day, on 22 April, act as reminder and a call for action for us to protect mother earth.
Our current environmental challenges, such as climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, plastic pollution and water shortages, have become serious global problems. We can now see the impact of climate change, for example, through increasingly severe weather patterns.
It is the Bahá’í view that genuine solutions to protect nature, will require a vision for the future, based on unity, justice, and willing cooperation among all the nations, races and people of different ethnic backgrounds. Furthermore, a commitment to a higher moral standard, and the development of consultative skills for the effective functioning of groups at all levels of society, will be essential.
The wise use and care of the environment depends on our unity as humanity. A vision for the future, based on unity and cooperation is necessary, because as long as one group of nations perceives its interests in opposition to another, progress will be limited and short-lived.
According to 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 need for justice in utilizing the earth’s resources. To be just and fair in doing so requires that we move away from the ideology of self-interest that is dominating our world today, to a mode of sharing and caring for our natural resources. It also implies the need to address the extremes of wealth and poverty, with its clearly adverse impact on the world’s natural resources.
The Bahá’í International Community states: “Wealth needs to be acquired and expended by nations in a way that enables all the people of the world to prosper. Structures and systems that permit a few to have inordinate riches while the masses remain impoverished must be replaced by arrangements that foster the generation of wealth in a way that promotes justice”.
Climate change and other environmental challenges are now challenging us to rise to the next level of our collective maturity, a maturity which calls us to accept that we are one people living on one planet, as members of one human family, and that there is need for justice in utilizing the earth’s resources.
We will always need material resources to sustain civilization. As we learn how best to use the earth’s raw materials for the advancement of civilization, we must be conscious of our attitudes towards the source of our sustenance and wealth.
In the Bahá’í view, there is a need for a world federal system to enable mankind to arrange its economic, material, and social life with justice for all peoples, and with reverence towards the earth.
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