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3.	Promoting SD Through Religion
	Can the major world religions play a part in improving environmental awareness and ethics around the globe? Since the late eighties, there has been increased awareness of environmental issues within mainstream religions, alongside traditional concerns about social issues like poverty. The work of Fathers Danny Martin and Thomas Berry, the Dalai Lama, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Patricia Mishe, and initiatives like the ‘Earth Covenant’ and the ‘Earth Mass’ among others, are a testament to this growing concern. Mary Evelyn Tucker of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions echoes a statement by the religious historian Thomas Berry. “The difficulty at the present time is that we have developed ethical systems for homicide and suicide, but none for biocide and geocide,” she says. A number of recent and upcoming conferences aim to re-establish the link between religion, ethics and ecology. A July conference on spirituality and sustainability in Assisi, Italy ended with a declaration that the environmental crisis is, at its roots, a spiritual crisis. And a series of 10 conferences at Harvard University on world religions and ecology, extending from May 1996 to September 1998, aims to clarify the environmental teachings of the major world religions, as well as provide material for sermons and ceremonies linking spirituality to SD. The Harvard conferences are being organized by Tucker and her husband John Grim. Three have already taken place, on Buddhism, Confucianism and Shintoism, and the fourth and fifth on Hinduism and Indigenous Traditions, will take place this Fall. Watch for a steady trickle of conference volumes from Harvard University Press. In a telephone interview with Developing Ideas Digest from the Assisi conference, Tucker spoke eloquently of the need to break through to a new global understanding of common ground in the international environmental dialogue, beyond the “paralyses of politics and despair”, evident at the recent June special session of the UN General Assembly to review international progress in implementing SD. She hopes the recent upswing in global activity on spirituality and SD will help to “reconceptualize” the dialogue. The Harvard conferences will conclude with a targeted appeal to politicians and policy-makers at a special meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, to be sponsored by UNEP in October 1998. Along with helping to give a boost to the Earth Charter process of forging a new global Earth ethics (see DI#1), religious leaders could breathe new life into the stalled international dialogue on achieving SD through a spiritual appeal aimed at people’s hearts. [can religion re-energize the international SD dialogue?]
	biocide n. death within the ecosphere comes from human activity. geocide n. the destruction of the planet by the same means.
	Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Religion and the Order of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Grim. eds. Worldviews and Ecology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Prss, 1994. Look for volumes in the Religions of the World and Ecology series from Harvard University Press over the next couple of years.
Virtual Idea	Center for Respect of Life and Environment