Philippines, the environment and the Catholic Church

At least 10,000 dead, whole areas flattened and millions homeless - yet another terrible tale of natural destruction disproportionately affecting the poor.  The Philippines is well used to being battered and flooded, but this was on a different scale.  It is hard to imagine the fear of those caught in the few hours of atmospheric rage.  And now, as survivors sift amongst the wreckage for their loved ones we will see many pictures in the media of anguished and heart-broken people.

Haiyan

Last December another typhoon, Sendong, far less powerful than Haiyan, deposited a month's worth of rain in one day over the southern most island of the Philippines.  This is not a lot - a small typhoon by the standards of the area - however It left nearly 1500 dead and as many missing.

Sendong Victim

Both typhoons, the big and the small, hit the southern part of the Philippines where environmental destruction is quite simply terrible.   Logging, mining, quarrying, monoculture, land clearance for settlement etc have transformed a once richly forested area.  Natural vegetation absorbs water, tree roots stabilise the soils on steep mountains, mangroves dampen storm surges etc, etc, etc.  It is madness in such a dynamic part of the world to strip natural defences.  But after a century of such destruction for economic gain the rich are richer and the poor just as poor and more numerous -  and even more vulnerable to natural disaster.

The recent news footage post Haiyan, showed a priest saying Mass for the victims.  Many of the praying faces looked comforted because if there is one thing Christianity understands well it is suffering.  In fact of all the great world faiths it is the central role of a suffering Christ that makes Christianity of such poignancy for those whose daily lives are a battle against poverty with its accompanying torturers - mental and physical pain.

I'm glad he said  Mass in the ruins, it was a powerful image.  But for me on the grander scale it is also a sight that instills anger and frustration.

The Philippines is the third largest Catholic country on earth.  80% of the population is Catholic, that is just under 80 million people.  It is a Catholic country to its soul.  Shame then that it is one of the most environmentally devastated countries on earth.  This is a land that has literally been - and still is being - ravaged by commercial greed and over-population.  Forest cover has been reduced from 70% to less than 1% over the 20th C.

deforestation in Philippnes

Pasig river

Philippine mangroves have been reduced from half a million hectares at the beginning of the 20th C to about 100,000 hectares today - and 95% of that is secondary regrowth.  Mangroves, natures natural defences against storm surges and flooding, were ripped out to develop the coastline.

Industrial activity has polluted rivers.  50 out of the 241 rivers in the country are biologically dead.  The Pasig River which runs through the heart of Manilla is one of the most polluted in the world.

This environmental vandalism is not just a tragedy for the look of the country and for the fate of its wonderful natural history - like the magnificent Philippine eagle - it costs human lives.

Does the Catholic Church have a role to play here?  The Catholic Bishops are trying very hard in the face of massive commercial opposition.  As long ago as 1988 they wrote this statement:
What is Happening To Our Beautiful Land?

This is a wonderful piece of writing and there are many good people (clergy and lay) who are trying to do the right thing, but 25 years on the destruction continues.  The huge pressures that drive economic growth - a growth without any end point it seems - and the greed of the companies that mine, log and plant swathes of monoculture need more than one bishops conference and a handful of activists to face them.  They need the strong, powerful voice of a unified Church of 1 billion people to say enough is enough.  It needs a clear voice that sets a different agenda and shows a different example.  Simplicity, temperateness, a wise approach to money, equality and justice for people AND the natural world are counter-culture but these are values that chime with many. Is the Catholic Church the right origin for that voice?

To be honest I'm not sure - maybe if Pope Francis is allowed his vision.  But as things stand at the moment there is no clear teaching on what the Church thinks about nature.  Is it to be subdued for human use?  Or is it the face of God?  Does a Philippine eagle have the right to live or does the economic gain from mining take precedence?  Should the population growth of the Philippines continue as it is?

1.8 million babies are born every year here - although the rate of population growth is slowing.  The annual percentage increase was 2.04% in 2002, today it is 1.69%, but still one of the highest in Asia.

If the Catholic Church truly used its respected voice to show a different way - a way that urged restrained growth, shared spoils justly, saw men and women as equal, looked upon the earth not as some basket of goods but as a wonder of life, then maybe the combined Catholic voices would grow stronger and more unified.  At the moment it is too weakened by division and disillusionment.

Pope Francis looks like a man who can make a difference but he will face opposition from within and outside the church.  There are many vested interests and powerful people with a lot to lose if his vision of justice and renewal is enacted.  Let's pray for him.

Climate Change Science

Deforestation in Brazil

The inevitable backlash against climate change is gathering pace. First we had the revelations about exaggeration and bias in research on climate science from the University of East Anglia, then the disappointment of Copenhagen and now even more pressure on UEA about withholding emails and contravening the freedom of information act. Suddenly a cloud of suspicion is cast over all the science that so many have taken to be the incontrovertible evidence that the earth is warming and we are heading for disaster. The widely perceived failure of Copenhagen showed that the governments of the world could not agree on something they all say is of vital importance - so maybe it isn't? Perhaps the whole thing is hyped up?

Ever since I began to think about environmental issues I have worried about the intense concentration on a single issue, big as it is. Concern for global warming has taken such a precedence that it has dominated environmental news and the concerns of government and civil society alike. It is as if climate change=the environment.

Obviously a change in behaviour such as recycling and so on is excellent in many ways because our profligate western lifestyle has to change - but there is a huge negative side to seeing care for the earth as a single issue based on how much CO2 we emit.

A total consensus on any single concern is rare, but when that issue involves changing the economy, the balance between north and south and a huge shift in industrial and domestic energy use, then it is bound to create division. Vested interests become a driving force, camps for and against vie for column inches and attention and every aspect of the issue comes under scrutiny. And when the outcome of a warming earth is portrayed as utter catastrophe then those of us in the middle will, not surprisingly, find comfort in any doubts raised.

The main problem now is that because climate change is "the environment" it will become very much more difficult to raise concerns for other environmental issues if it is dismissed as mass fraud.

This was all so inevitable and all very depressing.

I don't know about the University of East Anglia and what it did and didn't do, but hopefully the legal process will sort that out. If it acted improperly then I hope those culprits are punished. But what I dread is that the dust thrown into the air about climate change will turn people away from the wider picture - that we misuse the earth on many levels, not just the amount of CO2 we produce - and that we have to change to put right what is going wrong.

Over fishing isn't to do with climate change, destroying habitats, degrading soils, pulling down forests to replace them with monoculture isn't to do with climate change. Putting pollutants in the fresh water systems and the oceans isn't climate change and building dams across most of the rivers of the world isn't climate change. Building on greenbelt, pulling down hedgerows, using large amounts of pesticides, concreting over wetlands isn't climate change. All of these do immense harm, wipe out species and degrade our earth. The effect of continuing to ravage the earth will be lack of fresh water for all, difficulty in producing food, a depleted ocean (and therefore fish to eat) and unknown problems with access to new medicines. We will not be able to pollinate plants or cleanse water - or carry out the many other "eco-system services" that we take for granted and that are provided free of charge by the earth.

E.O Wilson, the great Harvard biologist, talks about the evolution of the earth seeing the end of the age of the fish, then the end of the age of the reptiles and now we are now coming to the end of the age of mammals and entering the age of loneliness. We will live in an impoverished world where only humans relying on science and technology and a few scavengers will survive.

There is so much to care about and so much we have to do to change our perception of what the earth is for. Even if the climate change scientists have exaggerated, even if glaciers take a hundred years to melt not fifty and so on, we still have to change our lifestyles, reduce our consumption and undergo a dramatic change of heart, because all environmental issues depend on us reducing our assault on the ecosystems and resources of the earth.

And as for unscrupulous science - there have always been unscrupulous scientists, as we have seen with the MMR fiasco, but simply because some are charlatans doesn't make all medical research suspect and wrong. It is the same for climate change science.

I hope we won't be put off course by this worry over East Anglia and I hope we keep our eye firmly on the ball. Concern for the earth is not just acting on climate change, it is much, much more than that.