Global – Amazon Bishops’ Plea to COP26: Act Before Disaster Strikes
In a letter addressed to the leaders gathered in Glasgow for the UN climate conference, the bishops of Repam and the Ceama Church Conference stress the urgent need to take action to save the great Latin American forest. At the expense of misguided policies that do not respect the "common home" are especially the indigenous people
"Dismay" and "impotence" in contemplating the effects of climate change and its catastrophic impacts for humanity and the common home, as Pope Francis "so beautifully" defines it, was expressed in a letter to the leaders of the COP26 Climate Conference, underway in Glasgow, by the bishops of the Church Conference of the Amazon (Ceama) and the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (Repam), concerned about the fate of the largest forest on the planet.
Threats to the forest
The document, signed by Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, president of Ceama, Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto, president of Repam, and the executive secretaries of the two organizations, states: "Environmental policies of insensitive and intransigent governments, the extractive model that dominates, deforestation of forests, indiscriminate and increasing fires and pollution of rivers.
A dramatic situation of devastation
Recalling the final document of the 2019 Synod for the Amazon and Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia, in fact, the "dramatic situation of devastation" that the forest is undergoing is highlighted, "drastically affected by environmental degradation and the consequences of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions." And it is above all the indigenous peoples who are paying the price.
The bill for future generations
"It is the poor who will be the first to pay the bill for this ecological and climate issue," Cardinal Hummes said, "they will have less access every day to drinking water, to land, to work. And also future generations, who will probably inherit a degraded planet, desolate and little by little unlivable for life; and this would be very serious."
We live in a broken world
"One does not have the right to maintain certain comforts at the cost of the pain and poverty of others," the document goes on to say, where it reiterates fears of the consequences of an increase in global warming that could exceed 2.4 degrees. "We are living in a broken world" and there is a need to take urgent measures in the face of the wounds that Amazonian territories and peoples and their cultures are suffering.'"Hot diapers, unfulfilled promises, unfulfilled commitments and measures that are not radical to reduce emissions, restoring the planet and its inhabitants are not worth it."
No second chances on earth
Ceama and Repam's plea, combined with that of many Amazon peoples, is that COP26 leaders avoid the impending catastrophe "sometimes already present due to public and private policies and decisions" that are often unsuccessful. "All of us are part of the problem, but also part of the solution," the text concludes. "We cannot lose hope, and if we have lost it, the decisions and options taken must decisively and appropriately address the root of the problems," in order to avoid what Gabrial Garcia Marquez wrote: "the lineages condemned to a hundred years of solitude do not have a second chance on earth."
Source: Vatican News
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