Vatican conference to study
role of religions in SDGs
 |
| Card. Peter Turkson |
The March 7-9 conference entitled, “Religions and the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was presented at a press conference in the
Vatican on March 5.
By Robin Gomes
A 2-day international conference in the Vatican this week
will focus and reflect on how the world’s religions can help in implementing
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the United Nations member states
set in 2015 to be achieved by 2030.
The March 7-9 conference entitled, “Religions and the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Listening to the cry of the earth and of
the poor”, is being jointly organized by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting
Integral Human Development and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious
Dialogue.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, the prefect of the Dicastery for
Promoting Integral Human Development, who presented the Vatican event at a
press conference on Tuesday, said that the upcoming event is not about the
progress made so far toward the 17 SDGs and 169 targets.
Marshalling the moral force
He said, “It is about marshalling the moral force of
religion behind the implementation of the SDG goals. We need to work together;
for no source of wisdom can be left out, just as no one can be left behind!”
“After four years from the adoption of the SDGs,” the
Ghanaian said, “we have to realize even more clearly the importance to
accelerate and tailor our actions to adequately answer to “both the cry of the
earth and the cry of the poor” (Laudato Si’ 49).
Since the response to those cries has to be
multi-layered, he said, we need to learn from the various cultural riches of
different peoples, their art and poetry, their interior life and spirituality.
This includes religion and the language particular to it.
Card. Turkson noted that some 80 percent of the
world is said to be believing in God or some other being with many belonging to
some religious group. The 70-year old cardinal said this is an immense
potential to unleash the power of love to respond to the suffering of the earth
and of the billions of people who have no access to adequate food, a decent
dwelling, a secure and dignified job, and who are also the most affected by
climate change.
Religions and development
In terms of development, Card. Turkson pointed out that
religions play a crucial role in providing education, a cornerstone
of civil society for centuries or millennia. According to UNICEF, the UN’s
Children’s’ Fund, religions still provide or support 50% of all schools,
and 64% of schools in sub-Saharan Africa.
Religious people, he continued, represent also the fourth
largest identifiable investment community with around 12% of
the total capital investment worldwide, and run around a third of all medical
facilities of the planet.
With their rich religious narratives, he said, religions can
contribute to a sustainable future, together with all societies and
institutions.
Card. Turkson said that the Vatican conference is to help
each other to foster an ecological and comprehensive conversion that
can transform the world. The cry of the earth and the poor, he said calls for
an immediate and urgent response.
Fr. Bruno Marie Duffé, secretary of the
Dicastery, who also addressed Tuesday’s press conference, noted that for a long
time economic development was thought to be without limits but today many
people look to religions for sustainable development.
Food
This fact was also stressed by René Castro Salazar,
the Assistant-Director General of Climate, Biodiversity, Land and Water
Department of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO.
He said that religions can draw on their tradition to
suggest concrete solutions in the fight against food waste, such as in the past
centuries when a part of the harvest was offered to the poorest population.
When people complain there is not enough food for all on the Earth, he said, we
throw away a third of it. “It would be enough to recover these wastes to
solve the problem of the more than 800 million people who are in a state of
food shortage,” Castro said.
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