Yesterday Zimbabwe joined the rest of the world in commemorating the Earth Day.
The day is celebrated on April 22 every year. The Earth Day is a reminder of the importance of unity, justice, and co-operation in protecting the mother earth.
Solutions to protect the earth, in the Bahá'í view, will require a globally-accepted vision for the future, based on unity and willing co-operation among the nations, races, and people of various ethnic backgrounds.
Considering that local, national and the international communities are linked through the environment, the need for international co-operation to protect the mother earth cannot be over-emphasised.
Our current environmental challenges, such as plastic pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, water shortages, and climate change, are serious global problems.
It is becoming more and more obvious that protection and preservation of our environment should be viewed not only in technical and economic terms, but also as a moral and ethical issue.
Various global problems facing humanity, including the environmental one, show how individuals, communities, and governments need to come together to address our common concerns. Such challenges call for a united action based on both ethical considerations and scientific evidence.
A fundamental component of resolving the climate change and other environmental challenges, in the Bahá'í view, will be the cultivation of values, attitudes, and skills that give rise to just and sustainable patterns of human interaction with the environment.
There is also need to observe the principles of economic justice, equality between the races, equal rights for men and women, and universal education.
The Bahá'í International Community, in one of its statements says: "for progress on the international stage to be sustainable, it must take place within a framework that promotes the attainment of progressively higher degrees of unity of vision and action," and that, "The mere collaboration of self-interested actors in a multilateral enterprise does not ensure favourable outcomes for the community of nations as a whole. As long as one group of nations perceives its interests in opposition to another, progress will be limited and short-lived".
Oneness of humanity must become a ruling principle
For our human family to work with a united vision, to address the current environmental challenges, the oneness of humanity must become a ruling principle.
Acceptance of the oneness of the human family is not to undermine national autonomy or suppress cultural and intellectual diversity.
It is rather to view the environmental challenges through a new lens -- one that perceives the whole humanity as one human family.
To sustain civilisation, there will always be need for material resources.
As consciousness of the oneness of human family increases, there will be a recognition that wealth of the earth is common heritage of all people, and everyone should have just and equitable access to the resources of mother earth.
To be just and fair in using the earth's resources requires that we move away from self-interest that is dominating the world today, to a mode of sharing and caring for the earth's resources.
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".
"Setting humanity on a more sustainable path to the future" in the Bahá'í view "involves transformation in attitudes and actions."
It will depend on our unity as humanity.
Unity in diversity: requirement of a sustainable social order
The following excerpt from a statement of the Bahá'í International Community summarises some ethical requirements of a sustainable social order, sustainable consumption and production, role of justice and unity to enable mankind to arrange its economic, material, and social life with justice for all peoples and reverence towards the earth:
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"Progress at the technical and policy levels now needs to be accompanied by public dialogue--among rural and urban dwellers; among the materially poor and the affluent; among men, women and young persons alike--on the ethical foundations of the necessary systemic change.
"A sustainable social order is distinguished, among other things, by an ethic of reciprocity and balance at all levels of human organisation. A relevant analogy is the human body: here, millions of cells collaborate to make human life possible. The astounding diversity of form and function connects them in a lifelong process of giving and receiving. It represents the highest expression of unity in diversity.
"Within such an order, the concept of justice is embodied in the recognition that the interests of the individual and of the wider community are inextricably linked. The pursuit of justice within the frame of unity (in diversity) provides a guide for collective deliberation and decision-making and offers a means by which unified thought and action can be achieved".
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