Coleman on papal encyclical, call to climate action
The call today by Pope Francis in his transformational papal encyclical on the environment, reminds us that climate change is first and foremost about people, and it’s the poorest among us that will suffer the most.
“The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation. In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: ‘Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest’…we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
As we at Oxfam have highlighted for nearly a decade, climate change hits poor communities first and worst. It disproportionately affects those most vulnerable and least able to adapt to more frequent and more severe storms, droughts, and floods.
Worse yet, climate change threatens to derail global efforts to combat hunger and poverty and is only exacerbating inequality around the world.
As a humanitarian organization, we see this playing out every day as we respond to increasing humanitarian crises and work with communities to build their resilience to more extreme shocks and changing weather patterns.
The pope is clear that we all have a responsibility to take action to curb climate change, declaring that polluting the water, soil, air are all sins. And he calls especially on citizens and governments to take the necessary steps to reduce emissions and increase resilience: “Because the enforcement of laws is at times inadequate due to corruption, public pressure has to be exerted in order to bring about decisive political action. Society, through non-governmental organizations and intermediate groups, must put pressure on governments to develop more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls.”