The environment once more!
Dr. Michel E. Abs
General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches
We will not write enough about the environment.
No matter how much we write, talk, present, call and urge, it will not be enough.
First, because the environment, the gift of the Creator, is the incubator for our lives and the guarantor of the future of our generations and the continuity of humanity on this planet earth.
Secondly, because the damage that mankind has inflicted on the environment, ever since the industrial revolution until today, is greater than what books, lectures and encyclopedias can accommodate.
The Church, through its experts and its concerned institutions including the Middle East Council of Churches, has done and is doing a lot to uplift the stage and the deplorable conditions that the environment has reached.
The first of our collective work was the launch of the "season of creation", which is a metaphor for an educational and awareness campaign that began on the first of September and will end on the fourth of October as set by the Church to coincide with the liturgical year.
This season began with a prayer at the National Evangelical Church in Beirut and will conclude with a prayer on the third Sunday of October at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Visitation, the Philokalia Institute and Society in the town of Aintoura in the Keserwan region, under the patronage of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi.
This month was filled with activities, campaigns and projects aimed at placing the environment item on the agenda of the Middle Eastern societies, as activities took place in the various countries in which churches members of the Council are present in our region.
But what is important is not for us to remember the environment once a year, only when the date set for the Season of Creation arrives, and then forget it while the harm done lingers on for the rest of the year. The crux of the matter is that environmental work should be sustainable so as to become part of our culture and our daily concerns, starting with household waste, to industrial waste, through to medical waste, and the list may be long.
Not only is our environmental culture insufficient in our region, but also the monitoring of the implementation of legislation lags behind. There is not enough retaliation from those who care about the environment concerning conscientization about signs of harm and destruction done to the environment, some of which are visible and others that are hidden and appear gradually to people when it is often too late.
Those who harm the environment betray people and society and may rely either on the lack of related legislation, the lack in the implementation of promulgated decrees, or the lack of awareness on behalf of those entrusted with the enforcement of environmental protection laws who may hide behind the existing shelter of prevalent general corruption or on the corruption of those who enforce the law.
The basic guarantee for preserving the environment, in addition to all of the above, lies in educating the younger generations to preserve the environment by including an environmental awareness dimension in the school curricula, either within civic education lessons or within special sessions and activities focusing on environmental protection.
In parallel with this trend, we must not lose sight of the importance of agricultural work in preserving and developing the environment. When the greenness increases and the drought recedes, the natural environment reaches a stage at which it can defend itself, through blessed green hands. We can only fight annihilation by stimulating life.
The drought that threatens our region, caused by dams being built haphazardly here and there, threatens not only the quality of the environment, but the entire life in the Middle East, as it may be the prelude to impoverishment, displacement and wars.
The challenge is very great, and what is required of our countries, churches, and religious leaders in general, in addition to civil and civil society organizations, is to cooperate in pushing this bitter cup away from us, in our present generation and in the generations to come.
Resources necessary to respond to the urgency of environmental protection are readily available to us. It only takes some will to concerted action on our behalf.