Green economy and religions politic

AuthorMaria Rosaria Piccinni
Pages139-153
139
MARIA ROSARIA PICCINNI
GREEN ECONOMY AND RELIGIONS POLITIC
1. Religions attitude towards environmental question
The word “environment” and its synonym “surroundings”, represents
all conditions, circumstances and influences affecting the development of
an organism. It particularly includes every living thing like human
beings, animals and plants and non-living thing, like soil, water, light,
climate temperature and pressure etc.1 Environment holds a central
position in most of the discussions of development strategies in the
contemporary globalised world2. Environmental security is considered a
common principle of all major religions of the world.
The environmental crisis is well documented in its various manifestations
of industrial pollution, resource depletion, and population explosion.
Religions are involved with the development of a more comprehensive
worldview and ethics to ground movements toward sustainability3. Whether
from an anthropocentric or a biocentric perspective, more ad equate
environmental values need to be formulated and linked to areas of public
policy4. Scholars of religion as well as religious leaders, and laity can be
1 Cfr. D.W. BROMLEY - J. PAAVOLA, Economics, ethics, and environmental policy:
contested choices, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002. About the effects of globalisation on the
environment cfr. S. BORGHESI - A. VERCELLI, La sostenibilità dello sviluppo globale,
Carocci, Roma, 2005.
2 Cfr. N. GRECO, La Costituzione dell’ambiente, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1996
3 Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It
contai ns within i t two key concepts: the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of
the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations
imposed by the state of technology and social organiza tion on the environment’s ability to meet
present and future needs.” All definitions of sust ainable development require that we see the
world as a system that connects space and time. Cfr. J. SCHMANDT - C. HERBERT WARD,
Sustainable development: the challenge of transition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2000; F. LA CAMERA, Sviluppo sostenibile. Origini, teoria e pratica, Editori Riuniti, Roma,
2003; E. HERMAN, Oltre la crescita: l’economia dello sviluppo sostenibile, Edizioni di
Comunità, Milano, 2001; A. BALLARIN DENTI - E. SINDONI, Etica e ambiente. Discipline a
confronto per uno sviluppo sostenibile. Atti del convegno [organizzato dalla] Fondazione
Lombardia per l’Ambiente, Milano, 18 giugno 2003. Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente,
Milano, 2004; M. CEVOLI - C. FALASCA - L. FERRONE, Ambiente e crescita: la
negoziazione dello sviluppo sostenibile, Ediesse, Roma, 2004.
4 Cfr. A. POSTIGLIONE - A. PAVAN, Etica ambiente sviluppo: la comunità interna-
zionale per una nuova etica dell’ambiente, Rapporto finale della ricerca condotta dal-
l’Istituto Internazionale Jacques Maritain, ESI, Napoli, 2001.

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