Statement
We call on the global development community to engage with Catholic Sisters in promoting and realising integral environmental solutions, to ensure a safe and thriving future for all people and our planet.
Sisters for the Environment: Integrating Voices from the Margins is a statement of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) intended to reflect and clarify the response of Catholic Sisters to the environmental challenges of our time.
On one hand, this statement addresses the urgency of the current moment, identifying COP27 on climate change and COP15 on biodiversity as crucial opportunities to turn the tide of destruction that is ravaging our Earth. On the other hand, it expresses a deep-rooted, faith-driven vision for ecological conversion that has inspired the mission of Sisters for many decades and continues to do so every day, all around the world.
Reflections shared
Important statement on climate change, biodiversity and social justice “Sisters for the Environment: integrating voices from the margins in advance of COP27
Sisters for the Environment: Integrating Voices from the Margins” an excellent event from UISG Superiors. On COP27 we are going on a piligramage – the challenge is to be heard in the right places and to be able to raise our voices. It is clear that the most vulnerable countries are receiving little of what is available
It was a privilege to share voices from our Pacific region at the launch of “Sisters for the Environment. Sisters are not just facilitating but integrating and empowering those on the margins, creating important coalitions for change. This Statement gives the Sisters visibility and use it to ask to sit at the table and be there and represent the voices at the margins. It is about integrating the voices and build their capacity to influence. We need the private sector more involved to cover the climate related costs
Losses and damages is the real critical aspect of COP27 and the one of COP15. Our problem is finance and there is a need to rethink our economic system. The first challenge is including future generations but our regulations are not prepared to include voices from the margins… Only including people from the margins we can really have a discussion about local and global development. We need education, a cultural shift, starting from faith-based discussions
Challenges are indifference, disillusionement, discouragement, lack of ambition and courage, delaying the actions, the same people talking and not doing. Different voices have to have their space for a value-driven conversation for an uncofortable truth. With the Statement and with the African Climate Dialogues we need to keep coordinaitng, to build the community of solidarity and to model the change we want to see. We need to make the Statement heard
The statement is so fantastic and helps us ambition come from a bottom up. How can we influences national policies and make the plans come int cop27 more globally ambitious. Opportunity to use the Statement with convesrations happening at the national level.….we need to build up from a national level going forward. Use the ideas and reccomendations in the Statement to make a difference nationally but from a national point of view feeding into the internaltional levels as well
We, as young people feel marginalised, we are not part of the decision-making process. Marginalised g roups have no voice, they have been displaced by society, we have displaced them, they are not considered when some requests are made but that is where we have all have to feel responsible. If everything is interconnected we have all to live for everyone excluding no one
The Statement is intended to reflect and clarify the responses of Catholic sisters for the environment challenges in our times.
The statement addresses the urgency of the current moment identifying COP27 on climate change and COP15 on biodiversity as critical opportunities to turn the tide of distruction that is ravaging our earth and really looking at other ways to reclaim our earth and our relationships with one another and it is expressed as a deeply rooted faith-elevated and faith-driven vision for an ecological conversion
As you (UISG Sisters) testify yourselves, your work is enriched by the consciousness of this new, integral vision of the world.
This is because the multifaceted and multidimensional reality of integral ecology address more than just the natural environment, but the interaction of the various dimensions of ecology, including its environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects and human ecology “in order to adopt a more integral and integrating vision” (LS, 141)
As sisters we are convinced of the need for the integral, integrative and inclusive approach to realze the UN 2030 Goal… advocating from a vision that is both human and spirittual as we seek sustainable solutions. The world most marginalised communities can teach us all the resilience required to confront the challenges of our time… we are called to be prophetic that is to stand with and to speak with and for for those whose voices are ignored or excluded.
