The 'pope' of hope

Can religion help prevent eco-catastrophe? The leader of the Orthodox Church thinks so - and as the spiritual guide for 300 million people, he has more influence than most politicians. Riazat Butt reports
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Riazat Butt
The Guardian, Wednesday June 18 2008
Article history
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For the many pilgrims who stream into the lavishly decorated Church of St George, Istanbul, it is the crystal chandeliers, incense clouds, iconography and sombre, chanting, enigmatic bishops dressed in black that are the main attraction of a little-known district in the throbbing Turkish metropolis.

Yet this cathedral holds far greater significance than photo opportunities and a sliver of Christendom in a Muslim-majority country. Around the corner from dusty cafes and tat shops, up a cobbled street, you come to the office of one of the most influential figures in the fight against climate change and world poverty.

His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, is the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians and 270th successor to the Apostle Andrew. He is also extremely green, taking heads of church and state to areas beset with environmental problems - the Amazon and Arctic among them - and confronting them with the best science.

After announcing, on an Aegean island, that attacks on the environment should be considered sins, he called pollution of the world's waters "a new Apocalypse" and led global calls for "creation care".

The 68-year-old archbishop, sitting behind his desk, popping artificial sweetener into a grainy espresso, is modest about his achievements, which, through the annual environmental symposia attended by the great and the good, include pressuring Brazilian soya traders into declaring a moratorium on crops from newly deforested land in the Amazon, and lobbying the Albanian government to clean up toxic waste dumped in Porto Romano on the Adriatic coast.

"We have succeeded so far," he says. "The Ecumenical Patriarchate has received awards because of this activity. It means our efforts are recognised internationally. At the beginning, we were talking about eco problem, then eco crisis, and now we are talking about eco catastrophe."

A decade ago, he says, people were puzzled by the links he was trying to establish. Religious people were indifferent, or even hostile, to science. Scientists and ecologists could see little relationship between their world and the world of faith. But there is hardly a religious leader in the world now, he says, who is not preoccupied by problems of pollution and climate change. "Every product we make and enjoy - from the paper we work with, to processed meat and the soy beans that sustain its industry, every tree we fell, every building we construct, every road we travel - definitively and permanently alters creation. This alteration - or perhaps we should characterise it as abuse - of creation is a fundamental difference between human, natural and divine economies."

Human economy, he explains, wastes and discards, while natural economy is cyclical and replenishes, and God's economy is compassionate and nurturing.

Guide the flock

As serious as he is about spreading the message of his environmental work, Bartholomew I is a genial, benign man who inspires warmth and attention. But being the Patriarch is an exacting job, especially in Turkey, where laws prevent him from appearing in his flowing robes on the streets. Despite this constraint, and the difficulties that come with being part of a minority religious group, he is ahead of his time, using his influence to campaign for change. The sense of urgency and commitment running through his message sits well with current thinking that religious leaders are in a better position to make an impact on their congregations than politicians or celebrities.

According to an Environment Agency wishlist of actions to save the planet, published last year, an ecological coalition of faith leaders was deemed more effective than a new Kyoto protocol-style agreement to regulate emissions. Indeed, the agency placed such faith on a holy alliance that it ranked the idea number two in its list of 50 things that would save the planet - above more conventional ideas such as flying less, an expansion of solar and renewable power, and the introduction of green taxes.

Nick Reeves, the executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, who helped the agency to draw up the list, says the world's faith groups had been silent for too long. "It is time they fulfilled their rightful collective role in reminding us that we have a duty to restore and maintain the ecological balance of the planet."

He adds that while most faith groups have environmental policies, they need to be more vociferous in getting their message across. "They speak for millions of people. There needs to be a stronger campaigning aspect to their work."

For the last five years, Bartholomew I has hired cruise ships on which he has staged major environmental symposiums involving church leaders of all denominations, scientists and politicians. The next symposium is scheduled for April 2009, on the Nile, under the patronage of the Patriarch, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

War on water

The brochure warns that ecological disaster in Africa could "mortally damage" the global ecosystem... Pasture land gives way to desert. Lake levels fall, animal and bird migrations change, fish stocks dwindle. River waters grow polluted and aquifers are drained for 'development'. Gigantic conurbations discharge untreated waste far beyond the capacity of the environment. High dams on major rivers block the natural supply of silt to downstream communities."

Asked why the symposiums focus on seas and waterways, the Patriarch points out that 70% of the planet consists of water, and 70% of the human body does too. "We are not in favour of having big meetings in places of the world - for example, Geneva, London or New York - that are not relevant for the topic, to discuss the problems of the rainforest or the melting of the ice in Greenland. It is much more important to bring relevant people directly to the areas in question, to the endangered bodies of water."

He plays down his role as a pioneer. "I don't think I'm so strong to change the face of the globe. We shall continue our humble efforts. We are all culpable. Each one of us has a smaller or greater contribution to the deliberate degradation of nature."

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Holy eco warriors
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Pope Benedict XVI used his Christmas homily to speak out against selfishness and the degradation of the environment as he celebrated midnight mass at St Peter's Basilica in 2007. "Man is so preoccupied with himself, he has such urgent need of all the space and all the time for his own things, that nothing remains for others," he said. Recalling Christmas homilies of the 4th-century Bishop Gregory of Nyssa, who lamented a "universe torn and disfigured by sin", The Pope also spoke of the environment. "What would He say if He could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation?"

The Archbishop of Canterbury has pledged to fly less in his role as head of the Anglican Communion. He says: "I'm trying to move our bishops on to environmentally friendly cars, and the Bishop of London and myself have been trying to do our little bit by travelling slowly and conveniently - and rather enjoyably - across Europe to meetings that we would have otherwise have flown to in the last couple of years. I came back by train from Rome on Saturday, and very nice it was too! You can't quite do it with Singapore, but ... one step at a time!"

The 14th Dalai Lama says a clean environment is a basic human right. "Taking care of our planet is like taking care of our houses. Since we human beings come from nature, there is no point in our going against nature. It is ... part of our responsibility towards others to ensure that the world we pass on is as healthy, if not healthier, than we found it."

Fazlun Khalid, director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences, is recognised as an expert on ecology from an Islamic perspective. He has also worked as the director of training at the Alliance of Religions and Conservation and as a consultant for World Wildlife Fund. Khalid believes that protecting the environment is a form of worship, and that humans have a basic right to the benefits of a healthy planet. "As the guardians of Allah's creation we have a responsibility to protect the environment. In our eagerness to 'progress' and 'develop' we have lost sight of the finite and delicate nature of planet Earth and of humanity's place in it."

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