Rome (NEV), April 26, 2020 – April 22 was Earth Day. This anniversary, which should celebrate the environment and the protection of our Earth planet, fell this year during the corona virus pandemic that hit the world and prompted many to question the correlations between the epidemic and the state of the planet. Appeals and stances to save our planet are multiplying.
Antonella Visintin, coordinator of the Globalization and Environment Commission (GLAM) of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI), has been engaged in environmental actions for years, both at local and global level. She asked to promote immediate concrete commitments in the institutional venues as well as in the daily life choices on occasion of the Earth Day celebrations.
“In 10 years we will be 10 billion humans on this planet. Even the proposal to feed this multitude with insects brings the problem of food back to the planet, always with the logic of removing resources from the ecosystem and other species”, said Visintin who continued by also questioning herself about the flourishing of calls not to return to levels of the planet exploitation as before the lock- down: “What I see is a great desire for recovery mostly radicalized in the demand for more ‘private’, without any constraints of responsibility towards human life and that of the planet. An example? The big industrial groups that will go into production to recover the accumulation margins produced by the forced stop linked to the corona virus”, she said.
“It is good to continue planting trees – continued Visintin – but deforestation should also be stopped; it is good to ask for an increase in cycling mobility, but this must be related to the stop of private cars. Who is investing in safe public transportation for Phase 2? In the face of the lack of investments and of the safety of public transportation, citizens and towns will choose private cars. And furthermore, we could immediately return portions of land to the wild species as we have done forcefully these days”.
“Gas is a candidate to be the energy of the future associated with renewable resources which alone cannot sustain the development model to which peoples and governments in fact entrust the future of the Earth. At the end of this day, what commitments will we have made tomorrow morning?”, asked the GLAM coordinator.
Visintin also spoke about the GLAM document “The post distanced normality” which contains issues such as reorganization of working times and ways and use of public space after the corona virus pandemic. In the working document GLAM suggests what could be the actions to be put in place in the gradual reopening of activities.
Structural and non-emergency reinvestment in public health, restoration of air quality, priority impulse to the circular economy are some of the answers that GLAM, created to raise awareness among churches on the problems that economic injustice and the destruction of the earth pose to the world and in particular to the Christian faith, has identified as starting points for a reasoning on the “future we would like”.
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