As many of our readers know, ICI has been increasingly working more on issues related to religion and ecology in the Himalayas. So it is with great interest that we can share some news on this front from China. On June 16, 2015, academics, journalists, scientists, government, religious and business leaders from China, the US and other countries came together for the first time to discuss the environmental challenges facing China and the world—and the increasingly important role of religion and traditional cultures in finding sustainable solutions to the challenges we face.
Earlier this year the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center and Communication University of China, hosted the “International Conference on Ecological Civilization and Environmental Reporting” in Beijing. Just this week the Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE) at Yale released the proceedings of this conference, titled Ecological Civilization. The report, which summarizes most of the talks and content of the international conference, should be of great interest to any of our members working on environmental issues in China, as well as the intersections of religion and ecology in global environmental discourses.
Here is a brief excerpt from the opening pages of this report by Jon Sawyer, Executive Director of the Pulitzer Center:
It is easy to assume that China’s environmental challenges are China’s alone. The bad air or unsafe food or toxic rivers we read about have no effect on us, we might think, and nothing to do with the world’s demand for the flood of inexpensive, high-quality consumer goods that has fueled the Chinese economic miracle. But “China is a global factory,” says anthropologist Dan Smyer Yu of Yunnan Minzu University. “However you consume, whatever you consume, pay attention to the label ‘Made in China.’ So each of us has a responsibility for the environmental practices of China. China’s environmental issue is a global issue. We have to take responsibility, each of us.”
Smyer Yu was among an extraordinarily diverse group of specialists who gathered at Yale Center Beijing in June to engage an issue that is close to home for us all—the state of our environment. But they also addressed a dimension of this topic that is new, and significant—how our diverse religious and cultural traditions might contribute to assuring a sustainable, healthy world for generations to come.
You can find out more about the conference and the book at the Pulitzer Center.
Download and read the entire conference proceedings book as a pdf [here] or on iTunes [here]. The e-book is also available via Kindle and Atavist.