The start of a new academic year is worth cherishing amid the Covid-19 pandemic. After a relatively dull summer thanks to Covid restrictions, students are able to resume school life, seeing their classmates and friends once again as they enjoy normal social and educational activities.
The enforced slowdown caused by the pandemic, which the world has endured for nearly two years now, has given many of us time for reflection. When talking about the pandemic in 2020, Pope Francis said it had drawn attention to our relationship with the environment, among other things. “The lockdown reduced pollution and enabled us to rediscover the beauty of so many places free of traffic and noise,” he said. “Now, with the resumption of activities, we all must be more responsible for the care of our common home.”
As a coordinated effort to care for the planet, the Church launched the Laudato Si’ Action Platform in the middle of this year. The initiative hopes to encourage different stakeholders, including schools, to embark on a seven-year eco-journey, deepening our love for the Earth as we implement the initiatives made in the environmental encyclical promulgated by Pope Francis five years ago.
While September sees the resumption of classes, it is also marked by the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation celebrated by the Church. With that in mind, how can we remind the younger generation of their responsibility to care for the environment? Laudato Si’ offers the following suggestions:
Firstly, we must turn awareness into action. A recognition of the gravity of today’s ecological crisis must be translated into new habits. Young people must understand and learn about the adverse impact of consumption on the environment. Some of them have grown up in a milieu of extreme consumerism and affluence that makes it difficult to live otherwise. Let’s start with small changes, making sure students minimise the use of plastic and paper, separate refuse, not waste food, use public transport more frequently, and reduce energy consumption.
Secondly, given the educational and motivational challenges we face, we need to broaden environmental education. In the beginning, it was mainly centered on scientific information and the prevention of environmental risks. Now such education must seek also to restore harmony within ourselves, with others, with nature and other living creatures, and with God.
Environmental education should facilitate making the leap towards the transcendent, which gives ecological ethics its deepest meaning. It needs educators capable of developing an ethics of ecology, and who can help people, through effective pedagogy, to grow in solidarity, responsibility and compassionate care.
In Hong Kong, schools have previously organised many ecological education projects to encourage students to change their living habits for the sake of the environment.
In this new school year, let us therefore also begin an ethical and spiritual conversation about the environment with our young people. Beach clean-ups and recycling projects are incredibly valuable, but we must sustain them by calling forth the transcendent goodness in everyone. Being in harmony with nature means being in harmony with our creator, and saving the planet is nothing less than God’s work. SE
