Sustainable Development Goals: “Sustainable Cities and Communities
It was September 2015 when the leaders of many States decided to adopt a series of goals to improve our world, with a view to the year 2030. These goals tell us of the urgency of our world to end poverty, while caring for the planet and fighting for the improvement of the living conditions of all the world’s inhabitants. Poverty, ecology and development go hand in hand in these goals.
Interestingly, that same year, a few months earlier, Pope Francis gave us Christians, and all of humanity, the encyclical Laudato Si. Pope Francis was thus ahead of the world’s political leaders, with a reflection on poverty, ecology and human development.
The Pope reminds us that the eradication of poverty, the care of the common home and the development of all people are inseparable concepts. He reminds us that they involve an institutional as well as a personal commitment. They imply a commitment of the Church, of societies and of the world. Neither as individuals nor as Marists of Champagnat can we neglect the urgency promoted by the Pope’s encyclical and the Objectives of Sustainable Development.
The XXII General Chapter, which took place at the end of 2017, echoes this urgency, and assumes it within the Message to all Marists as a challenge for the coming years. “Abandoning the culture of egos”, “promoting echoes”, “awakening an ecological conscience around us”, “caring for our common home” are expressions that already form part of our feeling as Marists.
We have begun to develop some initiatives in different parts of the Institute and we are called to continue growing in these calls to create sustainable Cities and Communities, in the ecological and also in the human; sustainable in development and, also, in the elimination of poverty.
If the challenge of creating sustainable societies is urgent, it becomes even more so in the large urban centres, where nature disappears, where there is more pollution, where there are significant marginal neighbourhoods. Working for more sustainable cities begins by taking small steps at the level of small communities, also in our own as Marists of Champagnat. From this transformation of the small, of our own environment, we will be able to fight and achieve the transformation of the cities. Decent housing, access to basic services, investment in public transport, care for green spaces all imply this change towards sustainability.
What do I commit myself to as a Marist, brother or layperson, to create more sustainable communities and cities? As a Marist Institution, can we do anything to help in the care of our common home? Certainly the answer is yes. It is time to start, it is time to take small steps, it is time to join others in this endeavour.
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Br. Ángel Diego – Director of the Secretariat of Solidarity