The School of Sciences of the University of Navarra counted with the visit of the environmental consultant Josep-Maria Mallarach, who stressed the need to recover the spiritual vision of nature. In his opinion, this is achieved by"confronting the monopolistic pretensions of the materialistic and relativistic mentality, whose limitations, in terms of the lack of values and the inability to give meaning to existence, have led to the global environmental crisis development ".

For Mallarach"the earth has gone from being the "sister and mother" to a simple natural resource to be bought and sold in a system obsessed with maximizing material benefits, without scruples towards our less favored contemporaries and ignoring the rights of our descendants". According to him, 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of the planet's resources: "confronting errors of this magnitude requires profound changes, an authentic 'ecological conversion', which must be assumed by everyone and by every institution", he pointed out.

The expert gave at the University of Navarra the lecture "From Rio to Rio+20: progress towards unsustainability seen according to the great spiritual traditions", where he referred to the setback that global sustainability has suffered in the last two decades. He also analyzed this phenomenon in the light of the great spiritual traditions, such as Christianity, Hinduism or Islam, and defended that "they all teach that a wise relationship with nature is based on respect, love, compassion, frugality and, deep down, a sense of the sacred". 

• download the complete discussion paper (.pdf)