From entrance, it can be complicated to agree on what politics is. This uncertainty is not raised here for the sake of discussion or academic detail, but with the intention of clarifying as much as possible and sufficiently what we are going to deal with.
Politics can be understood, from entrance and in democratic countries, as the work of those who contest elections and are elected to govern: politicians. Alongside this activity could be considered the activity carried out, with more continuity and in the background, by employees of the local, regional or state administration directly related to the elected government. There is no doubt that these two groups of professionals have a unique role to play. It is in their hands to make possible, for example, that a widespread or emerging environmental sentiment among citizens can be concretized and maintained over time; either at a local scale - enabling new bicycle lanes or more natural spaces in each city, for example - or at another scale - for example, establishing and keeping up to date, in a country, a legal and administrative control over projects, plans or policies that may have a significant environmental impact on the rural and natural environment.
Another broader understanding of politics is possible, understanding it now as that activity constituted by the initiative and the work of any person who contributes to the common good, beyond the sphere of his or her home. And perhaps this is the most necessary and radical role that politics could play in the face of the environmental crisis. The value of nature integrates material dimensions and also anthropological or cultural relevance, located in the realm of what we call spiritual, of what is related to the human spirit. For this reason, its damage, and the environmental crisis, should be understood at the same time as the manifestation of a crisis of culture, much more profound and universal than its reflection in the mirror of the natural environment: "The human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together"(Laudato si', n. 48).
The environmental crisis is deeply human and social in its roots. What happens to the environment is rooted in the particular life of each person on earth, as the cause; at the same time, it reaches them as the affected. Human beings can deliberately accelerate or reverse the deterioration of the environment, putting at risk the humanity and naturalness of their behavior and the landscapes in which it is reflected. Today, a whole way of life -necessarily nourished in the last written request by the use of the goods of the earth, by nature- seems to be faltering. Well-being -considered successful and desired, especially by those who contemplate it without enjoying it or by those who see it threatened in their lives- is constantly warning us of anxiety, of an unsustainability with two inseparable faces. Not only is the overall quality of the natural environment at risk, but also the quality of human life. The future is becoming uncertain for a growing issue number of people, even in the most economically developed countries. This is especially true after each new crisis.
There is a growing conviction that, with the current way of using, distributing and consuming natural goods, not only the environmental impact grows and accumulates, but also billions of people who will never be able to live as we do in the most developed homes, neighborhoods, cities, regions or countries. At the same time, billions of people who will never be able to live as we do in the most developed homes, neighborhoods, cities, regions or countries, to sum up all the scales of inequity, are left on the margins of well-being. A cultural uneasiness is spreading: a welfare that is not universal and that globally damages the value of the earth, to what extent will it not be wrong from its very approach? It appears the challenge to build a new fraternity, sustainable, that integrates in its project and in unison the respect to the human dignity and to the earth. It is a question of a goal that should lead every worthy political life, more necessary the farther it is from being reached. But how to achieve it?
The construction of a culture and politics of the common good, in the face of the environmental crisis, is in the hands of politicians and administrations. Also, in a less visible way, in the hands of all those who, with their lives of solidarity, build a new political culture. They live facing value, both human and environmental, learning to recognize it in every human face and in every corner of the landscape. They find in that daily and interdependent beauty, sometimes so damaged, the motive and the hope of a common project for humanity and the earth, for the benefit of both. The food of the promoters of the common good is commitment: either with respect for the quality and beauty of the environment that we do not see and that sustains us in our way of living with well-being (we will have to rethink those distant oil wells, or the mining products that inhabit our young and outdated telephone...), or with respect for the quality of life and the beauty of the poorest or most vulnerable people, on whose work our well-being and consumption may depend (... from a textile factory in Bangladesh, perhaps, that challenges me). Both qualities demand from us, intertwined, moral height in the political and effective citizen work (whichever corresponds in each case ...). Finally, in the field of politics, it is a matter of "daring to turn what is happening to the world into suffering staff , and thus to recognize the contribution that each one can make"(Laudato si', n. 19). We are called to learn to enjoy and heal in unison every threatened natural and human value, for "everything is connected"(Laudato si', n. 91).
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Jordi Puig i Baguer
Professor of department of Environmental Biology, University of Navarra
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
