International Seminar
TERRA MATER
THE
GUBBIO CHARTER 2007
In the 25th anniversary of
the Gubbio Charter 1982, the participants to the Forth International
Seminar Terra Mater (Gubbio, September 24-27, 2007) think it is necessary to
propose the Franciscan view of nature not just to believers, but to
everybody, for its extraordinary strength at this moment in time when our
planet situation seems to be more worrisome than ever before.
Recently, several exponents
of the scientific community have multiplied their alarmed appeals,
particularly addressed to political authorities. However, the necessary
changes are delaying to be activated: fear is not a strong enough motivation
either to overcome the culture of profit per se,
or to graze the consumerist push that continuously occurs from it.
The progressive
reduction of oil and gas
reserves makes it more and more difficult to provide enough of energy, even
causing bloody conflicts.
Scientific academies denounce
the phenomenon of climate changes, occurred from massively applying to
fossil fuels: the quick increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere upsets the stability of equilibriums and periodic phenomena
that determine climate.
Thus, it is absolutely
necessary to modify the structure of energetic budget, despite the fact it
is not possible yet, in place of fossil fuels, to use nuclear energy,
because of all the unsolved problems this involves.
At the very core of the
emergency, besides the energetic and climatic problems, there are also: the
loss of biodiversity, a massive deforestation, pollution destructive effects
on environment, and the painful picture of degenerative diseases, the
deterioration of urban centres, the long-lasting scandal of poverty and
hunger in the world that forces millions of human beings to emigrate.
The recurrence of the eighth
centennial of S. Francesco’s arrival at Gubbio – where he cured the lepers
in the culminant point of his conversion – suggests we let his example leads
us to a total change of perspective.
The Franciscan teaching,
which focuses on brotherhood among all living and not-living creatures,
reveals the model of a man that, after eight centuries, can still inspire
both believers and non-believers.
The life style deriving from
this point of view suggests everybody “a good life” inspired by a culture of
limit, rather than boundless development and measureless consumerism.
Therefore, Terra Mater
thinks it is essential
to impose - as the
technological progress has enormously increased the ability to manipulate
nature, which has consequently become considerably vulnerable - a deeper
human responsibility, in order to defend all natural systems and
to restore their delicate equilibriums, as well as a criterion of caution
that can prevent from adopting innovations without a reasonable guarantee of
their safety;
to promote an increase in one’s
individual responsibility, after becoming fully aware of the
gradually more serious environmental crisis, in order to avoid any
prejudicial behaviour, and to encourage a critical vigilance and defence of
environment, which is to be thought as a common possession;
to adopt moderation in
goods and resources supply, that are not to exceed the demand for
fundamental needs: this is going to lead people to do without unnecessary
objects, habits and comfort levels, according to a frugal life style;
to invite governments,
institutions, citizens and firms to experiment and use, with determination
and constancy, alternative energy sources, from energetic concentrate
sources, as fossil fuels and nuclear energy, to sources diffused on the
territory, in order to make them – together with energy saving - the
crucial point of public politics and private habits;
to stop thinking of the "world
consume" as a structural element of human beings in the industrial and
technological civilization, and to encourage people to consider environment
as a whole of natural and cultural realities, while man is an original and
indissoluble part of it;
to individualize new sites to
make planetary political decisions, in order to overcome the
traditional diplomatic relationships among the States and to allow a
plurality of subjects and agencies (non - governmental organizations,
employers' associations, etc.) to partake of any decision making processes;
to definite again the reasons
for unequal economic relationships between industrialized and developing
Countries, with particular reference to agricultural politics and above all,
the imposition of monocultures that impoverish biodiversity and make the
countries that adopt them more subject to crisis and conflicts;
to recognize women’s
dignity and fullness of their gifts, like in the franciscan vision, and
valorise them as the bearers of the ethics of care, which, in alternative to
the culture of dominion, assume among their own privileged objects nature
and environment;
to recognize the cultural
dimension of the relationship between man and nature in the form of the
landscape, expression and patrimony of a community that, according to
their own interpretation of housing, do not betray the historical, equal and
symbolical dimensions of the place;
to privilege the direct
experience of places and environment, to be contemplated, crossed and
known in order to be enjoyed and aesthetically used;
to effect a permanent
environmental education (that involves schools, institutions,
associations, firms and media) according to a view of complexity, considered
as a systemic vision of reality, both in its scientific and ecological
aspects and in its ethical and behavioural features, privileging directed
experiences on the territory;
to assume an attitude inspired
to the more advanced sensibility towards animals, protecting them
from as many maltreatments and sufferings as possible (in particular, to
valorise the alternative methodologies to animal experimentation), and to
defend all species risking extinction;
to adopt an analogous attitude
of respect towards the vegetable and mineral world: S. Francesco teaches us
that the ethics that only deals with humans, risks being inhuman. His
humanism, for its cosmic opening, can be defined ecological.
At a quarter of a century from
the "prophetic" Charter of Gubbio 1982, Terra Mater leads again every man
to follow in S. Francesco’s footsteps, to rediscover the fundamental values
of housing the Earth.
TERRA MATER
Assisi Nature Council ( A.N.C.)
Associazione Italiana per il World Wildlife Fund (W.W.F. Italia)
Associazione Nazionale Italia Nostra
Boureau Européen de l’Environnement ( B.E.E.)
Centro Francescano Studi Ambientali
Club Alpino Italiano ( C.A.I.)
Club of Rome
Comune di Gubbio
Comunità Montana “Alto Chiascio” Gubbio
Conferenza dei Ministri Generali delle Quattro Famiglie Francescane
Ordine dei Frati Minori (OFM)
Ordine dei Frati Minori Cappuccini (OFMCap.)
Ordine dei Frati Minori Conventuali ( OFMConv.)
Terzo Ordine Regolare di S. Francesco (TOR)
Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali ( E.N.P.A.)
FAI - Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano
Federazione Italiana Pronatura - Federnatura
International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources (I.U.C.N.)
Istituto Italiano di Bioetica
Legambiente
Lega Italiana Diritti dell’Animale ( L.I.D.A.)
Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli ( L.I.P.U.)
Mountain Wilderness Italia
Planning Environmental and Ecological Institute
Provincia di Perugia
Regione Umbria
Società Italiana di Ecologia ( S.IT.E.)
Society for International Development (S.I.D.)
World Futures Studies Federation
