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 extraordinarily strong Franciscan view of nature
not just to believers, but to everybody, while our planet situation seems to
be more worrisome than ever before.
Several exponents of the scientific community have recently 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 St. Francis’ 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, to 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 valorize 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 landscape, expression and heritage of a community that,
according to its own interpretation of housing, does not betray the identity
and the historical and symbolical dimensions of the place where it lives;
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, valorizing 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" Gubbio Charter 1982, Terra Mater again
encourages every man to follow St. Francis’ 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.)
Terraceleste
World Futures
Studies Federation
