On Behalf of the Earth

Christ the Redeemer towers high above Rio de Janeiro, with outstretched arms and an expression of pathos and compassion. The statue is the landmark of Rio. Residents say they look for it whenever, in this city of 11 million people, they have lost their way and need directions.

Standing at the feet of Christ atop the mountain, the city looks stunning in its beauty, drama, and charm. But Christ's look of pathos also sees the violence, anxiety, and despair. Homeless children are murdered each day; most are black. Thousands of desperate women try to sell themselves to stay alive. The middle class are afraid to ride buses or ferries wearing their watches and earrings. And many see no clear way to a future with promise.

For 14 days in June 1992, Rio welcomed the "Earth Summit" into its midst. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before in history. Representatives of 178 nations of the world gathered to consider the prospects for the future of humanity and the sustainability of the planet.

Titled the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the gathering had as its aim the formulation of cooperative international policies to protect the Earth and meet the needs of its growing number of inhabitants. At the conclusion, more than 100 heads of state came for history's most inclusive "summit" meeting of governmental leaders. And 9,200 journalists were there to report on the event.

The Earth Summit included not only government delegations, but also the official presence of an astonishing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)--more than 1,4000--who were accredited to the conference. But even more, thousands of additional people and representatives of organizations gathered together at the "Global Forum." This festival included participation by representatives of more than 7,000 organizations from around the world. Held at Flamengo Park in downtown Rio, as well as at various other meeting sites throughout the city, this gathering featured up to 60 separate meetings, forums, and discussions on any given day, addressing various dimensions of planetary survival.

And to the Earth Summit, the churches also sent their representatives. Some church organizations and ecumenical bodies were among the officially accredited NGOs at the governmental conference. Others were participants in the Global Forum.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) convened a major ecumenical meeting--one of the myriad of events at the Earth Summit (see "The Wind of the Spirit," this page). For the first seven days of June, a group of 176 people from 54 countries and more than 70 different churches met in an area on the north side of Rio called Baixada Fluminense. There they reflected, worshiped, discussed, and responded to the issues of the Earth Summit from the perspectives of churches worldwide. They were also warmly embraced by the local Catholic and Protestant churches in this area--a place known as one of the most violent in Brazil.

BUT NOW THAT THOSE days in June have past, what is the lasting significance of these events in Rio de Janeiro? And what is their meaning for the witness and perspective of Christians around the world?

The Earth Summit will come to mark the time, historically, when the world realized that development, as traditionally understood, had failed. By the time of the Earth Summit, a growing number of voices were saying that the path of development was headed in a misguided and self-destructive direction. The whole world simply could not and should not catch up to the "leaders." The entire paradigm was wrong.

In this light, the path of the affluent North was not progress; it was leading instead to the rising temperature of the globe's atmosphere, the deterioration of its ozone layer, the poisoning of its waters, the loss of its soil. And these effects, while caused chiefly by the North's consumptive economies, were felt globally, and particularly by vulnerable peoples and environments in the South. Further, investment by the North in the South had resulted more in economic bondage than freedom as economies of many countries became crippled under the burden of debt payments.

The assumptions that for the past four decades had been driving the programs and hopes for global human welfare were called into sharp question by many voices at the Earth Summit. New approaches, values, and models, all wrapped around the phrase of "sustainable development," became a common commitment, even if its implications and meaning remained unclear.

Historians will regard this as a global moment when the world began to speak of the failures of earlier dreams and began a search for a new relationship between people, the Earth, and their economic activities. That search leads quickly into the terrain of values and ethics, and raises questions concerning spiritual realities. At question is whether there is, in fact, a path that can lead the world to a future where all people can be offered the hope of life, and the Earth can be preserved in its capacity to provide that life.

EVALUATING UNCED AS AN official governmental event, unique in history, can be done in answer to three questions. First, did it focus the world's attention on the challenges of planetary survival? Here, it definitely succeeded. Further, new paradigms, approaches, and ways of seeking an integrated understanding of justice and the integrity of creation were placed firmly into the global agenda.

Second, did UNCED succeed in institutionalizing new commitments, agreements, treaties, and specific actions by governments to reverse our present course and concretely reshape the future? Only in part. A true "Earth Charter," parallel to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, is yet to be proposed and adopted. Agenda 21, the 500-page blueprint for global sustainability adopted by the conference, is fine on paper but must be implemented, including the issue of financing.

The Climate Convention, although signed by 154 nations, may lack sufficient strength at present to ensure reversal of global warming. The Biodiversity Convention lacks the agreement of the United States--the nation with the largest single power to erode its effectiveness. And other issues require international treaties as well to help reverse destructive trends. Yet, in all these areas, UNCED established a foundation for further action and ratified new levels of global agreement that had never previously existed.

Third, will UNCED begin a radical new departure that can ensure a sustainable future? Nothing guarantees this. Some NGO observers pointed to the inability of UNCED to integrate its actions with the crucial factors of international debt, the GATT negotiations, and the structures of foreign trade and exchange. While those questions came up frequently in discussions, little at UNCED mandates any breakthroughs here.

The international press focused extreme attention on the role of the United States and President Bush at the Earth Summit. Certainly, one of the dominant features of the event was how much the United States was isolated.

But while the United States prevented a stronger climate treaty, and its refusal to sign the Biodiversity Treaty weakened its significance, the overall effect of U.S. actions was to undermine its own role and respect, even from its most loyal allies, in global leadership. History may come to regard the Earth Summit as the point when the United States began losing its position of unchallenged primacy in the post-Cold War world.

At the closing session, Boutros Boutros Ghali, the U.N. secretary-general, turned from the usual language of U.N. diplomacy to the world of spirituality in addressing the question of UNCED's significance. We have been told, he said, that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, and this is true. But now we are learning that we must also love the Earth.

For thousands of years, the U.N. secretary-general told the diplomats and government ministers, ancient cultures believed that the Earth had a soul, that we lived in a spiritual relationship with the world. And today we must restore that sense, in order to build a new ethical and political context to live and act with the Earth.

At a press conference immediately after the close of UNCED, Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the conference, came back to a central point. "We cannot sustain current lifestyles in affluent countries....The present economy is simply not sustainable. The evidence is powerful, and must get through to people. The status quo will not survive."

Strong ended by stressing that UNCED gives a basis for making fundamental changes, but alone it is not enough. "Political will is the problem, and mobilizing such political will is the key." In that process, the role of NGOs and grassroots groups will be the source of hope and action.

The experience of the thousands of groups, organizations, movements, and NGOs at Rio de Janeiro during the Earth Summit was highly creative and upbuilding. They debated the issues, drafted their own versions of treaties and conventions on critical issues, built new alliances, identified the weaknesses of the official process, and made far-reaching commitments to ongoing political action around the world.

History may well judge that the Earth Summit was far more decisive in mobilizing the people, groups, and movements who were not a part of governmental structures. Their actions may prove in the long run to be more important in building a sustainable future than the documents and treaties signed at Riocentro.

Sidebar: The Wind of the Spirit

"SEARCHING FOR THE New Heavens and the New Earth" was the title of the World Council of Churches meeting during the Earth Summit. And for many, the first sign of where to begin this search was in the life of those Christian communities who are experiencing faith, hope, and encouragement in the face of crushing problems in the world. The issues confronting the Earth Summit finally required not just technical and political answers, but the strength and power of the Spirit of God.

The program of the WCC meeting was designed to take the perspectives and commitments emerging from the 1990 Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation World Convocation in Seoul, Korea, and apply them to the UNCED agenda. Seoul had produced interlinking "covenants" dealing with four areas, namely global economic justice, militarism and peacemaking, preserving creation, and combating racial oppression.

Thus the WCC agenda at Baixada Fluminense (site of the WCC meeting) featured presentations dealing with each of these issues, in the context of the Earth Summit. A theological reflection team sought each day to focus on the biblical and theological dimensions of the discussion. From that basis, the participants were to decide on the nature of their response to the Earth Summit.

The result was illuminating. First, the participants decided that their most important task was to write an "epistle" to the churches around the world, offering to them their discernment, encouragement, and challenge from this encounter with the Earth Summit. They wanted to reach out with a word that would speak to and strengthen churches in their efforts to respond to the groans and cries of creation.

The Letter to the Churches begins: "Dear sisters and brothers, we write with a sense of urgency. The earth is in peril. Our only home is in plain jeopardy....We dare not deny our own role as churches in the crisis which now overwhelms us. We have not spoken the prophetic word ourselves. Indeed we did not even hear it when it was spoken by others."

It goes on to affirm: "Our God is a God of life, and the power of the Holy Spirit permeates all creation. Therefore, we should develop a spirituality of creation....To live according to the Spirit is to capture its presence in all creation....Our churches themselves must be places where we learn anew what it means that God's covenant extends to all creatures."

Those who gathered at the WCC meeting felt that the most urgent tasks for an "ecumenical response to the Earth Summit" were to strengthen the role of the churches in addressing these questions, to further the ways of communicating and educating about these issues within the Christian community, and to give attention to the theological questions involved, particularly the theology of creation.

At the same time, the meeting's presentations and its final recommendations did give considered attention to very specific concerns. All this was in the context of attempting to express a guiding vision and ethic; as explained in the letter, "We have worked together on the vision of just, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable development in a life-centered world society."

That work encompassed a focused examination on the links between racism and the effects of environmental destruction. It also gave special attention to the role of indigenous peoples in the search for sustainable societies. Questions receiving relatively little attention at the UNCED government meeting, such as the effects of militarism on the Earth today, were brought into sharper focus at Baixada Fluminense. And other issues often overlooked, such as the relationship of population, consumption, and the environment, received attention at this ecumenical event.

By the final evening, the group was drawn into the worship life of the local church communities. It was the eve of Pentecost, and they were invited to join with hundreds in the cathedral of Duque de Caxias for an all-night vigil. Songs, celebrations, prayers, testimonies, sharing from the WCC participants from around the world, a meditation by theologian Leonardo Boff, as well as breaks for food and fellowship, continued through the night.

Then from a liturgical bonfire in the courtyard of the cathedral they all lit torches and candles and processed through town, joined by hundreds from other parishes, until five or six thousand were gathered for a sunrise Pentecost service in the town square. Praise was offered, petitions for the Earth and the Earth Summit were shared, scripture was read, Emilio Castro preached, and Eszter Karsay, a Reformed Church pastor from Hungary, blessed bread which was distributed to all. And the Letter to the Churches, approved the prior afternoon, was first read on that Pentecost morning, with copies given to representatives of each of the regions of the world, symbolizing the sending forth of that word to the corners of the Earth.

No official UNCED meeting took place at Riocentro that Pentecost Sunday. The thousands of government delegates had the day off and were comfortably sleeping in well-appointed hotel rooms along Rio's beaches, far from the town square of Duque de Caxias in Baixada Fluminense.

But between those two places Christ the Redeemer watched. And some wondered and prayed for the wind of God's Spirit to blow that Pentecost morning through many dry and drowsy bones in Rio de Janeiro.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson was program secretary for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, coordinator of the WCC activities at the Earth Summit, and the author of Redeeming the Creation (WCC Publications, 1992), from which this article is drawn, when this article appeared.