Faith, Bioethics, and Sustainable Development: A Christian Perspective on Bioethics of Care and the Challenges of Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

The complex interwoven crises of climate disruption and biodiversity loss demand not only rapid technological innovation for sustainable development but also major shifts in consumption and behaviour, implying a need for responses rooted in ethical values and a reorientation of attitudes towards the more-than-human world. In this context, given the global significance of faith communities and institutions as motivators and moral authorities, it is important that faith leaders state the challenges for sustainable development and suggest pathways forward to protect the environment and people that live in it. Building on his landmark encyclical of 2015, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis issued Laudate Deum, an apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, and followed this up with a message to COP 28 for leaders to show leadership in facing up to the climate challenge. We argue that the interventions of Pope Francis point to the crucial importance of an approach to sustainable development that can integrate faith perspectives on social and ecological ethics with the knowledge generated by the natural sciences and by environmental systems science. The interdependence revealed by the emerging scientific understanding of human, animal, and ecosystem life implies the bioethics of care and stewardship, which have the potential to bring people together across religious and disciplinary divides. Unlike other analyses, we argue that it is important to understand how life was created if we are to care for it effectively and sustainably. We also put forward the case for more sustainable land use and the production of more sustainable foods. This article is written from the perspective of the Catholic Church, including its approach to moral theology, but we argue that the implications of the analysis are relevant to all faith communities and religious institutions seeking to promote sustainable development.

1. Introduction

The complex interwoven crises of climate disruption and biodiversity loss demand not only rapid technological innovation for sustainable development but also major shifts in consumption and behaviour, implying a need for responses rooted in ethical values and a reorientation of attitudes towards the more-than-human world. The literature supports this contention, critiquing the countervailing position that sees the transition to sustainable modes of industrial development as chiefly a matter of technological change within the prevailing economic paradigm of growth-based extraction, production, and consumption.

In this context, given the global significance of faith communities and institutions as motivators and moral authorities, it is important that faith leaders state the challenges for sustainable development and suggest pathways forward to protect the environment and people that live in it. Building on his landmark encyclical of 2015, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis issued Laudate Deum, an apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, and followed this up with a message to COP 28 for leaders to show leadership in facing up to the climate challenge. We argue in this paper that the interventions of Pope Francis point to the crucial importance of an approach to sustainable development that can integrate faith perspectives on social and ecological ethics with the knowledge generated by the natural sciences and by environmental systems science. The interdependence revealed by the emerging scientific understanding of human, animal and ecosystem life implies the bioethics of care and stewardship, which have the potential to bring people together across religious and disciplinary divides.

The role of faith in sustaining life in the environment will be discussed primarily from the perspective of Christian thought and action, particularly drawing on initiatives of the Roman Catholic Church. However, many of the considerations are applicable to most faiths and religions. There are approximately 2.4 bn people who claim to practice Christianity, or about one third of the world’s population, and Catholics are the largest group, at about 1.4 bn. Muslims account for approximately 2 bn people, Hindus for approximately 1.2 bn, and Buddhists for approximately 0.5 bn. Pope Francis took the lead in promoting the sustainability of life on the planet with his encyclical letter Laudato Si’ (Pope Francis 2015). This was promoted in the UK with initiatives such as the Laudato Si’ Centre at Wardley Hall and the Guardians of Creation Project sponsored by the Diocese of Salford, and the Journey to 2030 Project ‘Building a Caring Community’. The Catholic Agency of Overseas Development (CAFOD) has been active in supporting sustainability initiatives in the UK with the LiveSimply award and projects across the developing world.

When trying to manage the environment in a way that ensures that life as we now know it can be sustained, many bioethical considerations arise. A major spiritual issue that needs to be addressed is the injustices experienced by the poor and the need to reduce extreme economic and social inequalities. Bioethics bridges the gap between disciplines, especially ethics and biosciences, but it is equally relevant to the environmental sciences and sustainability. Such applications are rightly influenced by agencies, such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and by governments, but there is a major role for the Church and other faiths to provide input to help to improve the lives of all people.

The paper is organized as follows. We first elaborate on the point that the diagnosis of unsustainable development is not simply the recognition, rooted in scientific evidence, of harmful impacts from our technologies and resource use, but also a growing awareness of the need for a reorientation of values and behaviour in relation to the more-than-human world. We suggest that this awareness includes a growing recognition, within and beyond faith organisations, of the relevance of religion to sustainable development. The next part of the discussion considers the need to bring together insights from fundamental natural science with analyses of the ethical and social challenges of overcoming the forces behind unsustainable development. We highlight the role of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ in this process of integration and in stimulating action based on bioethics of care and stewardship.

Next, we build on this analysis by outlining a comprehensive Christian approach to sustainability that can also support collaborations across faith boundaries and with secular actors. We then offer a case study of the challenges arising for this approach in relation to a major issue in sustainability transitions, namely land use and food production. We then bring the strands of the discussion together with a reflection on bioethics and action for sustainability in the light of our presentation of Christian perspectives. Our concluding discussion suggests some directions for further research.

2. Sustainability as an Ethical and Spiritual Challenge and Demand

The diagnosis of unsustainable development—manifest in environmental pollution, climate disruption, biodiversity loss, and large-scale poverty—is now well established and acknowledged by policymakers worldwide. The current international framework of UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs) is the latest manifestation of governmental and corporate concern about the risks of unsustainable development and the opportunities gained from avoiding them. The predominant policy response among governments and corporations to the diagnosis of unsustainable development has been to emphasise the need for, and benefits of, technological innovation to enable the continuation of industrial economies and societies. The assumption is that new technologies, and greater efficiency in resource use, can overcome all the challenges to ecological stability that we face. The paradigm of prosperity and progress through technologically enabled economic growth is assumed to be fundamentally sustainable—what needs to be changed are the technologies, not our values and desires, nor the systemic relationships between societies, and between humans and the rest of the natural world.

There is a large proportion of the literature that challenges this analysis, arguing that technological fixes are insufficient and may generate as many problems as they purport to solve, and that the depth of the crisis of unsustainability is such that we need to challenge the fundamentals of our economic growth model (Jackson 2017, 2021), and of the ethical and epistemological paradigms of modernity (Bristow et al. 2024; Scoones 2024). This literature makes three main claims. First, that it is implausible in the extreme that technological supply-side changes to achieve decarbonisation can be implemented in time worldwide to restrict global heating to tolerable levels in the second half of this century. Second, if we cannot rely on technological fixes to enable the world to live within planetary boundaries of ecological stability and resource sufficiency (Steffan et al. 2015; Richardson et al. 2023), then there must be radical shifts in energy demand and consumption, and above all in the affluent world, in the interests of justice and equity for developing countries (O’Neil et al. 2018). Third, that such shifts in consumption are implausible unless underpinned and motivated by norms and values that give strong support for transformational changes in our economic systems, and by a shift in ‘inner’ life that enable citizens to accept what for many may feel like sacrifices and losses, to reorient desires and hopes for the common good, and to reimagine our relationships with others and with the biosphere (Bristow et al. 2024; Ives 2023).

The founding text of contemporary sustainable development, the Brundtland report (World Commission on Environmental Development, WCED 1987), lends support to this analysis, emphasising the political and ethical transformations required for sustainability, and, in particular, highlighting the overriding needs of the poorest worldwide. This perspective on sustainability transitions focuses on the imperative of systemic change, not on technological shifts within existing industrial systems, and on the following ethical imperatives: (a) human safeguarding of the more-than-human world; (b) social and economic justice and wellbeing for all, and as a matter of priority for the poor and for future generations; and (c) the common goods needed by people and communities to meet basic needs.

The emphasis in the literature regarding systemic change for sustainability on value shifts, inner transformation, ethical obligations, and common needs is suggestive. It is a mainly secular literature, but its concerns and prescriptions resonate greatly with the values and priorities of the main religions (Ives and Kidwell 2019). There is considerable overlap with the concerns of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). The analysis of CST as presented in the guise of ‘integral ecology’ in Laudato Si’ shows important convergence with secular accounts of the ethics of sustainability and with accounts of the social ethics of commons (Christie et al. 2019).

This convergence, and the pragmatic recognition of the importance for advocates of sustainability of engaging with faith communities, given that most of the world population has some form of religious identification and engagement (Pew Research Center 2015), lend weight to claims that more attention needs to be paid to the role of religion in sustainability transitions (Ives and Kidwell 2019; Martinez de Anguita 2012). There is growing literature on the potential and activities of faith communities in promoting sustainability (see Section 7 below). We aim to contribute to that body of work in what follows. We begin by focusing on the links between fundamental biological science and the ethics of sustainability: these constitute a zone of convergence between secular and religious perspectives and highlight the potential for bioethics of care and stewardship to motivate sustainable development transitions.

3. Sustainability in the Light of Fundamental Biology: The Preciousness of Life and the Bio-Ethical Imperative of Care

Despite various complex models as to how a primitive cell might have arisen on the early earth, the bioengineering obstacles to this being possible appear insurmountable, particularly with respect to control mechanisms within the cell. There are around 1 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) atoms in a typical cell, and, although 70% is water, the whole cell molecular content is in constant purposive motion. At a quantum level, there must be intra- and intercellular signaling to maintain the genetically assigned purpose of the cell. The cell is likewise integrated into the whole of a multicellular organism. Although the motion of molecules within the cells may appear chaotic, somehow the entire organism is able to maintain its own identity and physiology. This cannot relate directly to the properties of either inorganic or organic molecules per se; there appears to be an underlying factor integrating the cell and the organism with purpose, and it is impossible to say what this factor is, as it appears to be governed somewhere deep in the quantum structure. Maybe consciousness and intelligence are also there as a fundamental aspect of the universe, and our own intelligence can discern this, and is related to it.

The most modern and exciting approach to biology and physiology is the advent of quantum biology, information handling, and the examination of the extraordinary computing power of biological material. However, with the statistical problems uncovered by reductionist physiology, it is almost easier to explain life using a metaphysical anima rather than a physical way. The whole is greater than the parts which are integrated into it. There is certainly no reason to reject intelligent causation in the present, as well as the past, since intracellular events are always happening now, in real time. If a supercomputer is necessary to simulate or understand biology, surely intelligence is involved at all levels, from the building of the supercomputer to the purposeful activity of the examined physiology (StackExchange 2020).

The power of the supercomputer needed to explain the creation and existence of life could come from in depth mathematical analysis, such as that outlined by the 2020 Physics Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose in his books The Emperor’s New Mind—Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Penrose 1989), and Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Penrose 1994), leaving an atheist pathway open, although he has always been open to metaphysical debate.

As a biologist, Richard Dawkins has supported atheism in his books The God Delusion (Dawkins 2006) and Outgrowing God: A Beginners Guide (Dawkins 2019). However, the power could also be provided by God, and many scientists find that a compelling path to support their faith, including the route to drive environmental sustainability. An excellent riposte to Dawkins is by John Cornwall in Darwin’s Angel: An Angelic Response to The God Delusion (Cornwall 2007). In recent months, Dawkins, within the public press, has softened his view on atheism and it will be of interest to see if this develops further.

Everything we know about the origins of life points to the spectacular improbability of it. Although many assume that, in a vast cosmos, life must evolve many times, it is reasonable to argue to the contrary that life on Earth is possibly unique within the cosmos. If so, it is precious in the extreme. In his recent book What is Life and How Might It Be Sustained: Reflections in a Pandemic, Lynch (2022) has suggested that the question of how to ensure the sustainability of life on Earth should be considered in the light of scientific analysis of how life originated. The book has a bibliography covering the scientific and theological theories on life.

Lynch’s analysis emphasizes the stupendous complexity of multicellular life forms and their intricate connections with other organisms, with the quantum scale of matter and energy, and with ecosystems. The fact that no other world has been detected that is a home for life is an observation that seems to have major ethical implications. If we take the view that life has intrinsic value—a claim that is shared by many religious and secular perspectives on ethics and meaning (Jonas 1979; Rolston 2012; Calicott 2013; Piccolo 2017)—then it is plausible that Earth is the sole location for such value in the Universe, given our present level of understanding and given the apparent improbability of the molecular configurations associated with the emergence of life here. If we suppose that Earth is uniquely endowed, whether in harbouring life per se or in having enabled the evolution of conscious reasoning creatures (above all, ourselves), then it is hard to resist the intuition that a unique responsibility rests on humanity to safeguard this source of value. In the light of this kind of reasoning, both the destruction of biodiversity and the potential extinction of the human species appear as cosmically significant risks.

We can go a step further from this analysis, arguing that a specific kind of responsibility then rests on humanity, namely, to prevent the elimination of life of Earth, and to avoid the destruction of what seems to be a unique form of conscious life, namely ourselves. This argument then implies that sustaining life is the bioethical imperative underpinning all other normative projects (Jonas 1979). Whatever else we may disagree on, there is a bioethical obligation of care and stewardship on the only creature apparently capable of eliminating life on Earth (and hence, potentially, in the cosmos).

Such an ethic of responsibility is arguably implicit in Brundtland (WCED 1987) and is a basic feature of many versions of secular ecological ethics. Moreover, it is core to the ‘integral ecology’ proposed by Pope Francis (2015) in Laudato Si’ as a new and comprehensive statement of CST that can appeal to people of faith across religious boundaries and be the basis for collaborations with secular actors (Christie et al. 2019). This thinking should lead to true sustainable development. It would be impractical to go through Laudato Si’ in detail in such a short article but there is nothing that can be sensibly criticized in the text. We turn next to a more detailed discussion of what Christian perspectives in general, and the Pope’s CST/Integral Ecology in particular, can bring to thought and action for sustainable development.

4. A Christian Approach to Sustainability

The evidence of the climate crisis potentially compromising all life is now very clear, and it is vitally important that Christians re-connect their faith with a care for our common home (Pope Francis 2015). It is essential that this is understood as a “re-connection” rather than as an invention of a new aspect of Christian belief. The connection has always been there and needs to be recognised and developed on a global scale and among congregations and institutions on all scales.

The argument was made over half a century ago by Lynn White (1967) that Christianity was deeply complicit in the ecological damage wrought by industrial development and the colonial extraction of resources: the Biblical concept of ‘dominion’ for humankind over the Earth became a conscious or subconscious rationale for exploitation and a domineering view of human exceptionalism. White qualified his own thesis by noting the latent capacity of Christian teaching, practice, and theology to embrace an ethic of care and stewardship, as evident in the life and work of St Francis; nonetheless, the critique of many post-medieval Christian cultures as damagingly anthropocentric and careless of the more-than-human world is compelling. Tyson (2021) argues that White (1967)’s thesis, for all its flaws (LeVasseur and Peterson 2017; Minteer and Manning 2005) needs to be taken seriously as an outline of a post-medieval Western long-range complex process of interaction between a ‘dominion’ theology and a secular variant of it that underpins modern science, our instrumental approach to the more-than-human world, and the humanist secular worldview of progress through science and technology. On Tyson’s analysis, secular Western modernity and most strands of contemporary Christianity share a common foundational worldview, which he terms ‘Progressive Dominion Theology’, as follows:

“By now, Christian eschatology has been secularized into progress, early modern Christian conceptions of dominion have been secularized into an infatuation with instrumental power, and Christian conceptions of nature as provided to us by God are secularized as a world of natural resources to plunder. This is Progressive because it is always driving forward; we must advance in science and technology, we must have economic growth, we must overcome all oppositions to our freedom and desires. This is a Dominion theology because human rule over nature is simply assumed to be our basic right, a primal marker of our identity as humans. This is a Theology because it is a tacit cultural first philosophy orienting a collectively assumed world view.”

(Tyson 2021)

In the light of this analysis and similar critiques (Taylor et al. 2016; Jedan 2017), it seems to us undeniable that, over centuries of modernization, many Christians across denominations and traditions have lost sight of the whole concept of creation and our role in caring for our common home. We were not concerned with any sense of stewardship, so various animals were hunted to extinction, others were threatened by trophy-hunting, and we intruded on the balance of nature without concern, disrupting biodiversity. Of course, exploitation and carelessness concerning the more-than-human world are not confined to Christian-influenced cultures and arguably have become even more pronounced in the past century of industrial globalization, which has been associated with profound secularization in many developed countries. That said, the Christian world has much to repent in relation to destruction of biodiversity, harm to indigenous cultures, and unsustainable extraction and pollution, as recognised in Laudato Si’.

The publication of the Encyclical came at a time when the warnings from Earth scientists and climate scientists were growing ever more urgent regarding the destabilization of the climate and of ecosystems. The decade since the Pope’s intervention has brought a steady stream of disasters and extreme weather events that are in line with those warnings from climate scientists and advanced modelling. Australia has seen a combination of drought, followed by wildfires, followed by floods. The same has been experienced in the United States. The melting of the icecaps is increasing at an alarming rate, as the Arctic and Antarctic warm much faster than the rest of the globe, causing rising sea levels. Large areas of the Horn of Africa are suffering a drought which has lasted seven years and shows no sign of ending. Hurricanes and cyclones are increasing in strength and in frequency and reaching areas previously unaffected. The floods in Pakistan in September 2022 impacted on a third of the entire country and rendered over 33 million people without homes or shelter. The “bomb cyclone” of December 2022 affected almost every State in the United States and Canada with record floods and snowfall, disrupting transport and electricity supplies for millions of people. In January 2023, President Biden spoke of 24 trillion gallons of rainfall in 16 days in California, causing the flooding of reservoirs and rivers, landslides, the destruction of infrastructure, and evacuations. Evidence in 2023 shows that the previous eight years had been the hottest years on record for the modern era; 2024 is likely to be the hottest on record in the world.

Unless action for both mitigation and adaptation are stepped up, it is estimated that, by 2030, an estimated 700 million people will be at risk of being displaced by drought. By 2040, an estimated one in four children will live in areas with extreme water shortages. By 2050, droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population, and an estimated 4.8 to 5.7 billion people will live in areas that are water-scarce for at least one month each year, up from 3.6 billion today. Up to 216 million people could be forced to migrate by 2050, largely due to drought, in combination with other factors, including declining crop productivity, sea level rise, and overpopulation. Sea-level rise brings its own serious challenges, as 40% of the world’s population live in coastal cities and on coastal land. Major cities are already planning for water defences and islands in the Pacific Ocean are faced with disappearance within a few years.

The impact of climate change on humans is increasing, whether as victims of drought or floods. But we are failing to understand that animal life and biodiversity are also intimately connected with humanity’s wellbeing. We are now living in the Sixth Mass Extinction in the history of our planet—the first to be caused by humanity. Shocking statistics speak of the destruction of half of the world’s wildlife, within a matter of a few recent decades. With the loss of the coral reefs, the impact on sea creatures is immense. Extinction threatens so many species. It is estimated that 2 to 3 billion creatures died in the Australian wildfires in recent years.

The mounting evidence and brutal experience around the world of a destabilized environment have energized many actors, and we draw attention here to the ways in which faith groups have become significant voices at international gatherings on climate and biodiversity. For example, the COP26 climate conference, held in Glasgow in 2021, was notable for bringing together people of many different faiths and for showcasing the extent to which Christian communities are working across faith boundaries, with secular actors, and in their own constituencies on climate action and broader initiatives for sustainable development. There were gatherings throughout COP26, including forums in which people of different faiths shared their beliefs and their concerns and their prayers. These highlighted common concerns across faiths—and shared with secular actors—about care for our world. The differences in their beliefs about the origin of the world and creation did not impede a universal religious understanding that change must come, with urgency, as a matter of expression of faith. This was important, given that over 80% of the world’s population is estimated to belong to one of the world’s major religions (Pew Research Center 2015).

This protest by young people and the understanding of members of different faiths spoke loudly and identified a major failing of COP26: the failing of leadership. Surely, an important, indeed vital, element of leadership is that leaders should be listening to the people that they claim to lead. Certainly, leaders may need to adopt measures and policies that would not be universally agreed by those they lead but, in the case of climate change, the voice for change and urgent action is loud and clear. The leaders seemed to be influenced only by the short-term economic impact of any decisions; that economic growth must be sustained.

In the light of the failings of climate and biodiversity policy to date, and the role of many Christian organisations and leaders in upholding what Tyson (2021) terms ‘Progress Dominion Theology’, as discussed above, we suggest that a return to some principles of the Christian faith which have been previously ignored is crucial. In the Scriptures, we see, time and again, references to the gift of creation. Several psalms and biblical passages praise the variety and diversity of all that God has made. The Scriptures also understand that we are stewards of creation. The richness and diversity of our world, the creatures, the plant life, and the biodiversity are provided for our sustenance, but there must be a duty of care and careful stewarding of all that has been entrusted to us; we must be sure to pass on to future generations a world where the rich diversity and balance of nature are protected in a sustainable way.

How does our Christian perspective and faith have relevance? In the Gospels, when a Pharisee approaches Jesus and asks, “What is the greatest commandment of the law?”, Jesus does not hesitate in answering. He says that the most important commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Then, he says that the second most important commandment, which resembles it, is that we must love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the test for all Christians’ actions. We can show our love for God by the way we love our neighbours, our brothers, and sisters. We need to test all our actions and decisions. Do they show love, concern, and respect for those around us? Clearly, in the matter of caring for our common home, we are failing to care for our brothers and sisters in so many parts of the world, because our actions and our consumption, are destroying their livelihoods. We have a duty of care. That duty of care is not just to fellow human beings but to the whole complex of creation on which we rely for our prosperity and wellbeing. It is through our actions, mainly in developing countries, that we are now seeing the dreadful impact of climate extremes, mainly on those nations that have done so little to cause change. In all this, we must recognize, as Pope Francis reminds us, that “everything is connected”.

We—and here we speak of ourselves and those like us in the affluent segments of developed countries above all—need to change the way that we live. Beginning with ourselves as individuals, there are so many ways in which we change without any real sense of being deprived. It is a matter of living more simply. CAFOD has produced materials in their programme called “Live Simply” which is being adopted by many schools and parishes throughout the country. The programme outlines several activities which make the difference that we can all manage without great cost or effort. So many daily activities can be adopted. We can eat less meat, particularly red meat, which will have a big impact on CO₂ emissions. It will also mean that more farmlands will become available to grow grain and wheat crops, rather than being left for grazing fields for animals. We can reduce the consumption of electricity by switching off lights and electrical equipment that is not needed. We can use our cars less by walking more, using public transport, and sharing journeys. We can be sure to only buy food that will be eaten (at present, it is estimated that 30% of all food purchased is thrown away). We can save water when washing or showering or washing clothes less frequently. We can be sure to wear clothes until they are worn out, rather than buy items that are only worn a few times and then thrown away. We can donate unwanted clothing and other goods to charity shops. All this will have an impact on production. Certainly, over time, all these changes will mean that our economy will change. Employment will adjust as many people will find that they must move to new jobs as the market changes, but those new jobs will become available as we become more insistent on sustainability.

The second level must be our industries. In some cases, they must be radically re-formed. This is especially true in energy production and use. There can be no alternative to the cessation of our use of fossil fuels. Oil and gas are the principal agents causing climate change. Our changes in priorities as individuals and communities can certainly impact industry and what they produce. The growth of renewable energy is urgent and progressing well but must increase.

The third level must be our politicians. They are focused on short-term solutions and improvements that they can present before forthcoming elections, giving reason for their re-election. But climate change is a global problem of such a magnitude that it needs to be “the” priority. If we fail to respond to the need to repair the damage, we stand on the edge of an abyss which threatens the livelihoods, and indeed the future, of all humanity. The environmental crisis presents us with a global challenge and a global opportunity. We know that we can shift our priorities radically to respond to a crisis. In both 1914 and 1939, when drawn into war, the whole structure and function of our society changed in a very short time. There were a single overwhelming priority of the conflict and people adjusted their lives and their aspirations to meet the challenge. We now face an equal if not greater challenge, and our politicians must recognize the urgency.

Pope Francis insists that we all have our part to play. Care for our common home and care for our brothers and sisters is rooted in our faith. We need to be talking about the urgency of change so that others, who may not be aware of the reality, may be brought into an understanding of the crisis and join their efforts for change. There are Christians who still believe that our faith has no connection with the environment. We need to increase our knowledge, at all levels, and learn how nature works and how we may steward creation in a way that is sustainable, ensuring that we no longer plunder resources in a way that threatens the livelihood and wellbeing of those around us, near and far.

As Christians, we must never lose sight of the hope that is ours. Pope Francis has been prophetic in his teaching about care for our common home, recognizing the damage now done and the threat of a climate catastrophe. But he always ends with hope. We must reflect that hope in our prayer and our daily practical actions, such as saving water and electricity, reducing waste, reusing rather than replacing, sharing journeys, and recycling. The list goes on, and hope is alive.

In the next section, we turn from the intersections of theology and environmental concern to considerations of important areas of policy and practice. We focus on fields in which the effective integration of religious–ethical perspectives with applications of new technology is crucial for sustainable development. We first consider land use, food, and the potential of bio-refineries; then, we consider aspects of contemporary bioethics.

5. Land Use, Food Sustainability, and Biorefineries

One of the arguments by some for supporting deforestation—not only a major threat to biodiversity and climate stability but also a powerful symbol of human ‘dominion as ‘domination’ of nature—is that land needs to be cleared to produce crops for feed and food. There is a delicate balance between food security and environmental sustainability. For example, in Amazonia, a lot of land has been deforested to switch land use for soya production to feed beef cattle. However, by carrying out a life cycle assessment, we can see that this not only greatly reduces carbon capture by vegetation, but that beef production is also an inefficient method of food production, especially when resources are scarce. In this respect, a plant-based diet is more sustainable than one with meat, including the use of fruits/vegetables and lentils/pulses.

This realisation has been analysed as a ‘game changer’ within a circular economy, where it is crucial that unavoidable food waste is used in biorefining (Sadhukhan et al. 2020). This is opposed to most supply chains for food and its products within a linear economy, where recoverable resources are discarded, creating adverse environmental and social impacts. To achieve such targets, a multi-disciplinary approach is vital for enabling both heathier diets and a more sustainable environment. This aligns with many of the United Nation’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. A biorefinery approach energy (fuel or combined heat and power) and/or the creation of chemical productions is a major component of the circular economy. Using a linear approach, crops have been grown to produce food and chemicals. For example, in 1975, Brazil became the global leader in the production of gasohol from sugar cane to fuel transport in a country where there was little oil and, therefore, good economic and political drivers. However, in the USA, when corn started to be used to produce bio-alcohol, corn prices nearly doubled, making it difficult for cattle farmers to afford corn for feed. This unintended consequence nevertheless led to bioethical questions on how resources should be used. One potential resource used to produce biofuel is algae, which has received only limited commercial attention. Ironically, microalgae were one of the first forms of life on the planet, evolving before plants, and they are abundant in both freshwater and marine environments. Their cells could be processed in a biorefinery to biofuels.

One such opportunity exists in Namibia, where the coastline is coated with a red alga, Duniella sp. Because of saltwater stress on the cells of the algae, about 90% of its cell mass is glycerol, which can be burnt in diesel engines following a small modification to them. This would have a massive effect on the local rural economy and be incredibly environmentally friendly. Governments and international agencies should be encouraging such opportunities on ethical as well as commercial grounds. The primary interest in crops for oils has been palm oil, which is produced by destroying rain forests, which capture a lot of carbon, and replacing them with oil palms, which are less effective than traditional forests at carbon capture, and, as such, are less sustainable. A much better option, which has been explored in Africa, is using jatropha to produce oil. Another approach to displace fossil fuels and mitigate the impact of climate change is to use macroalgae as chemical factories (Sadhukhan et al. 2019). These are widely available as seaweeds and have used little in the past, save for crofting farmers on the West coasts of Scotland and Ireland, who have harvested them to use as soil conditioners, but they could also be used to treat wastewater and sludge, thereby aiding in delivering the UN SDGs. As important additions to value in chemical factories, they could be processed using drying, milling, grinding, suspension in deionised water, and filtration in order to extract heavy metals, using the centrifugation of solids to recover nutrients, and using ion exchange resins of supernatants to separate proteins and polysaccharides. Essential amino acids could be used as food additives, and the displacement of animal-based proteins could be an important step in social life cycle assessment. Such approaches ultimately need to be economically sound, and governments and aid agencies might be best placed to perform assessments before persuading rural communities and commercial bodies to adopt them.

One of the critical approaches to improving food crops has been to breed plants. Attempts to do this have been made since plants have been cultivated, but the first scientific approach was made by the German Czech monk Gregor Mendel, who coupled his faith to understanding inheritance in pea plants, at St Thomas’ Abbey between 1856 and 1863. This formed the basis of what we now understand as plant genetics and laid the foundations of successful plant breeding for agriculture. In 1973, a team led by Herbert Bayer and Stanley Cohen (Cohen et al. 1973) showed that genes could be exchanged between bacteria via plasmids. Of particular interest for sustainable agriculture was the bacterium Bacillus thurigiensis, which produces a crystal insecticidal toxin, as discovered by Shigetani Ishiwatari in 1901 (Palma et al. 2005). This biological toxin could mitigate the potential negative ecological impacts of the overuse of pesticides. The characterisation of the toxin gene opened up the possibility that the gene might be transferred to produce genetically modified (GM) plants. This was deployed by Monsanto in India to 93% of the crop, doubling the yield and halving the need for pesticides. However, it was mired in controversy, as the second year of the crop resulted in large reductions in yield, contributing to the high farmer suicide rate in India. One issue that is often ignored with GM crops is that the extra genetic burden could cause a reduction in the competitiveness of the wild type or plant species derived from breeding. One of the advantages of using the bacterium B. thurigiensis as a biopesticide spray, which has been used successfully for many years, is that it can be used on any plant species developed via breeding, and will often result in optimum yield and agronomic characteristics. While there are many attractions of developing GM crops, this has almost certainly contributed to the demise of the biopesticide industry, an industry with many advantages, especially against chemical pesticides. This has also had a major impact on the development of biofungicides, such as Trichoderma spp., which can control root diseases and stimulate plant growth.

In 1982, a GM antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant was produced and, in 1986, an herbicide-resistance gene was inserted. In 1996, a delayed-ripening GM tomato was produced. However, neither of these became a commercial success. However, one very successful GM crop has been golden rice, which is named because it turns yellow due to beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A. This has been discussed by Ben Mepham in his book Bioethics (Mepham 2008). The crop was designed to counter vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. The World Health Organisation estimates that the deficiency affects 100–140 million children annually, with up to half a million becoming blind every year; half of these children die within a year of losing their sight. While strategies involving the supplementation of diets with capsules, the fortification of food supplies, and dietary diversification have all been used, golden rice presents an attractive option. However, many ethical issues have arisen because of its use. The principal concern is, as always, cost, but proponents of the crop, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Nuffield Council, argue that public–private partnerships can be developed to enable poorer people to benefit, while it is reasonable that commercial companies should recover research costs with profit by selling in countries who can afford it. One company involved in GM crops, Monsanto, has already fallen foul of public and official opinion by introducing the terminator gene into plants, such that the second generation of seed became sterile and prevented farmers from saving seed. However, they issued a pledge in 1999 that they would not commercialise this and, in 2006, a global moratorium on the technology was passed. This demonstrates the delicate balance between public and commercial benefit in a sustainable world and justifies why aid agencies such as CAFOD should be vigilant and justifiably lobby bodies like the World Bank as appropriate.

6. Bioethics

Bioethics is a branch of moral theology and applied ethics that studies philosophical, social, and legal issues, with a special focus on the dignity of the human body. It has mainly been applied in medicine and life science but is highly relevant to the environment and sustainability as well.

For the protection of health, it is important on bioethical grounds that drugs, vaccines, and care are available to all those who need them. It is also important that food systems are de-risked, that diets improve, and that hunger is ended. To achieve these goals, it is essential that accurate reporting is carried out by governments as to the causes of illnesses, and that the threat of epidemic and pandemic can be properly analysed by international agencies such as the World Health Organisation, who can then respond effectively. Politics can often override this necessity. For example, it has taken a very long time to establish the source of the spread of the COVID virus in China. It seems likely that a non-deliberate release came from a laboratory in Wuhan and that animal vectors such as the pangolin resulted in zoonotic disease. The origin is still not certain but more open information at the outset might have reduced the disease’s impact.

Sustainability can be compromised by social inequality. As Jesus was travelling round his own area teaching, he noticed that the people he encountered were harassed and dejected. We, too, can ask ourselves what we notice about the people we meet as we travel around. Do we notice them at all? The county of Sussex in England is generally regarded as affluent. However, in a 2020 report from the Sussex Community Foundation called Sussex Uncovered, the summary states: “The findings reiterate that there is significant inequality in Sussex. While some areas are among the wealthiest in the country, others are among the poorest. Our coastal towns show marked disadvantages and high levels of poverty, mental health problems and homelessness. The high cost of living combined with low wages, makes parts of Sussex the least affordable places to live in the country. Rural isolation and disadvantages remain serious problems, especially for the high proportion of older people living alone. If nothing else, the fact that there are 37,000 children living in poverty across Sussex should be a strong call for action”. In interpreting the Christian faith, it is very unlikely that, were Jesus travelling around our local area, these facts would escape his notice and comment. Preaching the Gospel considers people’s material as well as spiritual needs, as it can happen that people’s energies and concerns affect the way they think about spiritual matters. Jesus responded to the needs of the people of his time by sending out into the locality his twelve disciples, “giving them authority over unclean spirits with power to cast them out and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness”. This is pertinent to epidemics and pandemics over history, including the COVID pandemic of the past few years. Unsurprisingly, the situation globally in the developing world is more extreme, and this is where organisations such as CAFOD are making a tremendous contribution to promoting social equality.

We can be guided by the analysis and instruction provided by Pope Francis. In his Apostolic Exhortation (Pope Francis 2013) The Joy of the Gospel, which is about the proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world, he says:

“In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history, as we can see from the advances being made in so many fields. We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education, and communications. At the same time, we must remember that most of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. Several diseases are spreading. The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. The joy of living frequently fades, lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident. It is a struggle to live and, often, to live with precious little dignity. This epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous, qualitative, quantitative, rapid, and cumulative advances occurring in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and life. We are in an age of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power.”

Much of this will resonate with us today. We can think of the migrants arriving on our shores, the mental health situation which led the Metropolitan Police and other forces to limit their response to those callouts, rising costs of living—especially in mortgage interest rates—and difficulties in our own country in accessing health care. In our proclamation of the Gospel, we cannot ignore these issues. When Jesus gives his disciples authority over unclean spirits, we can have the confidence that he is with us when we work, in whatever small and local way we can, to combat violence, abuse, and neglect in all areas of life. When Jesus gives them the power to cure all kinds of disease and sickness, he is inviting us not only to care for others in the best way we can but to help build up our system of healthcare. As we do so, we proclaim Jesus in word and deed and show the full power of the Gospel.

Pope Francis has written an extension of Laudato Si’; hopefully, that will provide further inspiration for protecting the planet while not compromising food security (Pope Francis 2023). As we have seen in the previous section, bioethics must include unintended consequences such as the fallacy of using crops for biofuel and GM crops limiting seed saving by subsistence farmers. Bioethics must also recognise the potential of zoonotic disease, which appears to be an increasing threat, as evidenced by the COVID pandemic. Also, humans are a potential threat to animals, and we must avoid the spread of human disease, for example in the gorilla populations of Africa and orangutan populations of Borneo and Sumatra.

For many of us, faith can provide inspiration when the world appears potentially unsustainable. In the Christian faith, many people find it challenging to think about the God–Earth relationship in a new religious and cultural context. Monge (2023) has tried to help with this theological perspective in stating that Jesus Christ is not to be found in a ‘new being’, man and God together (novum born from the incarnation), but in the abiding of the hypothesis of the word in Jesus, who is thus true man and true God. Such concepts verge on the metaphysical for scientists, but the exploration of them can enhance the potential to create a sustainable world.

7. Discussion and Conclusions

The sustainability of life on this planet is currently threatened by ecological disruption generated by our industrial systems: the risks include food insecurity and the challenges of the impact of climate change. Human health is inextricably linked to environmental health. To protect life on the planet, faith can be helpful for individuals in their own thinking, but also faith organisations can steer both national and global thinking. This is important in political situations where the dishonesty of vested interests and corruption can lead to turmoil. Agnostics and atheists can be attracted by ideas and concepts put forward by faith groups that offer a common cause of social justice and care for creation.

Eight years after the publication of Laudato Si’ (Pope Francis 2015), Pope Francis published on 4 October 2023 the Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum (Pope Francis 2023), addressed once more to all people of good will on the climate crisis. He comments that we cannot doubt the human course of climate change and derides those who question the facts. He points to the weakness of international politics in providing a solution and suggests we need to reconfigure multilateralism. The COP meetings have had limited success, but hopefully COP 29 in Azerbaijan will be helpful. At least, for the first time, 197 countries and the EU have agreed to a transition away from fossil fuels and have pledged to triple the global renewable energy capacity by 2030, which is greater than the doubling proposal in place before the meeting. A ‘loss and damage’ fund for vulnerable countries was started, provided by wealthy countries. ‘Praise God’ is the title of the exhortation Laudate Deum; when human beings chose to take God’s place, then they become their own worst enemy. Such leadership from Pope Francis in his message at COP 28 will hopefully have influenced delegates and must give us hope that, with sound scientific evidence and faith, we can halt the path to global environmental deterioration and generate a sustainable world. It is pleasing that the World Resources Institute has launched faith-based projects to identify ideas and programmes that build capacity for community-level solutions (World Resources Institute 2025). Hopefully, other agencies will follow their lead. The urgency of climate change needs to be recognized at the national and international levels and seen in the context of Christian hope. Many myths abound and we have much to learn from the history of sustainability of life on the planet, which was indicated earlier (Lynch 2022), and more recently in the delusion of decarbonization (Moore 2023).

Laudato Si’ has inspired research; one such research centre has been created at the University of Oxford, led by biologist turned theologian Celia Deane-Drummond. She argues that humans are part of the natural world but also apart from it (Deane-Drummond 2021). It important to engage theological and ethical thinking with natural and social sciences. Shadow Sophia is the theology of wisdom and a component of moral theology. Mistreatment of the environment might be regarded as a vice. Thomas Aquinas explained this via the virtues of compassion, justice, and wisdom, which should include individuals and institutions (Deane-Drummond 2020). Laudato Si’ creates an integral ecology and creates care for everybody. While the concept has come from the leader of the Catholic Church, it is entirely consistent with the theological thinking of the other world religions, especially in relation to climate change. For example, Islam forbids unethical and excessive exploitation of the environment, even during times of war. Prophet Mohammed said palms and crops should not be burnt (Koehrsen 2021). Buddhism supports interdependence and the belief that people should respect the balance of nature. There is encouragement to extend compassion throughout a universe that is connected through time and space (Capper 2024). In Hinduism, the core teachings of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Dhorma (righteous actions) mandate respect for all living beings and the natural world. This means that Hindus have a responsibility to protect the environment and minimize harm to the planet, which is particularly expressed in their respect for vegetarianism, rivers, and mountains (Tay 2019). Shinto dictates we should look at our environment with the spirit of reverence and gratitude. Land, its nature, and all creatures are children of Kami (Rots 2017). Judaism emphasizes the importance of caring for the planet and acting to combat climate change. For example, in a recent survey, 78% of Jewish Americans see climate change as a crisis (Krone 2024). This should perhaps be considered by President Trump, who has recently declared his intention to remove the US from participation in the Paris Climate Change Agreement of 2016, which aimed to mitigate climate change via adaptation and finance to limit global warming to 2 °C, with a goal of 1.5 °C, reached by agreement of the 196 parties at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference.

Science is developing in helping us to update our views on evolution and how it could be compromised. For example, the traditional view of evolution expressed by Darwin was by vertical inheritance, but there is now a place for an alternative view which encompasses horizontal evolution, as expressed very clearly by David Mindell in his recent book on The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution (Mindell 2025). Horizontal evolution covers interbreeding and genetic recombination, the merging of species, horizontal gene transfer, and coevolution. This is a paradigm shift in evolutionary biology and critical for biological innovation. The future of humans is covered in the book and the role of the rapidly advancing topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is discussed. It is important that the Church engages in this, and the signs are good. For example, one of our colleagues at the University of Surrey, Jim al Khalili, was recently invited to discuss the opportunities and threats of AI to the Papal Academy of Science in Rome in the presence of Pope Francis. With the rapid advancement of science, there is a crucial role for faith to play, if life is to be sustainable.

In this inter-disciplinary paper, we have linked a fundamental consideration of life and its origins, including a consideration of quantum biology (Al-Khalili and McFadden 2015), and shown, with examples, how we might sustain or compromise life from an environmental perspective. The Catholic faith drives these considerations, especially from a moral theology perspective, but our research shows that they are relevant to and consistent for all religions.