Editor’s note: This is the eighth installment of a series of columns by deacons of the diocese addressing the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.

By Deacon Robert Millott

For several decades now we have been hearing and reading a lot about our environment and how we as human beings have been poor stewards of what God has given us. In the Old Testament man is seen as God’s representative on earth and is responsible for filling it with human beings. Because we are made in God’s image, we must act in a Godlike way towards our fellow humans.

Thanks to technology we can now organize water and food supplies so that there is enough for everyone. Technology coupled with human greed, however, is now destroying the human environment at an unparalleled rate. Extinction of species as a result of this activity, e.g. deforestation and urbanization, is now occurring a hundred times faster than it would naturally.

Natural resource degradation is rapidly undermining the current and future livelihoods of large numbers of the poor. Many of these poor often derive their incomes from natural resources such oil, gas and minerals. They also depend heavily upon the exports of agricultural commodities such as coffee, cocoa and sugar. They do derive a momentary benefit from the commercial exploitation of natural resources by being employed in these activities, and the money earned helps to reduce poverty, but it is the long-term effect that we must all be concerned about.

The poor people of the world are most vulnerable to environmental change because the majority of them are living in ecologically fragile areas, and the urban poor are living and working in environments with high exposure to environmental hazards.

By promoting nonfarm sources of income and technological improvements in agriculture, we could help to reduce poverty in rural areas of the world. Reductions in child mortality would also be more likely if everyone had access to an adequate clean water supply and good sanitation facilities.

Degradation of the environment affects children under the age of 5 the hardest. Twenty percent of the burden of disease in developing countries is linked to environmental conditions, including insufficient and unsafe water, lack of sanitation, disease vectors such as mosquitoes, and indoor and outdoor air pollution. Every year more than seven million people in developing countries die prematurely from environment-related diseases, and many of these are children.

Activities that lead to the destruction of species is not compatible with managing this earth that God created for us benevolently. Through technology we have be exploiting and destroying what God has given us at a greater pace that any time in human history. We should not blame technology for the environmental destruction that is occurring. We should be blaming technology in the service of profit and money-making. The Third World countries are the ones that are hurt the most, because greed and profit strip their countries of their natural resources, and they are left with little to show for it. It is through our technology that we can help to reverse some of the damage caused by our excess consumption and greed.

Children the world over, especially those living in developing countries, are the greatest victims of environmental degradation, despite the great strides made over the past 10 years in improving both children’s well-being and the environment. We must spare no effort to free humanity, especially our children and grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irreparably spoiled by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.

What can we do to help change the course we are on? To achieve sustainability means ensuring that our current actions do not aid further declines in human well-being. This will mean that we will need to learn how to recycle our rubbish and then do it. Learn how to conserve our natural resources and how to get by on less. Think “green” and purchase products made from recycled materials. Purchase fair-traded commodities such as coffee where the pickers and growers are paid a fair amountfor their commodities. Help train people in developing countries how to take care of the resources they have. One parish in our diocese funded the construction of a nursery in the Dominican Republic. When they did this, Haiti benefited directly because a water line for the nursery was run from a source in Haiti through several villages. Those villages now have a source of clean water to drink and the nursery in the Dominican Republic has water to irrigate the plants. The nursery grows plants for food and trees to replant the hillsides that were stripped bare because of the need for firewood to be used as fuel for cooking and heating.

We can make donations to groups such as World Vision, Episcopal Relief and Development, and The Anglican Relief and Development Fund.

You may also find the following prayer helpful from The Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth, you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

—Sources used for this article came from:

The Bible and the Environment, by Professor Gordon Wenham for the first annual JRI Lecture;

The Environment and the Millennium Development Goals, published by the United Nations; and

The Millennium Declaration.