Actions for Justice Resources
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Laudato Si’ Plans help your institution, community, or family discern and implement your response to Laudato Si’.
The ecological crisis is “a summons to profound interior conversion,” a reexamining of our relationships with the Creator, with creation, and with our sisters and brothers. (LS 217) This conversion process is one that unfolds over months and even years, as the Holy Spirit calls us to an ever deeper richness of spirit.
In our response to that conversion, we realize that “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue.” (LS 216). Action is needed.
The Laudato Si’ Goals guide our actions. They redefine and rebuild our relationship with each other and our common home. Their holistic approach acknowledges the planetary limits of all socio-economic systems and the human roots of the ecological crisis. They call for a spiritual and cultural revolution to realise integral ecology.
The Response to the Cry of the Earth is a call to protect our common home for the wellbeing of all, as we equitably address the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and ecological sustainability. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Protecting the climate by installing solar panels, insulating buildings, buying renewable energy credits where available, and installing cleaner or more efficient cookstoves or appliances
● Protecting biodiversity by planting native trees, planting native gardens, removing invasive species, practicing regenerative agriculture, and protecting pollinators
● Protecting waterways and land by ensuring sensible fertilizer use, instituting drop irrigation and other conservative irrigation models, planting waterway buffers, avoiding the installation of impermeable surfaces around buildings, instituting regular litter removal and prevention campaigns, and pursuing conservation schemes
The Response to the Cry of the Poor is a call to promote eco-justice, aware that we are called to defend human life from conception to death, and all forms of life on Earth. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Protecting all life through educational events
● Delivering WASH services by ensuring access to clean water, training community members in hygiene practices, and ensuring diverse community members plan WASH projects
● Promoting and protecting Indigenous leadership by ensuring Indigenous communities have the rights to their land and by elevating Indigenous leadership
● Delivering access to land and clean air by ensuring community members have free access to green space and that children’s spaces are free of air pollution
● Growing in solidarity with vulnerable people by doing an audit of community challenges, delivering programs to address basic needs, and delivering programs to address failed systems
● Sharing resources and wisdom by learning from elders, sharing social resources, sharing monetary resources, and holding community-wide action days
Ecological Economics acknowledges that the economy is a sub-system of human society, which itself is embedded within the biosphere–our common home. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Building and supporting the circular economy by launching trading communities and purchasing from retailers that use recycled materials ● Ensuring financial investments are ethical and sustainable by divesting from fossil fuels, investing in socially responsible enterprises, amd choosing ethical banking and insurance companies
● Practicing fair and sustainable purchasing by supporting ethical businesses, taking a “total cost of ownership approach” to purchases, making a sustainability shopping list, and purchasing from local retailers
● Ensuring the dignity of workers by supporting good jobs with liveable wages and benefits, supporting cooperative management practices, supporting those who perform “care labor,” and buying from cooperatives and other ethical enterprises
● Participating in the gift economy by teaching gift economy values
The Adoption of Sustainable Lifestyles is grounded in the idea of sufficiency, and promoting sobriety in the use of resources and energy. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Improving sustainability in buildings by installing cleaner or more efficient lighting, reducing use of heating and air conditioning, and installing low-flow taps
● Improving sustainability in transportation by increasing use of electric vehicles or bicycles and by replacing air and auto trips
● Improving sustainability in diets by reducing food waste before and after market, composting, buying food from local producers when possible, and transitioning from meat-based to plant-based meals
● Improving sustainability in consumer purchases by eliminating the use of disposable plastic and styrofoam, correctly recycling as much as possible, and reducing purchases of new consumer goods
Ecological Education is about re-thinking and re-designing curricular and institutional reform in the spirit of integral ecology in order to foster ecological awareness and transformative action. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Developing Laudato Si’ learning opportunities by implementing a Laudato Si’ education plan and by ensuring that members of the community are familiar with the local ecosystem, the science and social dimensions of the ecological crisis, and ecological virtues
● Ensuring education is community-led by creating ways for educators to undergo ecological conversions, creating opportunities for youth-led events, and developing mechanisms to publicly recognize young people for their leadership
● Weaving Laudato Si’ themes into the community's communications by regularly highlighting them in newsletters/bulletins and on social media and by encouraging community members to develop Laudato Si’ Plans
● Delivering equitable access to education by ensuring under-represented groups are educated, shaping education programs with a wide variety of people, offering culturally appropriate and/or alternative forms of education, and ensuring that education promotes human rights and dignity
Ecological Spirituality recovers a religious vision of God’s creation and encourages greater contact with the natural world in a spirit of wonder, praise, joy and gratitude. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Celebrating the Season of Creation by co-hosting a Season of Creation event with another community, publicly praying for our social and ecological redemption during the season, developing an annual Season of Creation practice, and publishing annual statements of support for the Season of Creation
● Encouraging community reflection on Laudato Si’ themes by having the leader of the community speak about them, including them in the celebration of liturgical moments, and making study and prayer guides available
● Praying in nature by blessing a natural space as a reflection/meditation area and regularly praying there, hosting an outdoor prayer service, and creating a prayer journal, bulletin board, or other way of recording and sharing prayers made in nature
Community Engagement and Participatory Action encourage the development of cultures and policies that protect our common home and all who share it. A proposed set of actions to make progress towards this goal includes the following (to be finalized in the coming months).
● Advocating for social and ecological causes by identifying a social/environmental policy focus, organizing public and/or private community events with officials to discuss advocacy issues, maintaining a regular review of policies and sharing updates with the community, and having a community leader make public statements about advocacy issues
● Engaging the wider public by organizing social/ecological events, regularly exploring the local ecosystem as a group, and writing for local newspapers or commenting on local news stories related to Laudato Si’ themes
● Developing a social response to shared challenges by collaborating with leaders to identify ways the Church can support your social/ecological programs and developing a community coalition to prepare for and respond to emergent social crises
● Developing resilience by analyzing the physical, social, and spiritual ways your community is likely to be affected by climate change and biodiversity loss and making a plan to resiliently prepare for those changes, ensuring buildings are prepared for changes in heat, storm intensity, and sea-level rise, and ensuring members of the community are able to travel to other locations in the event of a weather emergency