Saving Our “Common Home” Through Them: A Critical Analysis of the “For Our Common Home” Campaign in Alberta

INTRODUCTION

The recent years have witnessed a fast-growing wave of new social collaborative mobilizations and demands for a more aggressive fight against climate change, as well as for climate justice and just transition to a post-carbon society around the world. This article, based on a case analysis of one of these collaborative and solidarity struggles, the “For our Common Home” Campaign in Edmonton, Alberta, contributes to the development of a theoretical framework for understanding the religious motives for addressing climate in terms of integral ecology and ecological conversion.

Led by Development and Peace–Caritas Canada, the official international development organization of the Catholic Church in Canada and official representation of Caritas International in Canada, the “For our Common Home” campaign is a multi-year faith-inspired climate justice campaign that aimed at pushing Canadian companies operating in the Amazon to be more environmentally responsible in their activities in the Amazonian basin, and to respect the voices of local Indigenous environmental activists.

After describing the campaign and its supporters, methods, and goals, I explore the following question: How can a faith-inspired movement like Development and Peace–Caritas Canada, through a religious environmental campaign in solidarity with Indigenous communities in Canada and Brazil, participate in the development of social cohesion, and the advancement of social justice? As Pope Francis has stated, though it is true that the Amazon region is facing an ecological disaster, it also has to be made clear that “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” ¹ The endemic persecution of environmental activists in the Amazon makes it almost impossible to raise up that combined voice of the earth and of the poor.

It is, therefore, in a solidarity effort for an environmentalism “that is concerned for the biome but [does not ignore] the Amazonian peoples,” ² that the “For our Common Home” campaign was developed to support environmental struggles in the Amazon with a focus, among others, of advocating for Canadian mining companies operating in the Amazon region to take their environmental responsibilities and be held accountable and liable of their environmental destructive activities.

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This article is the result of a combined research approach involving both direct participatory observation and participation in virtual meetings and events, because of the restrictions imposed as a consequence of the global COVID-19 pandemics. The direct observation simultaneously took place at the Saint Thomas Aquinas French Catholic Church of Edmonton and at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples in Edmonton. Taking into consideration the Indigenous backgrounds of the members of one of the communities involved, this research was governed by the guidelines for “Research Involving First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples of Canada.” ³

Upon establishing firm connections with Indigenous communities through my involvement and work with Development and Peace-Caritas Canada, and subsequently receiving their free prior informed consent at the first meeting, I made sure the basic principles of ethical research with Indigenous people were respected at virtually every level and step of the research initiative. Abiding by such principles was aimed at minimizing risks and maximizing benefits to participants and communities. Far from being a simple distant observer, I participated in the development and implementation of “for our Common Home” campaign.

My active participation and co-organization of the campaign, as a member of the Justice and Peace commission (representing Development and Peace at the parish level), gave me an opportunity to collect the data that are used in this article through notetaking. By participating in all the meetings of the Justice and Peace commission, I was able to deepen my understanding of the purpose of the campaign, hear the stands of the church leadership as well as that of some elders, knowledge keepers, and prominent adults members of the Sacred heart Church of the First Peoples on environmental issues.

Such participation and data collection was supplemented by 14 random informal conversations with seven boys and seven girls, members of the Church. The decision of having informal conversations, in the form of storytelling, was motivated by the desire to balance the formal narratives held by campaign organizers and the Church leadership with the perceptions of the beneficiaries of the campaign. Second, since the Commission and church leadership mostly comprised adults whose social and ecclesial positions imposed a certain duty to reserve and diplomatic ways of talking, the informal conversations gave an opportunity to capture the unfiltered point of views of the youths.

Finally, the decision to focus on the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples was motivated by the fact that it offers the most appropriate ground to study problematics at the convergence of Indigeneity and Christianity. Its members, sharing the double identity of being at the same time Indigenous and Christians, I anticipated that their environmental inclinations will have the double taint of indigeneity and Christianity, and will help better visualize the encounter, convergence, and divergence between the two forms of environmentalisms in their struggle for the stewardship and care of our common home.

I am aware of the critiques that can be addressed to my methodological approach in terms of objectivity and passion-oriented analysis because of my direct personal involvement. To counterbalance those probable critiques I back myself off with the “standpoint” and strong objectivity approaches that go beyond the understanding of objectivity and depassionalization in terms of neutrality. ⁴ In other words, rather than being based on some sort of hypothetical universal unattainable neutrality, the objectivity of this article is based on my “situated knowledge,” ⁵ as well as the acknowledgment and critical self-reflection of my partialities, location, and lived experiences as a knowledge-producer. ⁶

In fact, in my mythological approach, “the social location is very close to epistemic position … [in the sense that] social locations not only vary from an epistemological point of view, but also and above all because some social locations offer the potential to be more epistemically reliable than others.” ⁷ That is why Sandra Harding argues that, through its social location, the standpoint approach offers an incredibly effective opportunity for the production of sound knowledge about the object of study, because it gives a great deal to the voices of the marginalized. ⁸

Moreover, it gives the researcher the possibility of accessing and assessing both open and tacit information and knowledge necessary for his investigation, provided he is self-critical of his own biases and exposure to biases. To this respect my involvement with the campaign, far from being an indication of passionate evaluation or a source of unquestionable subjectivity, is the very guarantor of my strong objectivity based on an unadorned reading and critical evaluation of the campaign.

CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME: WHEN CHRISTIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM SUPPORTS INDIGENOUS STRUGGLES

The key demands of the care for our Common Home campaign fall within the scope of the ecological teachings of Pope Francis, developed in his encyclical letter Laudato Si, namely his call for Integral Ecology, Ecological Conversion, and the Culture of Care. In Pope Francis' words, “it cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation. Just as the different aspects of the planet—physical, chemical and biological—are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network which we will never fully explore and understand. A good part of our genetic code is shared by many living beings. It follows that the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality.” ⁹ From the papal's perspective, integral ecology points at the nature and level of interconnectedness that exists between living and non-living, and that defines the very essence of our common nature as fundamentally relational beings. In other words, nobody and nothing in the order of creation can live in isolation; our very existence is essentially relations and connections to other living and non-living as well as everything surrounding us.

The understanding of nature as integrality and interconnectedness among all its constituencies, including humans, leads us to the need of ecological conversation. Such ecological conversion is at the same time a call and a responsibility. It is a call to operate a complete paradigm shift from the way we look at nature, and its human and non-human inhabitants, not as means and objects of profit and capital accumulation; they have to be contemplated as manifestations of the creator and as sisters and brothers, in the order of creation.

Ecological conversation is a call to shift away from the culture and practices of overconsumption, and the belief that humans are masters of the earth that the patriarchal colonialist imperialism has accustomed us to, to a culture of care and sustainability partnership with Mother Nature and with other creatures. Such visions, which also recall the Indigenous concepts of Rematriation, Interconnectedness and Stewardship, support my analysis in this article.

Moreover, it should be stated that such calls from Pope Francis are not unique among world religious leaders. In fact, on November 10, 2016, on the eve of the global climate change conference called COP22, 304 religious leaders from 58 countries issued a joint declaration on climate change. Their declaration calls world leaders to “ground their [climate] decisions in a humble and compassionate reverence for the interconnectedness of all life,” and invites believers and their communities to reduce emissions, engage in fossil fuels divestment and reinvestment in low carbon solutions. ¹⁰

This call represents a confluence with the one made by Pope Francis in mid-June 2015 in advance of the previous year's conference, COP21, when as both religious authority and Head of State he issued a quite radical Encyclical titled Laudato Si’: On care of our common home, with the aim of influencing the then-forthcoming Paris summit on building a legally binding post-Kyoto agreement. In his encyclical, Pope Francis developed the concepts of “integral ecology” and “ecological conversion,” which together allow for a focused analysis of the current climate crisis from a holistic perspective.

For Pope Francis, climate change is symptomatic of socially unjust neo-liberal capitalist models that oppress the poor and the workers for the sake of profits and capital accumulation. ¹¹ As such, to address the resulting challenges, we should: (1) respect nature, its laws and equilibrium; and (2) go beyond partisan interests to place the well-being of current and future generations, particularly the most vulnerable, at the center of political preoccupations. ^{12 , 13}

Nevertheless, even though the Pope uses a religious vocabulary, concepts similar to what he names as “integral ecology” have long been incorporated into other worldviews. According to many Indigenous cosmologies, nature is perceived as a whole, and their traditional cultures are based in worldviews that rarely put humans at the center of creation, as ultimate masters, but situate them “within a web of life in which all entities, be they inanimate, plant, animal or natural, possessed a spiritual dimension of their own.” ¹⁴ “Species of animals and plants are siblings or close relatives of human communities among many Indigenous peoples and thus must be treated respectfully as they too have rights and needs.” ¹⁵

Saint Francis of Assisi, far from any anthropocentric or anthropomorphic representation of nature, embraces such relationship views when, in his famous Canticle of the Creatures he praises “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon and the stars,” “Brother Wind,” “Sister Water,” “Brother Fire,” “Sister Mother Earth,” “and Sister Bodily Death.” ¹⁶

The two sets of visions cited earlier (Christian and Indigenous) stress a conception that goes beyond the normative Western understanding of nature as an externality, or a “commodity to be exploited or owned,” to include a spiritual relationship ^{17 , 18 , 19} and an inalienable dimension of mutual respect. ^{20 , 21} The holistic, spiritual, and reciprocal respect dimensions are key to Indigenous worldviews and therefore, from Indigenous perspectives, defending nature is not simply a matter of protecting an externality, but it is also a matter of defending an identity and securing self-survival.

On the other side, religious “ecological conversion” is not only about adapting production and consumption patterns (within the same neoliberal capitalist system) through multiple market mechanisms, techno-fixes, and patches, but it is also about a systematic and systemic change, in order to adopt models that respect nature, workers, and the specificities of affected populations. ²² In short, “what is required is an act of re-orientation away from unsustainable practices. This act is part of a larger process that can be named ‘essential recovery’, which needs to occur both on the level of worldview and in terms of bringing forward past sustainable practices.” ²³

This environmental model can only become possible if societies and individuals learn to live according to sustainable modes of resource exploitation and consumption through acts of transformative learning—a transformative learning that will lead to changes in our worldviews, to make them more holistic, ^{24 , 25 , 26 , 27} and to accelerate the ecological transition based on the “essential recovery” and ecological Rematriation ideals and projects. In fact, “The Indigenous concept of Rematriation refers to reclaiming of ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge and resources. […] It simply means back to Mother Earth, a return to our origins, to life and co-creation, rather than Patriarchal destruction and colonization.” ²⁸ In other words, in this context, according to the KARI-OCA 2 Declaration, ²⁹

As such, Rematriation mostly appears as a counter-narrative, countermovement, and an alternate sustainability lifestyle. From such a perspective of return to the sources, and applying it to the specific case of ecological crisis, I understand and use Rematriation as an Indigenous reaction to the current dominant colonial, paternalistic, and capitalist-inspired view that has turned nature into fragmented simple commodities. Besides that oppositional stand, ecological remediation puts forward a feminist-based view that claims a humble return to Mother Nature, understood as an inexhaustible network of relations among human and non-human as well as living and non-living beings, in a continuity that involves past, present, and future generations from a horizontal perspective, and the divine from a vertical perspective.

In fact, the return to the ancestral teaching and approaches of the Indigenous people gives the possibilities of learning from those who, around the world, have always and continue to be uncontestable stewards of nature. As Pope Francis, taking the example of Indigenous people of the Amazon, states:

If the care of people and the care of ecosystems are inseparable, this becomes especially important in places where “the forest is not a resource to be exploited; it is a being, or various beings, with which we have to relate.”[…] The wisdom of the original peoples of the Amazon region “inspires care and respect for creation, with a clear consciousness of its limits, and prohibits its abuse. To abuse nature is to abuse our ancestors, our brothers and sisters, creation and the Creator, and to mortgage the future.”[…] When the indigenous peoples “remain on their land, they themselves care for it best,”[…] provided that they do not let themselves be taken in by the siren songs and the self-serving proposals of power groups. The harm done to nature affects those peoples in a very direct and verifiable way, since, in their words, “we are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God. For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and destruction of Mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the multinationals have cut the veins of our Mother Earth.” ³¹

In fact, sustainability can be fostered through acts of “essential recovery” in which past practices are re-contextualized to meet present challenges. In this scenario, historically sustainable ways of life can be rediscovered, not simply to clone or appropriate past practices, but rather as a renewing ressourcement, a return to the sources, in the spirit of Vatican II. ³² Talking about the importance of ressourcement in the Christian tradition, it should be emphasized that, a few years after his election, Pope John XXIII launched the idea of the second Vatican Council with a statement that became emblematic in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

In a conservative-dominated context of the bi-millenary institution, he called Catholics to “throw open the windows of the church and let the fresh air of the spirit blow through.” These words of the Pope gave a new strength and breadth to the progressive wing of the Church that was already and is still divided into two movements: The partisans of Aggiornamento, and the partisans of Ressourcement. Aggiornamento, it should be noted, refers to the radical progressive movement demanding a complete adjustment, adaptation, and accommodation of the Church to the standards and demands of the modern world.

The disciples of Ressourcement, on their side, endorse a more balanced position. Ressourcement implies “a return to the authoritative sources of Christian faith, for the purpose of rediscovering their truth and meaning in order to meet the critical challenges of our time.” ³³ In other words, Ressourcement demands a creative and fruitful dialogue between the past, the present, and the future. In my use of this concept, I insist on the interconnectedness it implies among various epochs and the importance it gives to the past as an inspirational source for current human-nature-divine relations.

My foundational argument in this regard goes thus: An ecological conversion that is based on a return to the “authoritative sources of Christian faith” implies a renewing Ressourcement or rather a continuous reliance on the biblical, traditional, and hierarchical sources of the Church that all advocate respect for nature, or better said a genuine spiritual environmentalism. In this regard, our shared humanity with its common survival needs and its shared environmental concern, in the sense of life-sustaining ecosystem, can become potential sources of wisdom for living out proper human-earth-divine relationships, ³⁴ as opposed to something to be discarded in favor of narrowly understood manifestations of progress and development.

In line with the eco-ethical imperatives laid out in Pope Francis's Laudato Si’, this energizing movement is about rediscovering green roots that can be cultivated to branch out in a contemporary context. ^{35 , 36} Such a transition to ecological sustainability could gain inspiration from an Indigenous holistic worldview and traditional knowledges, as “Indigenous peoples interpret and react to the impacts of climate change in creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies to find solutions which may help society at large to cope with impending changes.” ^{37 , 38 , 39} It is also inspired by Pope Francis's integral ecology, motivating an ecological conversion and the achievement of adaptive and resilient eco-ethical living.

The rediscovery of the interconnectedness of all living and non-living beings and the return to the sources through acts of Rematriation are aimed at bringing humanity to develop a deeper sense of ecological conversation based on responsible stewardship. ⁴⁰ The call for responsible stewardship is an invitation to a radical shift in the way we view nature and our relationship with nature. Nature, from this perspective, is not just a provider of goods and services, and we are not “masters of creation”; we are part of nature and, at the same time guardians, and not owners of nature, because the whole creation belongs to a supreme and transcendent entity called God, Great Spirit, Great Mystery, the Great One, the Mighty Spirit, the Divine, the Transcendent, the One who lives above, or Creator, among others, depending on spiritual traditions.

From the Biblical perspective, even though we are called to have dominion over the Earth, this does not imply a dominion of majestic royal power of modern-time kings and leaders, a domination and mastery that lead to unsustainable exploitation. Dominion, from the Biblical perspective, refers to the steward-dominion of ancient Kings of Israel who were chosen by God to serve the people and “to exercise care and responsibility for God's domain particularly in the interest of those who were poor and marginalized.” ⁴¹

“The steward is one who has been given the responsibility for the management and service of something belonging to another, and his office presupposes a particular kind of trust on the part of the owner or master,” ⁴² and that is why, in the context of human-induced unsustainable exploitation and destruction of our common home, Pope Francis, like Indigenous communities around the world, calls for a radical change of patterns to adopt those who are more respectful of living and non-living beings. Such a conversion, following in the footsteps of the Laudato Si Movement (a global Catholic climate movement), is to be undertaken at three important levels: The spiritual, the lifestyle, and the public sphere or engagement dimensions (Fig. 1).

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FIG. 1.

The three levels of the Laudato Si Movement (a global Catholic climate movement): The spiritual, the lifestyle, and the public sphere or engagement dimensions. Source: Laudato Si Movement, 2020. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ep7tIWtf1KR5suvoicv3P7e4A6M0dzX6/view

In this case, briefly speaking, the spiritual dimension that entails ecological conversion calls for a complete mindset change, a renewed look at nature from a holistic, relational, and interconnectedness perspective. The lifestyle dimension calls for change in our exploitation, consumption, and disposal patterns to adopt those that are sustainable, less consumerist, less polluting, and more environmentally friendly. The public sphere dimension basically calls for mobilizations, advocacy, and solidarity. For the purposes of this article, even though the “Care for our Common Home” campaign integrates all the three dimensions, I will mostly focus on the public sphere dimension.

Taking advantage of the shift in the global decision-making process, the current approach gives more opportunities to non-sovereign actors to make known their voices, and the campaign aims at making the voices of the formerly voiceless heard by decision makers. In fact, unlike the former decision-making approach where negotiation texts were unilaterally prepared by the UNFCCC secretariat and discussed by states during conference of the parties (COP) meetings, in the current approach the main responsibility in building climate policies is transferred to states through institutionalization of Intended National Determined Contributions. ⁴³

In such contexts, the international community mandates the future of climate politics and actions to states under the coordination of the COP, and it only has recourse to “naming and shaming” tactics to encourage countries to action. ^{44 , 45 , 46 , 47} In this scenario, climate justice movements, Indigenous environmental defenders, and faith-inspired environmentalists who had little to no impact in the former political context are able to influence the conception of intra-national and national climate policies, and the elaboration of national reduction pledges.

Given this new context, it is more than ever interesting to study the metamorphosis that faith-inspired movements are going through, and the mechanisms they are putting in place to induce decision makers to take their views and perspectives into consideration. At the moment, despite the importance of the resistance against environmentally destructive practices, investments, and policies, with great impacts on Indigenous lands, resources, and health in Canada in general and Alberta in particular, research on faith-inspired environmentalism and the solidarity of that form of environmentalism with Indigenous struggles for the protection of their lands, livelihood, and environment is still very limited.

This article, drawing on the critical analysis of the “For our Common Home” campaign implemented by Development and Peace-Caritas Canada, focuses on one such faith-inspired initiative that tries to emphasize the importance of fighting against climate change, ensuring social-climate justice ideals and solidarity with the persecuted Indigenous environmentalism.

THE “FOR OUR COMMON HOME” CAMPAIGN IN ALBERTA

The “For our Common Home” campaign was launched by the Catholic faith-based organization Development and Peace-Caritas Canada in 2020. It deals with ecological justice and Indigenous rights issues, with a specific focus on solidarity with Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. The campaign, officially called “For our Common Home: A Future for the Amazon, a Future for All,” is a call to reflection, solidarity, and action with Amazonian Indigenous peoples who are continuously battling against (1) Deforestation (with new highways and railroads opening the forests to cattle ranching and industrial agriculture, the Amazon is losing one to three soccer fields' worth of forest cover every minute!); (2) Resource extraction (essentially driven by insatiable consumer demand, oil extraction, and mining that are polluting the Amazon's land, air, and waterways); (3) lives-threatening and livelihoods-threatening risks (from megaprojects like hydroelectricity dams that are uprooting communities, and where those who defend their territories are being threatened, criminalized, and killed).

The campaign was built around activities such as education and training on the concepts of integrate integral ecology, ecological conversion, and calls for solidarity with Indigenous communities fighting for the protection of their land and of the Amazon forest, as an expression of the culture of care by Canadian Catholics. Education and training activities mostly took place during Sunday celebrations during which campaigners elaborated on the meaning of those concepts developed by Pope Francis, and on their implications for the life of catholic communities and believers. Members of lives, struggles, and persecutions of Indigenous communities and some environmental activists in the Amazon were presented to members of those communities. The culmination of this activity was the collection of solidarity signatures and messages from Canadian Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Those signatures were initially supposed to be handed over to two Amazonian Indigenous communities (the seringueiros of Machadinho d'Oeste and the Mura people of Manaus) in solidarity and support of their struggles during a touring visit that was finally cancelled because of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemics. As a result, those signatures were handed over to representatives of the two Amazonian Indigenous communities, who received them with great satisfaction and gratitude on behalf of their respective communities, during a Webinar organized by Development and Peace and titled “From Canada, with love, to the defenders of the Amazon,” on October 4, 2020.

Other activities included reflections and pledges to reduce carbon footprints through individual or community actions to be taken as participation in the global fight for the protection of the environment, and advocacy. Pledges were invites [to] people of all ages to commit to at least one lifestyle change for the sake of the environment. Examples including reducing meat consumption and using public transport,” ⁴⁸ as acts of communities and individuals' ecological conversion.

As far as the advocacy component is concerned, it was initially planned that this will be done through strategic meetings with Members of Parliament in their respective electoral constituencies to invite them to act in the direction of taking a stand specifically on the destructive activities (mostly mining) of Canadian corporations in the Amazon, in-person advocacy was prevented by the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic situation and health restrictions.

Based on my observations, there was far more stress on expressing solidarity with Indigenous communities fighting in the Amazon, than on taking individual and community actions to reduce the carbon footprints at the local and parish levels in Canada. The component of the campaign that was geared toward individual and community pledges and actions to reduce carbon footprints at the local level became minimally considered as the campaign went on. In fact, even though no disaggregated data was produced, according to the final statistics of the campaign, “more than 1,000 people have embarked on an ecological conversion” ⁴⁹ by signing the intergenerational pledge; comparatively, that is approximately one out of seven people who signed the solidarity letters. Figure 2 shows the pledge options that individuals and communities were called to select from.

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FIG. 2.

Pledge options. Source: Development and Peace. “Intergenerational pledge for our common home.” Available at https://www2.devp.org/en/campaign/forourcommonhome/pledge (Last accessed on May 20, 2022).

Pledges, even though not much valued during the campaign, were in line with the ecological conversation Pope Francis called for, and the lifestyle dimension advocated by the Laudato Si movement. In real life, both dimensions cannot be strictly separated; a real conversion always leads to lifestyle changes. In this context, the ecological conversion called for a complete change of mindset to have a different look at the environment and nature, no longer as a simple resources provider, but as a common home with which and in which we are all interconnected and have the shared responsibility to care for.

The lifestyle dimension focused on concrete actions that could be taken to reduce our carbon footprints and ensure the protection of our common home, both individually and as communities of faith. As communities, no church in Edmonton or Alberta, to the best of my knowledge, made pledges to reduce carbon footprints as a result of the campaign.

However, although the COVID-19 pandemic engendered difficulties that forced the campaign to put several of its activities on hold, Development and Peace Canada continued to work with local partners in the Amazon to maintain pressure on corporations involved in mining activities in the Amazonian region. Following the acknowledgment of Pope Francis that “the colonizing interests that have continued to expand—legally and illegally—the timber and mining industries, and have expelled or marginalized the indigenous peoples, the river people and those of African descent, are provoking a cry that rises up to heaven,” ⁵⁰ the official development organization of the Catholic church of Canada continued to stand by the Indigenous communities in the following terms, enclosed in their letter of support prepared for the campaign and signed by 66,447 inhabitants of Canada:

Dear seringueiros of Machadinho d'Oeste and Mura people of Manaus,

Thank you for protecting the Amazon rainforest, your traditional home and humanity's common heritage.

We, the people of Canada, are pained to learn of your persecution, dispossession and criminalisation by those who would rob your lands, livelihoods, waters and way of life to exploit the gifts of the Amazon for profit.

We join you in urging your government to stop privileging corporate interests over your rights and the integrity of the forest.

We will impel our government to hold Canadian companies to account for what they do on your lands. Keeping you in our hearts, thoughts and prayers, we wish you more power in your fight for justice and dignity. ⁵¹

However, it is important to mention that Catholic environmentalism, from a hierarchical perspective, is still quite limited in Alberta. Such limited engagement, in a context dominated by the great involvement and the repetitive calls and invitations from Pope Francis for the protection of our common home, the commitments from roughly 250 catholic institutions around the world to divest from coal, oil and gas industries and re-invest in clean energy sectors, ⁵² and the growing concerns for the protection of the environment and for environment justice among local catholic groups and youths worldwide, raises some questioning.

However, I argue that such a state of affairs may be justified by the limited interest the catholic church leadership in Alberta has for environmental issues or, alternatively, a desire from that leadership to remain on the safe side of the politically correct. In fact, in a province where petroculture is the norm, where environmental and energy transition issues are highly politicized and pretty unpopular, and where blackmail and persecution attempts of environmental defense institutions by the current provincial political leadership, through targeted investigations on the financial sources of environmental movements advocating and fighting for energy transition, and the establishment the Canadian Energy Centre also known as “energy war room” to promote the interests of the Alberta oil and gas industry ⁵³ and fight against any entity opposed to it, the limited involvement of the local church leadership keeps it on the safe side.

In Alberta, even though some church groups or movements such as Development and Peace are involved in the advancement of environmental justice, this is a movement pushed from below. The “For our Common Home” campaign did not gather a specific, strong, large-scale momentum, even though it was endorsed, at least in principle, by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Edmonton and the pastors of parishes and churches where it was implemented. The Archdiocese of Edmonton, and the parishes where the camping was implemented, did not officially take any pledge, and there exist no structure to advance environmental education, advocacy, or education at the archdiocesan or parish levels.

This brings me to argue that, despite Pope Francis' calls, the efforts of Development and Peace and the campaign, issues related to integral ecology and ecological conversion are still seen as peripheral matters by the local church of Edmonton. Obviously, the deployment of the campaign, in a province largely dominated by a very deeply rooted petroculture, helped educate the faithful on concerns for the protection of the environment and for environmental justice, and helped enhance the culture of care through the development of a sense of solidarity with Indigenous environmental activists among Catholics in Alberta.

However, it is important to mention that such solidarity is still very much oriented toward the Global South. The campaign, right from its conception, was externally oriented rather than focusing on internal situations of environmental persecutions, taking responsibility for churches-related environmentally harmful activities or investments, or taking on a strong stand on provincial and national situations of environmental injustices.

As this campaign calling for solidarity with Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon who are persecuted, and even killed, for asking that their lands, environment and livelihoods be preserved was being implemented, the Wet'suwet'en blockades and struggles to stop the Coastal GasLink pipeline from crossing their unceded territory were being intensified, amid violent repressions from the Royal Canadian Mountain Police in British Columbia, here in Canada. The “For our Common Home” campaign did not issue any solidarity statement or action to support those Indigenous activists and Peoples struggling locally for the protection of their unceded lands, environment, and livelihoods.

Proposals from some campaigners at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples and Saint Thomas French church in Edmonton called for such local solidarity, but those calls were not really considered. Such lack of solidarity with Indigenous Peoples fighting for their lands ignores an important dimension of the Indigenous environmental justice demand; that is, the stewardship and healing of their lands, which goes in line with the healing of bodies and spirits, ⁵⁴ in the context of interconnectedness between the living and non-living orders. ⁵⁵ As the KARI-OCA 2 Declaration states:

As peoples, we reaffirm our rights to self-determination and to own, control and manage our traditional lands and territories, waters and other resources. Our lands and territories are at the core of our existence—we are the land and the land is us; we have a distinct spiritual and material relationship with our lands and territories and they are inextricably linked to our survival and to the preservation and further development of our knowledge systems and cultures, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem management. ⁵⁶

I argue that this was an important shortcoming of the campaign because, even though the culture of care needs to be global in scope, it needs to start by our closest neighbors here in Canada. The truth that is told to non-minded environmental leaders in the Amazon has to be told, without complaisance, to non-minded environmental leaders in Canada. Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples abroad is great, but it should be accompanied with solidarity with Indigenous Peoples of Canada.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of the internationally oriented solidarity signatures for Indigenous Communities in the Amazon (specially the seringueiros of Machadinho d'Oeste and the Mura people of Manaus who were the first beneficiaries of this campaign), collected by the campaign, at the national level, by age range. From a first-level observation, it might be easy to conclude that those above 55 years of age seem more concerned by environmental justice issues, and they are ready to show their solidarity with Amazonian Indigenous communities and peoples fighting for climate justice and for the protection of our common home.

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FIG. 3.

Distribution of the internationally oriented solidarity signatures for Indigenous Communities in the Amazon. Source: Presentation of solidarity signature on October 04, 2020.

Nevertheless, a deeper observation and analysis of the situation brings me to the hypothesis that such dominance of the involvement of people aged 55 and above may not necessarily be as a result of their higher environmental sensitivity, but it may simply come as a demonstration of their greater involvement (far more than younger generations) in churches' activities. Such a hypothesis seems plausible when we observe other environmental and climate justice mobilizations in the province, nationally, and internationally.

Social mobilizations in general, and climate justice mobilizations, gather more momentum and are usually led by young people more than older generations. The Fridays for Future movement and the boldness of prominent young globally known climate justice activists such as Autumn Peltier, Greta Thunberg, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Licypriya Kangujam, Lesein Mutunkei, Nyombi Morris, and Vanessa Nakate, among others, eloquently speak in this regard. In the specific case of religious climate justice activism, the global youths-dominated catholic “Laudato Si” movement clearly demonstrates youths' involvement through faith-inspired climate justice activism.

The “Laudato Si” work in advancing the teachings of Pope Francis through a variety of activities such as prayers and retreats, training of communities and animators, advocacy for the respect of people and nature, circles where people meet in small groups and deepen their relationship to God, to nature and ways leading to individual and community ecological conversation among others. The overall mission of the movement, based on the environmental teachings of Pope Francis developed in his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, is “to inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice.” ⁵⁷

CONCLUSION

This article, we can conclude, has brought us to realize that an ecological conversion, lived in the context of an integral ecology, appears to be the best framework for analyzing and understanding faith-inspired environmentalism, at least from the catholic perspective. It is in the context of such framework that we can situate the implementation of the “For our Common Home” campaign, in Alberta; a campaign that demonstrated, to an extent, a growing consciousness for environmental issues in general and, in particular, environmental justice matters.

Throughout my participation in the preparation and implementation of the campaign at the Saint Thomas of Aquinas Catholic Francophone parish and the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples in Edmonton, I noticed a strong involvement and desire to learn more from members of the two congregations. It is important to mention that both parishes had no prior history of environmental actions and there are no known or self-declared climate justice/environmental activists' movements in either of the congregations.

However, even though in both congregations, climate justice and environmental issues in general were still not yet taken seriously, their respective pastors took advantage of the campaign and created a space for members of their congregations to be educated on environmental justice issues and to engage, from a Christian perspective. Nevertheless, the limited interest in taking personal and community pledges to reduce their carbon footprint, and the considerable level of participation in solidarity with persecuted Indigenous activists and communities fighting for the environment in the Amazon, demonstrates that there is a belief that fighting against climate change is still other people's business; there is still a conviction that the planet can be saved, but it has to be through other people's actions, and that the expressed solidarity of communities from the Global North is enough.

There is still a deeply rooted thinking that Catholics in Alberta can continue maintaining their petroculture, silently witnessing the persecution of local Indigenous climate justice activists and communities fighting for the protection of their unceded territories, environment, and livelihood, while supporting Indigenous people leading the same fights in the Global South. This raises two fundamental questions: Can we really save our planet only through “them”? Obviously No. Rather, only a deep ecological conversion is needed to tackle climate injustices and environmental violence. But then, how can we deepen our ecological conversion to face and include local climate injustices and environmental violence?

Genuinely deepened ecological conversion can, among others, include: Departing from the culture of productivism and consumerism through smart acquisition and use of resources, both individually and as communities; divesting from fossil fuel and investing in renewable energies; boycotting Global North and Canadian companies polluting and violating human rights in the amazon in solidarity with Amazon communities and Indigenous Peoples; advocating for the passing and implementation of better climate justice, ⁵⁸ climate racism, ⁵⁹ and just transition ⁶⁰ legislations.