Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Buddhist Ethics and Perspective on Environmental Issues and Conservation

Actually, the varieties of life on Earth are interrelated. The number of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, the enormous diversity of genes in these species, the different ecosystems on the planet, such as deserts, rainforests and coral reefs are all part of a biologically diverse Earth which interrelated to each other. Every one of them no mater how small or big, all have important role to play and it depend on one another. If we harm one species it will impact to one another. And the impact will continue to every kind of species because they are interrelated. Sooner, these impacts will affect to us. Human being is one kind of these species which also depend on other species. So if human being harm to other species, the impact will come to them or we can say if men harm the world, the world will harm them back.


Many kind of environmental issues that our human beings have experiences like global warming, earth quack etc. all are happened because we harm the environments. So to preserve our lives we need to preserve the world. Nowadays we all are accepted that we need to do something to reduce global warming and to protect our world. Many actions have been done and we also have created Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the scientific knowledge on global warming.


The world mostly agrees that something needs to be done about global warming and climate change. The first stumbling block, however, has been trying to get an agreement on a framework. In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meterological Organization (WMO) to assess the scientific knowledge on global warming. The IPCC concluded in 1990 that there was broad international consensus that climate change was human-induced. That report led way to an international convention for climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by over 150 countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. This section looks at this Convention and some of the main principles in it.[1]


But, however, we can see very less that the world can do about global warming and climate change. In some cases, it seems there has been a recent interest in associating climate change/global warming with “over population” and that countries such as China and India have to do more to help contain global warming.


About Buddhist societies, Buddhists never remain aloof from the problem of the world. In case of global warming, Buddhists have taken many activities to resolve the problem. For example, In Thailand, there are some Buddhist movements leaded by ecology monks to protect the environment such as the tree ordination, the symbolic center of Phrakhru Pitak's Conservation program which leading up to the ordination and the conservation activities organized by him and the villagers afterward were all motivated by the emotional and spiritual commitment created by the ceremony. Throughout the ceremony, Buddhist symbols were used to stress the religious connection to conservation, the villagers' interdependence with the forest, and the moral basis of the project. This ceremony however has been carried out for publicity and public sympathy to make the government see the environmental impact of some of its economic development plans.


From the different term of reference mentioned above, however I try to show the relationship of Buddhist ethic and environmental conservation which we can study and apply for social practice in order to preserve our environments. But however the real solution for environmental problem, global warming or climate change is not Buddhism alone can do, every part of the world must participate and give the importance in solving this problem, otherwise our world will be destroyed with what we behave in everyday life. Conclusion Human beings have always singled themselves out from the rest of the natural world and they act as if they’re somehow separate from it. But as we already known that human beings and nature are inseparable. To harm the nature is to harm ourselves, and vice versa. Just as we should not harm ourselves, we should not harm nature. The studies of Buddhist ethic teach us to deal with nature the same way we should deal with our selves: nonviolently. So it’s clear that the fate of each individual is inextricably linked to the fate of the whole human race. We should let others live if we ourselves want to live. The way of life of Buddhism and environmental ethic is to live with nonviolence

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