Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter Icon

Environment

Environment

“Despite the reactions and resistance to this threat, geocide continues, while at the same time the unwavering view that nature has the power to renew itself is cultivated. It is not auspicious that humanity is aware of the seriousness of environmental problems and continues to behave as if it were unaware.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

"The consequences of the ecological crisis know no borders of states and civilizations, and affect the conditions of survival not only of the human race, but also of life in general on the planet.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“The climate crisis is not a ‘future scenario,’ but a painful reality, with the rapid decline of biodiversity, deforestation, pollution of the atmosphere and seas, catastrophic fires and floods.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“I am struck by the weight of a recognition that surely belongs not to an individual, but to a vision that has animated the Ecumenical Patriarchate for over three decades: that the God who breathed stars and humans into being is the same God who grieves when a single sparrow falls, when a coral reef bleaches white as bone, and when a child gasps for clean air.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“The destruction of the natural environment begins in the mind of man, and therefore, from there the healing must begin. What is needed is a ‘Copernican shift’ in the spiritual realm and our value system, a radical change in mentality. Otherwise, we will treat the symptoms of the crisis, while the source of the woes remains active and unscathed.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“The fact that climate changes have always existed on Earth is not a reason for complacency, as it is certain that the contemporary ecological problems—such as the rapid decrease in biodiversity, the pollution of the seas and the atmosphere, the rise of ocean levels, extreme weather phenomena, the social consequences of the ecological crisis such as water scarcity and food crises, migratory flows due to climate reasons, and many other related issues—are all anthropogenic in origin.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“This world is not just a gift from God; it is a challenge for humanity.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“We believe that the roots of the environmental crisis are not primarily economic or political, nor technological, but profoundly and essentially religious, spiritual and moral. This is because it is a crisis about and within the human heart.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“Although the time we have been on the planet is insignificant in the context of the life of the planet itself, we have reached a defining moment in our history. We have expanded our dominion over Nature to the point where absolute limits to our survival are being reached. We have lost half of the great forests of the world to the demand for timber and for conversion to agriculture, without thinking that these giant wet sponges are responsible for the delivery of much of the fresh water…. Instead of living on income, or the available surplus of the earth, we are consuming environmental capital and destroying its sources as if there is no tomorrow.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

“To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For human beings to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests, or by destroying its wetlands; for human beings to injure other human beings with disease by contaminating the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances – all of these are sins.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew