Sustainability: Faith & Action

Sustainablility" as a focus of QEW dates back at least as far as the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which several QEW members attended as representatives of a non-governmental organization (NGO).

The official title, "The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCED)," reveals the primary purpose of this historic gathering of of nations: to referee a race between burgeoning human needs and Earth's beleaguered biosystems.

The World Council of Churches expressed the dilemma this way in 1979:

"The twin issues around which the world's future revolves are justice and ecology. Justice points to the necessity of correcting maldistribution of the products of the earth and of bridging the gap between rich and poor countries. Ecology points to humanity's dependence upon the earth. Society must be so organized as to sustain the earth so that a sufficient quality of material and cultural life for humanity may be sustained indefinitely. A sustainable society which is unjust can hardly be worth sustaining. Humanity now has the responsibility to make a deliberate transition to a just and sustainable society."

A QEW committee on Sustainable Development was formed in the mid-1990s to explore how this question could be addressed in the context of Quaker values and testimonies. The name soon was shifted to the "Sustainability Committee," as Friends struggled with the question of how ongoing "development" could be sustainable on a planet with finite resources. Some suggested, however, that "development" still could be embraced in the sense of "getting better" rather than "getting bigger."

The Committee had many fruitful exchanges on various aspects of Sustainability, which resulted in two QEW publications: The QEW pamphlet, Practicing Sustainability—What Does It Mean for Friends? and the QEW booklet, Sustainability and Spirituality, a Study Guide for Friends and Others, both available from the QEW Publications Catalog. Members of the Committee also have contributed a number of illuminating articles on sustainability to BeFriending Creation.

At the same time, the QEW Population Concerns Committee was laboring with the problem of sustainability in another area: The evidently unsustainable exponential growth in human population, reaching a point in the early 21st Century where numbers of humans and their material needs apparently were far exceeding the earth's capacity to supply them without compromising the needs of other species and those of future generations. This groups has produced a number of population-related pamphlets, booklets, and books over the years, which can be ordered from the QEW Publications Catalog.

At one point both committees reached the same conclusion, that their call to communicate their concerns and insights in the form of pamphlets and books had been largely fulfilled. Attention turned to ways they could support one another in their leadings to put this information and wisdom into action, individually and corporately. This has led to a recent merger of the two committees into one Interest Group called "Sustainability: Faith & Action." They have been discussing over programs and projects that could raise consciousness of population issues within the Religious Society of Friends, ultimately influencing Quakers' decisions about family size, adoption, material consumption, etc.