Letter to Prime Minister Chrétien: A Framework for Sustainable Communities

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

The Canadian churches have participated in many of the United Nations’ sponsored summits that attempt to define the future of the global community. The World Summit on Sustainable Development provides a key moment to express concern regarding the unsustainable path on which the global community is proceeding. The excessive strain being placed on the world’s forests, oceans, rivers, mountains, wildlife and other life support systems cannot be maintained.

The values that inform our own perspective on these proposals for flourishing sustainable communities include:

• Global Solidarity – rebuilding relationships and standing especially with those people who have been disempowered, marginalized and made voiceless.
• Fairness and Equity – sharing both the benefits and the responsibility for the global common good for now and future generations.
• Peace – rules-based demilitarization and disarmament that includes the permanent prohibition of nuclear weapons, a ban on placing weapons in space, and progressive conventional disarmament, as well as enhanced global capacity for the peaceful resolution of conflict and for building political, social and economic conditions for sustainable peace, including respect for human rights.
• Sufficiency – meeting needs before wants and not allowing greed to outstrip available non-renewable resources; rejecting an inevitable faith in technology to provide solutions for our own excesses.
• Diversity – respecting and embracing the complementarity and abundance of creation… there are many alternatives.