Cooperation between academia and religion key to breaking “sustained unsustainability”

In his keynote address to the conference “The Future of our Planet: Global Perspectives on the Care for our Common Home”, organized by the German Catholic Academic Exchange Service (KAAD for its German acronym) and held in Bonn from 27-30 April 2023, Dr. Beling first introduced the highlights of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si’ to the audience, the "Carta Magna of Integral Ecology," as theologian Leonardo Boff has dubbed it, and its sociopolitical significance. Next, Beling referred to the mixed reactions to Laudato Si in both the political and the public sphere, noting the tendency to sideline the encyclical’s “inconvenient truths” to adapt it to mainstream conventions in sustainability governance. Dr. Beling then goes on to elaborate on the role that sustainability science and the church can and should play in countering this discursive narrowing that is underpinning the current state of “sustained unsustainability”, thus contributing to open the canon of governance options towards a social-ecological sustainability transformation. In so doing, Beling synthesized what he sees as reciprocal challenges from church to science and vice versa, ending with an outlook on the future role of church and science as sustainability governance actors.

The full text of Beling’s keynote address can be accessed here (in German)