This article initially focuses on the Laudato si (Pope Francis 2015)¹ to represent the view of a Christian religious leader on the desired societal response towards the environmental crisis. This document is an official letter released by Pope Francis, head of the global Catholic Church, on 24 May 2015. It is titled ‘Praise be to you’, after a document by St Francis of Assisi (The Holy See 2024), also called the ‘patron saint of ecologists’ (White 1967:1207). His name was adopted by the Pope at the start of his tenure (Taylor, Van Wieren & Zaleha 2016:307). The document reflects Pope Francis’ comments on human society’s relationship with Earth and how it can be changed from its current destructive course. It has aroused great interest and been studied extensively by academic scholars and by organisations that are active in the environmental discourse (Annett et al. 2017; SAFCEI Weekly News 2023).

It is a lengthy document (184 pages), and for the purposes of this article, only the first few paragraphs are discussed.

The next document, chosen to represent a non-religious organisation, is the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, developed by the United Nations (UN 2015).² It was published in 2015 after global consultations with leaders to introduce the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were formulated to initiate a united global response towards the environmental crisis (UN 2023). Since 2015, countries worldwide have been organising national initiatives to reach the stated goals by 2030. The preamble to the 2030 Agenda is studied to evaluate the attitude of these leaders towards the Earth and our environment.

To add to the findings from these two documents, reference is made to findings from the analyses of other documents that were also studied. From the religious sector, this includes an article by the Ethics in Action Initiative, consisting of leaders representing different religions (Annett et al. 2017),³ as well as a document by a South African multifaith organisation, SAFCEI (2018).⁴ To provide a perspective on the motivation for environmental action from a secular perspective, findings from the executive summary of the Living Planet Report (2020),⁵ compiled on behalf of the WWF, are added to the comparison, with some references to the preface of the 16th Global Risks Report released by the World Economic Forum in 2021.⁶ These last two documents were published during the COVID-19 pandemic and were studied to provide some information about the impact of the pandemic on global responses by human society towards the environmental crisis.

Despite the anthropocentric focus revealed through a reading of the document, the ecosophy espoused by the Pope can be considered as sincere, as opposed to shallow. He displays real concern, and the elements listed in the methodology and theoretical framework can be clearly discerned in the text.

The encyclical provides an abundance of material for discussion and study and has, since its release, resulted in numerous studies and comments by scholars. The introduction is further analysed in a previous article (Du Toit 2024:79–110). For the purposes of this article, I will proceed to compare the ecosophy demonstrated by Pope Francis with that which was found in the other documents.

From these statements and others that are further elaborated upon in a previous study (Du Toit 2024:135–140), the conclusion can be drawn that the Earth is not considered as an important partner in the process of achieving sustainability and that the focus is more on solving social problems related to human society. While Francis puts the blame for the deteriorating state of the Earth on human greed and sin, referring also to Patriarch Bartholomew (Pope Francis 2015; par 2:3 and par 8:8; 9:8), such accountability is not mentioned in the Agenda. The focus seems to be more on maintaining the current economic system while changing it to be more sustainable.

The Agenda considers the importance of the Earth in the process of developing a sustainable human society while achieving the SDGs, but human ownership and authority seem to be more important. The need to maintain a peaceful society to achieve these goals is acknowledged (‘There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development’, UN 2015:2), as is the need for a unified response (‘If we realize our ambitions across the full extent of the Agenda, the lives of all will be profoundly improved and our world will be transformed for the better’, UN 2015:2). This is an indication of human interconnectedness but is not extended to interconnectivity with the rest of creation.

Some evidence of social justice is found in the document, as the SDGs ‘seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’ (UN 2015:1), while being ‘focused in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable’ (UN 2015:2); but it does not necessarily translate into ecojustice. The Earth (or ‘the planet’) is considered as a partner in the process of sustainable development ‘so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations’ (UN 2015:2).

These observations provide evidence for assigning an ecosophy based on a shallow environmental outlook, not based on the principles of belonging and interconnectedness or sacredness. It also does not envision a process of ecological conversion or the implementation of ecojustice.

The Ethics in Action Initiative (EIA) is a multifaith coalition formed in response to the encyclical by Pope Francis. A group of religious leaders attempted to address the moral cause of the environmental crisis, as pointed out by the Pope, through finding common ground among various religions, using shared moral foundations (Sachs & Flanagan 2022:6). The article referred to here contains the conclusions from a series of meetings held in the Vatican (Annett et al. 2017).

In concurrence with Pope Francis, the leaders acknowledge the current predicament of human society as caused by human ethical failings by stating that ‘it is the human spirit – the essential question of ethics … that will determine our success or failure’ (Annett et al. 2017:1), and they consider religion as having the moral foundation to address this.

They further point to the current economic system and resulting materialism in society as drivers for greed and personal enrichment, in turn leading to poverty and social inequality. Therefore, situations ‘such as extreme poverty, hunger, lack of access to education, and deaths caused by preventable and treatable disease, are anachronisms. Worse, they are choices’ (Annett et al. 2017:1).

They conclude that to ‘achieve sustainable development – meaning a world economy that is at once prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable – the world needs a fundamental reorientation toward the common good’ (Annett et al. 2017:1). They are of the opinion that the rule of considering what is best for the ‘common good’ represents the ‘shared vision of the world’s great religious and secular ethical traditions developed and honed over the past 2500 years’ (Annett et al. 2017:1).

The conclusion by EIA regarding the contribution of religion in society, as well as the principle of common good as motivation for the response to the environmental crisis, provides a strong link with the argument for human stewardship put forward by Pope Francis in the Laudato si.

However, it falls short of including the Earth as part of the relationship, denying the kinship the rest of nature shares with humans since the time of creation. Therefore, the content of this document does not show evidence of the principles of DGR or of the images considered to support the presence of a sincere environmental ecosophy. The outlook of the authors remains primarily anthropocentric despite acknowledging human failings in caring for our common home.

A multifaith organisation, the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), was established in 2004 to encourage cooperation between different faith communities in responding to the environmental crisis (Davies 2013:88). Similar to the Ethics in Action Initiative, the Institute believes that focusing on commonalities between different religions can assist in engendering a unified societal response towards the environmental crisis. They celebrated May 2023 as ‘Laudato si month’, ‘Hope for the Earth, hope for Humanity’ (SAFCEI Weekly News 2023).

The focus is on aiding faith leaders in guiding their congregants towards environmentally beneficial lifestyle choices, based on ecological knowledge (SAFCEI 2024). A booklet was published for this purpose, and its introduction is analysed for this study. The ‘ECO-AUDIT User Guide for Faith Communities’ (2018) aims to promote eco-literacy through conducting an ‘eco-audit’ of how much resources you use and how much waste you produce, guiding people on how to implement more sustainable living in their own context.

In the introduction to the booklet (2018:3), human society is admonished to ‘care for creation’ (recalling the title of the Laudato si), because ‘our wellbeing is dependent on the health of our planet’ (2018:3 par 1). The booklet is described as a guide on ‘learning to live lightly’ (2018:3, par 1). This ‘journey’ (2018:3, par 1) could be viewed as part of an individual ecological conversion. The introduction further refers to ‘modern lifestyles’ and how they impact on the ‘finite resources’ (2018:3, par 2) of the Earth, with the resulting climate change caused by human uses of fossil fuel as well as the impacts of pollution.

The authors of the booklet make a statement relating to ecojustice, saying that they consider ‘the impact of climate change and fair access to resources’ as ‘moral issues’ (2018:3, par 2), from a faith-based perspective, once again aligning with Pope Francis’ opinions.

The images and concepts found in the text provide indications of interconnectedness and ecojustice, leading to the conclusion that it reflects a sincere environmental attitude, instead of a shallow, purely anthropocentric outlook.

The ‘Living Planet Report: Bending the curve of biodiversity loss’ was published in 2020, on behalf of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). The WWF is declared on their website as the ‘world’s leading conservation organization’ (WWF 2023). It was established in 1961 and, through expanding its focus beyond conservation over the years, it now aims to ‘keep the planet in balance for people, wildlife, and the planet’ (WWF 2023).

As an influential organisation with considerable financial resources, the WWF has been criticised for overriding local concerns regarding conservation projects. They have been accused of influencing public media to present a favourable image and of tailoring projects to attract wealthy donors, resulting in projects viewed as eco-colonialism in developing countries (Luke 1997:32–42).

The Living Planet Report (LPR) is a comprehensive report, compiling global data on the state of the planet and the species inhabiting nature. The main theme is that wildlife has declined by almost 70% in the period since 1970, mostly because of habitat encroachment and the exploitation of natural resources by human society (eds. Almond, Grooten & Petersen 2020).

At the start of the executive summary of the report (pp. 6–8), the use of words such as ‘decline’, ‘fall’ and ‘decrease’ (2020:6) emphasises the reduction in the populations of wild animals detected worldwide. The seriousness and urgency of the situation have apocalyptic connotations. The apocalyptic undercurrent is strengthened further by referring to the extinction of species, ‘destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented’, as well as the loss of natural habitats, for example, ‘increasingly destroyed and degraded forests’ (2020:6). The outlook from the results of the comprehensive survey is extremely bleak; however, the report concludes that the trajectory of the ‘curve’ (2020:8) can be flattened and that a sustainable human society is possible. Unfortunately, the precise mechanism of how this can be achieved is not discussed in detail; however, that may not have been the purpose of the report. The reader is left with a feeling of discrepancy between the seriousness of the results and the optimism of the conclusions.

Besides evidence of the principles of interconnectedness and belonging (‘perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic will spur us on to embrace this unexpected opportunity and revolutionise how we take care of our home’, 2020:8), and the apocalyptic sentiments referred to above, the overall focus of the report is on human welfare (‘our economic prosperity’, 2020:7) and does not provide convincing signs of a sincere approach to the environment. It can therefore be assumed to be based on a shallow, or primarily anthropocentric, environmental ecosophy.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an independent, non-profit group founded to promote global economic cooperation (WEF 2023). It released a report in 2021 that reflects some main conclusions about the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on world economies (WEF 2021). As part of this study, the preface was analysed.

An important statement from the report is that a previous WEF report predicted in 2006 that ‘the risk of a global pandemic’ (WEF 2021:5) as a result of increasing global interconnectedness would have serious impacts on human society. The lack of preparedness to face this threat is exacerbated by the increasing ‘existential threat’ (WEF 2021:5) of the environmental crisis. The report, therefore, links the COVID-19 pandemic with the global interconnectedness of human society and the environmental crisis.

These threats increase the ‘need for global collaboration’ (WEF 2021:5) to protect the future of the next generation – referring to intergenerational justice – while also using words with apocalyptic implications (‘alarm’, ‘lethal’, ‘acute threat’, ‘severe’ and ‘longer term harms’, 2021:5), indicating a deterioration in global stability. Evidence of this deterioration has been evident in the years after the pandemic in an escalation of global conflicts, a rise in social unrest in various countries and growing food shortages because of climate change (Denzin & Giardina 2021:8).

This report contains some evidence of apocalyptic sentiments (used to emphasise the seriousness of the statements), and it underlines the results of increased human interconnectedness. It also highlights the responsibility of the current generation towards future generations (intergenerational justice) and the obligations of global leaders to take decisive action in light of the environmental crisis. While it exclusively focuses on human society and not on the Earth, it still provides an alternative perspective and useful evidence to support the conclusions gained from the excerpts of the other documents that were studied.