Ecological conversion: The spiritual shift the planet needs

When I visit places of natural heritage, at home or abroad, I like to stop and take in the view: rolling landscapes, clear waters, limestone caves and dramatic green mountains.

I look closely at the soil, the sunlight and the water systems that keep it all alive.

This kind of quiet observation pulls me out of myself. It becomes a spiritual interaction with Creation. I begin to value the life around me – the way nature renews itself, its biodiversity, and the water and sunlight that sustain it. I hear birdsong in the trees and see people walking by. It reminds me that life carries on, despite all the hardship and suffering in the world.

There is something spiritual in nature’s unity, goodness, beauty and truth. Watching it regenerates my soul and brings a sense of peace.

Here is the important point. There is a delicate ecosystem that sustains human life, animals and plants. Break its rules, and disaster will follow eventually.

Today’s climate crisis stems from breaking these rules. It comes from short-sighted development built on a belief in the right to exploit nature, backed by laws that protect that right, instead of adhering to principles that respect the ecosystem itself.

On 26 August, a glacial collapse and ice-rock avalanche in the Himalayas set off flash floods and debris flows along the Nepal-China border, killing well over a thousand people. It is a stark reminder of what rising temperatures can do when we ignore the harm we cause the ecosystem.

At its root is a lack of love and appreciation for the environment, and for the systems that keep the planet’s temperature in balance.

Malaysia has its own version of this problem. Those in authority do not always show due diligence before approving projects that damage the ecosystem.

Take limestone quarrying and marble mining in Perak. Environmental groups have long warned that it is causing lasting damage to ancient karst formations and threatens fragile cave ecosystems around Ipoh and the Kinta Valley.

Governance and conversion

Around the world, and here at home, ecological ignorance and injustice run deep in the way we govern ourselves. This calls for what might be termed ecological conversion.

That conversion has to be spiritual. Spirituality has the power to reshape our thoughts and desires around a moral sense of what is objectively true and real.

A spiritual shift raises hard questions about the development model that nations follow, both globally and locally. Genuine change means abandoning exploitative economic practices rooted in greed.

What Pope Francis meant

The late Pope Francis described ecological conversion as a deep, personal, spiritual change. It calls on humanity to see the Earth as a sacred gift from God, not an object to profit from.

This reframes the role of human beings. We become stewards of creation, tasked with protecting the garden of the Earth, rather than absolute owners.

It also entails integral ecology. Environmental damage cannot be separated from social justice because the poorest communities suffer most from climate breakdown.

Floods, storms and droughts have always happened naturally, driven by climate cycles such as El Nino.

But human-driven global warming is now altering the Earth’s water cycle. That makes these events more frequent, more severe and harder to predict.

Time to change course

It is time for decision-makers, both globally and nationally, to undergo this spiritual and ecological conversion, so they can act to limit the damage from climate change.

It can start with something simple. Take a walk. Notice the beauty and the life-giving, protective power of a varied landscape – its caves, clear waters, mountains and greenery.

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