This year, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’. Given the ten years since its promulgation by Pope Francis, do we find ourselves in a better world? If not, have we at least, as individuals and as a community, found a clear path that leads to integral ecology? It seems to be the experience of many that authentic ecological conversion is still wanting in many of the different critical fronts that we face. Why is that? Why is addressing the various ecological and social crises of our time not bearing significant fruit? Perhaps we need to take a step back and notice some cultural worldviews that have embedded themselves in how we regard each other and our common home.
Current Ecological Context
A brief scan of the present ecological situation of our planet doesn’t give us an encouraging picture. For example, average global temperatures for 2025 are on track to make this year the second or third hottest on record, with 2024 still holding the top spot. As we know, among the number of consequences of higher temperatures are more intense storms, such as those we’ve experienced in recent years. A second example is our failure to regulate plastic production and pollution. Last August, the United Nations Environment Programme gathered 1,400 member delegates from 183 countries with the hope of reaching a global treaty that would limit the manufacture of plastic. However, vested interests came in the way of a consensus and the talks eventually failed. Without such a treaty, it is estimated that plastic waste could triple by 2060. Finally, it was reported last October that the tipping point for coral reef dieback has been reached, the first of other environmental tipping points. Surely, the demise of coral reefs will have serious cascading effects upon many species, including ourselves.
Despite all our sincere efforts, why does it seem that the global situation is still getting worse? To answer this question, it might be helpful to take a brief look at our collective history and see how it has influenced our view of each other and of creation.
Enclosure and Colonization
In England, during the 1500s, feudalism had weakened through peasant revolts and the effects of the Black Plague. The elites then stepped in and initiated a process that was later called the Enclosure Movement. During this period, rich landowners further increased their wealth and holdings, either through law decree or through violence, by fencing off large tracks of land for their own private use. Since much of the land they acquired was commonly used by the peasant majority, enclosures displaced a great number of people, disconnecting them from the land. The disparity was so great that by the end of the 1800s, only 0.6% of Englishmen owned 98.5% of agricultural lands. Enclosure began in England but also spread to other countries in Western Europe in later years.
Around the same time that enclosure was ramping up in England, colonization of foreign lands was being initiated by Spain and Portugal. From the late 1400s to the early 1900s, European countries sailed across the seas to conquer and claim other lands. Beginning with Christopher Columbus who landed in the Americas in 1492, colonizers seized and subjugated lands together with their inhabitants, seeking valuable materials and produce to bring back for their mother country’s economic benefit and status. Repeatedly, the process of colonization marginalized the indigenous communities who were forced to surrender their sovereignty to the powers that be.
Enclosure and colonization had very similar dynamics and were really two sides of the same movement of wealth acquisition. Karl Marx would later name this process as “primitive accumulation,” where violent acts of expropriation were used as foundation for the amassing of wealth leading to the rise of capitalism.
Ideas that Supported Conquest
Enclosure and colonization began with brute force and violence, imposing their will upon weaker communities. The elites then found support in the writings of philosophers such as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, whose ideas of mechanistic philosophy and dualistic ontology provided justification for their actions. Although the elites were powerful enough to alter social structures in their favor, they still needed to change the people’s cultural worldview. They also needed a new way of looking at nature.
1) Nature is to be conquered and exploited
Bacon was one of the prominent thinkers of the time, eventually credited to be the father of empiricism and a pioneer of the scientific method. He was also known to use tyrannical metaphors to describe the relationship between man and nature. In implementing the scientific method, Bacon believed that nature was to be regarded as a “common harlot,” to be “restrained,” “bound,” and “kept in order.” He argued that it was the rightful place of nature to be “bound into service” and treated like a “slave,” to be “forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded” to meet man’s desires. Man not only had the right but the responsibility to subject nature to coercion, to use science and its methods to “torture nature’s secrets out of her.”
2) Nature is just a machine, it is not alive and has no spirit
Not only was nature to be conquered and exploited, according to Bacon, but also to be regarded as something that was collectively not alive. Through its creatures, nature might seem to have life, but it is only an illusion, its motion to be understood as that of a machine. Descartes built upon the mechanistic views of Bacon, and thought that it would be so much easier to conquer and exploit nature if it was rendered lifeless. Descartes pointed out that there was a fundamental dichotomy between spirit and matter. Spirit was alive, and matter was not; it had no life, no agency, no intention or motivation. Humans were associated with spirit, while everything else fell on the side of matter, including nature. Nature was governed by predictable mechanical laws, much like the parts of a mechanical clock. From the 1600s onwards, these ideas came to dominate the scientific field and popular culture.
3) Nature is just an object
If nature had no spirit, then it followed that it was simply a collection of inanimate objects. Once nature was regarded as just an object, whatever ethical constraints remained in the minds of the elites, or hesitations against subjugation of land and its people, were taken away. With nature as object, they were free to do whatever they wished with it. Land became property, living beings became things, and ecosystems became natural resources.
One contemporary question comes from this way of thinking. Are we free to do with animals as we wish? Do animals have spirits, or do animals have souls? Will we meet our beloved pets in heaven? The uncertainty of our answers to these questions reveal that we have been conditioned to believe that all of nature is just an object and that non-human creation has no meaningful part in God’s plan of salvation.
There’s More to Laudato Si’
Several hundred years later, we find ourselves heirs of dualistic ontology. Our worldview is practically still the same: nature is simply an object, a natural resource to be exploited for our own gain, within which nothing of the divine resides. This ethic remains profoundly entrenched in our global culture today. That is one of the reasons why ecological conversion is not that easy. Living Laudato Si’ means so much more than planting trees and managing waste; it entails developing cultural and social structures that are based on respect, kinship, and relational ontology.
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Fr. Gabriel Lamug-Nañawa, SJ is the Philippine Province Assistant for Ecological Justice, Coordinator of the Reconciliation with Creation network of JCAP, and Grade School Chaplain of Ateneo de Naga University. He was also a missionary to Cambodia for 17 years.