To protect the Earth and its people, religious orders invest in climate solutions
By Brian Roewe
EarthBeat
May 28, 2022
Increasingly, Jesuits in Canada are thinking about the boreal forest.
Covering 60% of the country, the vast biome is the largest intact forest in the world. It also plays a critical role in global efforts to address climate change, not just as a major carbon sink but through the increasingly valuable minerals underneath it that are key components for electric vehicles and batteries at the heart of a shift to renewable energy.
But how and where that mining occurs in Canada's boreal zone will have major ramifications for the nation's Indigenous communities, who make up the vast majority of the region's population. For the Jesuits, the scenario presents a call to collaborate with First Nations peoples to protect the forest as part of Catholic teaching on caring for creation.