The right to development, integral human development, and integral ecology in the Amazon

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses the reorientation of environmental protection in Amazonia away from the paradigm of individual and collective natural resource management of regional or global commons, to the more radical thesis of Integral Ecology as the vindication of human dignity, environmental stewardship and collective responsibility – a concept deeply related to the Church’s own pioneering of Integral Human Development as the ‘authentic development of every person and of the whole person’. 2 Under the concept of Integral Ecology, we argue that this expressive elaboration of the Catholic Church’s core social teaching of Integral Human Development ultimately hearkens more closely to the broad definition of the Right to Development in the Draft UN Convention on the Right to Development, which recognises development ‘that is consistent with, and based on, all other human rights and fundamental freedoms’. 3 As seen in the Final Document of the Amazon Synod, 4 Integral Ecology does not put forward an anthropocentric vision of environmental protection that seeks mainly to balance human extractive and consumption needs with environmental preservation objectives, but rather reinforces the shared identity of the Earth and its inhabitants, and our collective human responsibility to care for ‘our common home’. 5 Nowhere is this unique relationship and interconnectedness of the Right to Development, Integral Human Development, and Integral Ecology more vividly illustrated than in the interdependence of the peoples and the natural environment of the Amazon.