Ethics in action for sustainable development
edited by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Owen Flanagan, William Vendley, Anthony Annett, and Jesse Thorson ; foreword by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
"In June 2015, Pope Francis published Laudato si', a magisterial vision of ecological flourishing and integral human development. At a meeting opened by Pope Francis in September 2015, world leaders came together at the United Nations to adopt Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In December of that same year, the same 193 member states of the UN met in Paris to adopt the Paris Climate Agreement. Between October 2016 and December 2018, Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo (Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences) and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs (University Professor, Columbia University) led a project titled Ethics in Action. Inspired by the leadership and vision of Pope Francis and guided by the framework of the SDGs, this initiative convened a core group of about 40 religious leaders, philosophers, practitioners, and scientists to explore the possibility of a shared moral vision of human flourishing that could ground sustainable development principles, practices, and actions. At 11 meetings this core group engaged in dialogue on the values and ethics (religious and secular) needed for addressing various challenges of sustainabl e development (poverty, peace and conflict, the refugee crisis, environmental justice, and the future of work). Enlisting the participation of international religious leaders has become increasingly important in framing efforts to obtain global consensus on environmental and many other issues. Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development reflects the thoughtful planning behind this initiative to ensure diversity and intellectual depth by capturing the religious and ethical thought of over 30 of its leaders and core members based on two years' worth of discussion and reflection on the ethical consensus needed to advance the SDGs. No other volume on sustainability and ethics or religion and ecology reflects such a sustained deliberative effort, with institutional support from groups like the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, the University of Notre Dame, Religions for Peace, Columbia University, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)."
