140. Due to the number and variety of factors to be taken into account when determining the
environmental impact of a concrete undertaking, it is essential to give researchers their due role, to
facilitate their interaction, and to ensure broad academic freedom. Ongoing research should also give
us a better understanding of how different creatures relate to one another in making up the larger units
which today we term “ecosystems”. We take these systems into account not only to determine how
best to use them, but also because they have an intrinsic value independent of their usefulness. Each
organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself; the same is true of the harmonious
ensemble of organisms existing in a defined space and functioning as a system. Althoughwe are often
not aware of it, we depend on these larger systems for our own existence. We need only recall how
ecosystems interact in dispersing carbon dioxide, purifying water, controlling illnesses and epidemics,
forming soil, breakingdownwaste, and inmany otherways whichwe overlookor simplydo not know
about. Once they become conscious of this, many people realize that we live and act on the basis of a
realitywhichhas previouslybeen given to us, which precedes our existence andour abilities. So, when
we speak of “sustainable use”, consideration must always be given to each ecosystem’s regenerative
ability in its different areas and aspects.
141. Economic growth, for its part, tends to produce predictable reactions and a certain
standardization with the aim of simplifying procedures and reducing costs. This suggests the need for
an “economic ecology” capable of appealing to a broader vision of reality. The protection of the
environment is in fact “an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in
isolation from it”.
114
We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of
knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision. Today, the
analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from the analysis of human, family, work-
related and urban contexts, nor from how individuals relate to themselves, which leads in turn to how
they relate to others and to the environment. There is an interrelation between ecosystems and between
the various spheres of social interaction, demonstrating yet again that “the whole is greater than the
part”.
115
114
RioDeclarationon Environment andDevelopment
(14 June1992), Principle4.
115
ApostolicExhortation
EvangeliiGaudium
(24November 2013), 237:AAS105 (2013), 1116.
