Religion, Science & Environment.

Symposium V The Baltic Sea  ”A Common Heritage, a Shared Responsibility”. June 1. – 8. 2003

Response from Kurt Bertelsen Christensen, Denmark

I participated in the Symposium from the 31st of May-7th of June, and I would like to share my experiences with the many people, who were responsible for the implementation of this symposium.

At first, I would like to thank for an exciting and very well implemented meeting on the Baltic Sea on board the good ship Ocean Monarch. It offered a perfect setting with a crew that met us all with great openness and many smiles. The responsible for the symposium, headed by Maria Becket, did a remarkable job. Their efforts meant that the whole symposium with its wide and intensive program became a great experience for us participants. Many thanks to all.

But why did that week’s meeting on the Baltic Sea become a complete success?

In terms of logistics, a cruise ship is a unique meeting place with space for common conferences, work shops and conversation. Furthermore, the Ocean Monarch is a wonderful ship; build in the 1970s, when they still knew how to build ships with a reasonable balance between good craftsmanship and the luxury, which I guess we all connect with a cruise. When you leaned on the gunwale to look out into the horizon, you were placing your elbows on a piece of very beautiful and well kept wood. There was brass everywhere, shining with renewed intensity every day. A lovely ship – and a perfect setting for the discussions.

The symposium was officially opened in Gdynia, Poland, with the reading of a letter rich with content from the Pope in Rome, who wished us good luck on the journey and underlined the importance of we people taking care of nature. The Patriarch Bartholomev added to the good wishes from the Pope with a speech, wherein he emphasized that we as the only reason in nature, also have the responsibility for nature.

Then followed one of the most impressive speakers of this symposium. The Metropolitan John of Pergamon spoke of the origin of humans in the Biblical and Darwinist teachings. Although the picture is still not perfectly clear to me, I gather that the overall project of John of Pergamon is to create a logical connection between the fact that we people are animals – and the Christian belief which says that we are created in the image of God. This is a vast project, and I would have liked to elaborate on this, but I will restrict myself here to the themes which had the biggest significance for this symposium. John of Pergamon asked us to think about, whether humans are administrators of nature or priests in nature. Is the human characterized by what it does, or by what it is? And here I think we come near to the core of our common responsibility – common, because here the question about whether we believe in God or not, is transcended. If we are only administrators, we can always turn away from the big responsibility with reference to God, presidents, or other authorities. If, on the other hand, we are priests in our common nature, our reason will tell us that nature is our responsibility, and this responsibility becomes very extensive, from not throwing plastic in the sea, to insisting in front of the authorities that there be fish in the sea, also for the generations following us.

The speech from John of Pergamon was often referred to in the following discussions, meetings and conversations.

Eight plenary sessions were held, with a lot of much extinguished speakers:

-         Dr. Vandana Shiva from India. Dr. Shiva became my, and probably this goes for many participants, guiding star on the Baltic, in this week in June 2003. A blessed speaker, with a power of heart and reason, which seems much like the power Jesus himself must have possessed, when he cleared the temple in Jerusalem. Vandana spoke and documented to us the monstrosities, which are inflicted on us by apparently uncontrollable companies like the Monsanto. How they with lies and manipulations take away the genetic inheritance from even the poorest inhabitants of our world. How they secure themselves monopoly rights of plants and seed corn, so that also the poor must pay dearly to get food on the table. And this is or will be food, which according to Dr. Vandana has lost many of the essential vitamins, which the original crops carried with them. I wouldn’t say that I have been doubting about my position towards the possibilities of gene technology within food supply, but at least I must admit to have been somewhat hesitant. I am not anymore. I say with Dr. Vandana Shiva – gene technology must get out from our food supplies – NOW!

-         Dr. Robert Lange from the USA. Dr. Lange was not in the list of speakers, but was very active in the discussions, and to the question about war and conflicts, he said: ”We will not have peace, until we learn to love the children of our neighbours as our own.” This view receives great strength from Robert’s own life.

-         Professor Serge Latouche from Frankrig. Prof. Latouche has a project, which contains an elaborate attack on the concepts and contents of the ”development” project – i.e. the development aid from the rich world to the poor. “Sustainable development” is, according to Prof. Latouche impossibility. Therefore, he concludes, if the development, in terms of a higher degree of balance between the rich and the poor world, shall succeed, it must as a minimum requirement be unsustainable. Latouche was emphatically supported by Edward Goldsmith of the USA, founder of The Ecologist, and Carl Jacob von Uexkull from Sweden, founder of the alternative Nobel Prize in support of nature and humans.

-         Neal Ascherson, who with great clarity and sense of humour talked about ecological justice, and how the Western model leads to injustice, Dr. Richard Chartres, bishop of London, spoke about the same theme, with a deep and warm voice, which reached every corner of the Ocean Monarch, and surrounded you by knowledge and care.

-         Dr. Elliott Norse, USA spoke about and showed the destructions, which accompany trawling in fishery. Everyone who heard him had to surrender to the logic, which Dr. Norse presented, in text and images. After the presentation, I and others had to ask the question why in the world we effectively promote and develop the trawling at the expense of more gentle fisheries.

It is not possible here to do justice to all the speakers and participants. There were many rich and thought provoking speeches – the above mentioned had my highest attention.

It was this unique mixture of people from the worlds of religion, science, politics and civil society, which created an atmosphere, where it was allowed to speak about that, which we otherwise, according to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein are not allowed to speak about. (Although I must say that exactly the direct, practical and political engagement of the participants in fact was very much in the spirit of the great Austrian thinker, and I think he would if not bless, then at least support this conference.)

My conclusion on the Baltic Sea Symposium is that we must start believing more in that which we know. We have to believe that it is in fact true that trawling in rocks and stone is destructive, even though some parts of science claim that it has not been proved. We have to believe that the industrial fishery for small fish for fish meal and oil is damaging to the marine ecosystem, even though parts of science claim that there has been made no evidence of this. We must believe in that which we know, and this belief must press the politicians to implement the necessary politics.

-         Many years ago, a group of French philosophers from the 68-generation said: ”We knew very well that something had gone terribly askew in the Soviet Union – that people were send to camps, etc. But it was only when we read Aleksander Solsjenitsyn’s book Gulag Archipelago that we dared believe in that which we already knew.”

Comments on the program and closing remarks

Even though I have participated in conferences and seminars on many occasions before, it is not in these connections, I spend my time. I often decide not to, because my head becomes tired, I lose the energy after just a short while. On the Ocean Monarch, the exact opposite happened. Here, I was charged with energy to such an extent that I was in fact able to participate from 7 in the morning till 1 in the night every day. Such stamina is most unusual for me at conferences and theoretical seminars.

There were good and relevant presentations and accompanying discussions. However, I missed some contributions from the fishing industry, agriculture, and industrial production. Something along the line of the contribution from Hannu Nilsen of the Finnish paper industry UMP-Kymmene, who gave us a thorough introduction to the environmental politics of that corporation.

The influences to the environment and natural resources from cargo transport, fishery and agriculture received considerable attention on this symposium, and it would have been beneficial if there had been more representatives from these trades, like fishermen who could give their view on the future of the fishery in the Baltic Sea, the role of industry and agriculture in the future, etc.

-         It would have been interesting, for example, to hear the manager of one big fishing industry at Bornholm tell about how his company has profited from the many landings of cod from the Baltic and Polish fishermen, who started landing their catches on Bornholm in the early nineties. How the company traded tools for fish and how the many fishermen from Poland and the Baltic countries were forced to switching from catching sprat and herring to cod fishery, with the result that companies in the Baltic countries and Poland lost their raw material of sprat and herring, which led to a situation in the early nineties, where Danish fishermen had to send up to 20,000 tons of herring to the east as a kind of emergency aid.

Such discussions would have been even more concrete and demanded high attention to the complex situation, which is the stage of the improvements and actions we must favour if we take the role of priests in nature seriously. However, the symposium gave very nutritious food for thought all the same, and I believe that it gave us all a very strong spiritual contribution to the work, which lies ahead. If we are doubting and hesitating about that which we already know, we are bound to fail. Only the deeply felt belief that we have the responsibility as the only reason in nature to take care of nature can make us focus on the destruction and damage of the marine environment and demand that it is stopped. The scientific or legal evidence might be on the way, but it is delayed by the colossal abundance of interests among managers and administrators. The responsibility lies in cutting through this fog of interests and manipulations and demanding that which we all deep down know to be true. The responsibility lies in starting to believe it.

With great reverence,

Yours truly

Kurt Bertelsen Christensen

Ferring Strand 30.06.2003 

Kurt Bertelsen Christensen
Chairman of The Danish Society for a Living Sea.
Juelsgaardvej 27, Ferring Strand
DK-7620 Lemvig
Phone 00 45 97 89 54 55
Fax 0045 97 89 54 55
Mail kbc@levende-hav.dk
www.levendehav.dk