Ġ. F. ABELA JUNIOR COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA THE DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMS OF KNOWLEDGE SEMINARS ENVIRONMENT WHEN Wednesday, January 28, 2015 2.15p.m.-3.45p.m. WHERE Room 247, Junior College KEYNOTE SPEAKERS PROF. ALAN DEIDUN PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY UNIT, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA MS. CLAIRE CORDINA BORG MEPA MS. GRETA MUSCAT AZZOPARDI MALTA WATER ASSOCIATION FR. MARK CIANTAR OFM MALTESE ARCHDIOCESE COMMISSION FOR THE ENVIRONMENT KEY QUESTIONS What constitutes the Environment? Do the Maltese actually care about the environment? What is the role of the Environment Protection within MEPA? This seminar is organised in collaboration with JC Chaplaincy and EuroCentre, Junior College.
Transcript
Ġ. F. ABELA JUNIOR COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA THE DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMS OF KNOWLEDGE SEMINARS
ENVIRONMENT WHEN Wednesday, January 28, 2015 2.15p.m.-3.45p.m.
WHERE Room 247, Junior College
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS PROF. ALAN DEIDUN PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY UNIT, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA MS. CLAIRE CORDINA BORG MEPA MS. GRETA MUSCAT AZZOPARDI MALTA WATER ASSOCIATION FR. MARK CIANTAR OFM MALTESE ARCHDIOCESE COMMISSION FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
KEY
QUESTIONS What constitutes the Environment? Do the Maltese actually care about the environment? What is the role of the Environment Protection within MEPA?
This seminar is
organised in
collaboration with
JC Chaplaincy
and EuroCentre,
Junior College.
Ġ. F. ABELA JUNIOR COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA THE DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMS OF KNOWLEDGE SEMINARS
INTRODUCTION
Keynote speakers, colleagues and students, as Subject Coordinator of Systems of
Knowledge, I welcome you to this seminar about the Environment. The organisation of
the seminar was worked out in collaboration with JC chaplaincy, particularly Fr. Marco
Portelli, and from the Euro Centre Ms. Boryana Chaneva and Ms. Kerry Chetcuti. Here I
would like to add a note of thanks to the following for their support: from the
Administration side Mr. Paul Xuereb, Principal and Dr. Philip Caruana Vice-Principal,
Secretaries of the Principal. Mr. Daniel Cioffi for helping us set up the audio visual.
This year, Junior College is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Taking in consideration
the Syllabus of Systems of Knowledge, we know that this subject since its inception in
1987, was formulated to allow one to experiment with ideas that move beyond the
particular areas of other subjects. One fourth this syllabus is dedicated to Sustainable
Development and the Environment. Students can select the Environment as one of the
fields to work out their Systems of Knowledge Project.
Today, one way to look at the environment is to see it as an ‘aggregate of surrounding
things like air, water, minerals, organisms, and other external factors which affect the life
of an organism’. We have also heard that development stresses the relation between
organisms and the environment, in a manner that the definition of sustainable
development which resulted from the Brundtland report sounds like a cliché. The
Brundtland report points to us that development to be sustainable have to maintain, ‘the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs.’ But as in Systems of Knowledge we can approach the strained relation
between organisms and the environment from a political, aesthetic, scientific and
technological perspective.
Ġ. F. ABELA JUNIOR COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF MALTA THE DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMS OF KNOWLEDGE SEMINARS
The three keynote speakers present here: Ms. Claire Cordina Borg from Malta
Environment and Planning Authority,, Ms. Greta Muscat Azzopardi from Malta Water
Association and Fr. Mark Ciantar from the Maltese Archdiocese Commission for the
Environment. As their bionotes prove, their experience in these various institutions and
organisations, will allow them to elucidate a number of points about our current state of
local environmental issues and how we can possibly extend our care so that Maltese
future generations will not be crippled to meet their own needs.
O N E T H I R D O F T H E W O R L D ’ S S H I P P I N G T R A F F I C PA S S E S B Y T H E M A LT E S E I S L A N D S A N D S I C I LY
O I L S P I L L / I S S U E S W I T H F U E L S U P P L I E S
!
= !
N O R E V E R S E O S M O S I S P L A N T S N O P O L I S H I N G P L A N T S
N O T R E AT M E N T P L A N T S N O P O W E R S TAT I O N
= N O D R I N K I N G WAT E R
S O L U T I O N S ?
R E N E W A B L E E N E R G Y
U S E O F T S E
R E C Y C L E
S O U R C E : M A R C O C R E M O N A
God put men and women on earth “to till it and
keep it” (cfr Gen 2, 15)
General Audience of Pope Francis, 5th June 2013
By Fr. Mark Ciantar OFM
• The verb “cultivate” reminds us of the care a farmer takes to ensure that his land will
be productive and that his produce will be shared: what great attention, enthusiasm
and dedication!
• Cultivating and caring for creation is an instruction of God which he gave not only at
the beginning of history, but has also given to each one of us; it is part of his plan; it
means making the world increase with responsibility, transforming it so that it may
be a garden, an inhabitable place for us all.
• This task entrusted to us by God the Creator requires us to grasp the pace and the
logic of creation. Instead we are often guided by the pride of dominating, possessing,
manipulating and exploiting; we do not “preserve” the earth, we do not respect it, we
do not consider it as a freely-given gift to look after.
• We are losing our attitude of wonder, of contemplation, of listening to creation and
thus we no longer manage to interpret in it “the rhythm of the love-story between
God and man”. This happens because we thinks and live horizontally, we have
drifted away from God, we no longer read his signs.
• The popes have spoken of a human ecology, closely connected with environmental
ecology.
• We are living in a time of crisis; we see it in the environment, but above all we see it
in men and women. The human person is in danger and the peril is grave, because
the cause of the problem is not superficial but deeply rooted. It is not merely a
question of economics but of ethics and anthropology.
• Thesystem continues unchanged since what dominates are the dynamics of an
economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who
commands, but money.
• God our Father gave us the task of protecting the earth — not for money, but for
ourselves: for men and women. We have this task! Nevertheless men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the “culture of waste”.
• If there are children in so many parts of the world who have nothing to eat, that is
not news, it seems normal. On the contrary, when the stock market drops 10 points in some cities, it constitutes a tragedy.
• This “culture of waste” tends to become a common mentality that infects everyone. Human life, the person, are no longer seen as a primary value to be respected and
safeguarded, especially if they are poor or disabled, if they are not yet useful — like the unborn child — or are no longer of any use — like the elderly person.
• This culture of waste has also made us insensitive to wasting and throwing out
excess foodstuffs, which is especially condemnable when, in every part of the world, unfortunately, many people and families suffer hunger and malnutrition.
• There was a time when our grandparents were very careful not to throw away any
left over food. Consumerism has induced us to be accustomed to excess and to the daily waste of food, whose value, which goes far beyond mere financial parameters,
we are no longer able to judge correctly. • Let us remember well, however, that whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were
stolen from the table of the poor, from the hungry!
