OUR COMMON HOME FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: PERSPECTIVE OF THE TRIBES IN INDIA

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UPFII) in New York, during its annual conference in 2012, pointed out that the Maori Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand believed that they had not inherited the earth from their ancestors but borrowed it from their children. In this belief, there is a paradigm shift in the understanding of Our Common Home and the way in which Mother earth could be sustained. However, despite international treatises on climate change from the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to the Paris Agreement (2015), not much has changed in the world. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) promotes good practices in view of sustaining the earth. However, in the context of India, the indigenous peoples seem to be fighting a losing battle. Government’s efforts of amending the tribes friendly Chotanagpur Tenancy Act 1908, and dilution of the Forest Rights Act 2006 and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Act 2013, are only a few examples of insensitivity to the future of our planet. The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023 and the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021, were passed in the Parliament despite representations from state governments, State Biodiversity Boards, civil society institutions, conservationists, and activists criticizing the amendments. The tribes of India have cultural mechanisms for sustaining the earth, they call jal, jungle, zameen, meaning water, forest, land. These are embedded in their society, to preserve, protect and promote ecological balance. This resonates well with Father General’s Letter on Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs), and specifically on Our Common Home. In view of sustainability of the future, we are invited to personally and collectively change our lifestyle and mind-set as Laudato Si’ of Pope Francis has articulated, to make this planet a little better place to live in.