Healing a Broken World - Society of Jesus

Healing a Broken World
reclamation, microbial degradation of pollutants, and sustainable agriculture
hold promise for climate change mitigation. Our knowledge of nature can be
oriented toward developing new natural and technological resources. It is
crucial to recognize that science and technology have opened up the
possibility of organizing a sustainable economic process. A productive
process grounded in the generation of a more complex, dynamic, and
flexible technical structure, integrated with the global ecological process of
production and reproduction of natural resources, offers more versatile
options for sustainability than those that emerged from the valuation of
resources by means of market signs and sectored economic planning.
Furthermore, it allows for better space distribution of productive resources
and more equitable access to social wealth.
25] The integrated management of resources requires a policy combining
knowledge of science with knowledge of the different disciplines that
interact in these processes. Sustainable development presents a deeper and
more fundamental challenge than many researchers, practitioners, and
policy makers have yet supposed. It needs more than new technologies and
practices; it needs professionals willing and able to learn from those working
on the ground, the peasants and labourers; it needs supportive external
institutions; it needs local groups and institutions capable of managing
resources effectively; and above all, it needs policies that support these
features. It also requires us to look critically at the very nature of the way we
conceptualize sustainability and how it is to be achieved.
26] Strategies of integrated management of resources lead to research on the
properties and potential use of resources. It does so through the innovation
of more efficient processes of photosynthesis, phytochemical and
biochemical transformation, of new technologies of materials, and new
energy sources. Likewise, this perspective of development leads us to
revaluate, revive and improve an ensemble of traditional techniques and to
develop new practical and scientific expertise.
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