Economic Justice and the Global Ethic Document

Global economic inequality remains one of the most pressing moral concerns of the contemporary world. Globalization has benefited some at the expense of many, and despite moderate progress against extreme poverty around the globe, 4.3 billion people around the world continue to subsist on less than $5 per day. Many lack the ability to meet basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, education, and healthcare. Meanwhile, the global ‘haves’ in the developed world continue to consume a disproportionate share of global resources. Given the ecological limits faced by planet earth, this economic disparity is unsustainable. And yet, it seems as though the world moves ever farther away from economic parity and justice. In 1993, the Declaration of Toward a Global Ethic recognized the need for solidarity and a just economic order as one of its four core directives. In 2018, a fifth directive calling for ecological sustainability was added. Together, these directives offer moral resources for reflecting on the need for both economic and ecological justice across the globe, and can serve as the groundwork for moral reflection across religious traditions on the need to create a just and sustainable economic framework. This panel will bring together participants from a number of religious perspectives to consider what economic justice and ecological sustainability could mean in light of these directives. We will explore the implications of creating a model of solidarity with environmental care within different religious traditions, and the social and political obstacles to be overcome in doing so. Given the limits of the earth’s resources, and the need to care for those on the margins of society, the question of how to create a set of social conditions that is both capable of supporting humanity over the long term and achieving a rough equality across the globe is one of the most significant challenges facing humanity. The Global Ethic can provide tools for overcoming this challenge.