The UN Biodiversity Conference is a last ditch effort to safeguard the living world. We shouldrespond with the spirit of the Bodhisattva

What are animals for? Or plants, fish and insects? The utilitarian answer is obvious in Wales, where I live: a country of three million people, and eleven million sheep bred for wool and meat. Animals, from this perspective, are here to serve us.

Put that starkly, many of us would rebel, and COP 15, the UN Biodiversity Conference starting today in Montreal, Canada, marks a growing awareness that viewing the elements of the non-human world as ‘natural resources’ has led us to destroy habitats and leave a million species, globally, on the edge of extinction.

Even the argument that we should preserve the environment to safeguard the climate seems too limited. For several decades the life sciences have taught us to view the natural world as a matrix of dynamic, overlapping ecosystems that comprise a single, vast biosphere. Understanding that we are part of nature, not its guardians, challenges our individual self-preoccupation and our shared, human-focused priorities. It also resonates with the Buddhist ideal of the bodhisattva: ‘the Awakening Being’. 

The paradox of Buddhism is that it asks people to follow a path leading to their  own liberation, but says that liberation comes when we abandon selfishness. The bodhisattva resolves this by undertaking to follow the path compassionately, for the sake of all beings, not their own. The bodhisattva vows: ‘Beings are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it. The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.’

That’s a daunting aspiration and it helps to recall that the path starts with practical, daily steps. But, faced with climate change and the biodiversity crisis, I think we need the Bodhisattva outlook. The crisis is overwhelming, the forces driving it seem unstoppable, and we often feel incapable. But the bodhisattva spirit tells us to engage all the same – yes, for our own sakes and our children’s, but ultimately for the sake of all beings. 

For some species there’s still time and if religion, spirituality or ethical values mean anything today, I think we must respond. The UN conference aims to adopt a Global Biodiversity Framework to halt the damage to plants, animals and ecosystems. For other species, it’s too late, and all we can do now is recall their names: the pied raven, the Caspian tiger, the Western Black Rhino, Bachman’s Warbler.