Vatican City, Dec 15 (DPA) Pope Benedict XVI has delivered a strong new call for mankind to safeguard the environment, in his message for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace which falls Jan 1.
The message titled: “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation,” was issued by the Vatican on Tuesday, and comes as world leaders are participating in a summit on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Under Benedict, the Vatican has embraced so-called “clean energy,” announcing earlier this year plans to to spend 660 million dollars to create what will effectively be Europe’s largest solar power plant.

In the message, Benedict said threats arising from the neglect of the “earth and the natural goods that God has given us” are “no less troubling,” than wars, terrorism and human rights violations.

The 82-year-old pontiff reiterated some of the themes that have been shaping his pontificate since his 2005 election, including paying more attention to so-called “green issues”.

“Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of “environmental refugees”, people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it… in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement,” Benedict asked.

Environmental degradation is “often due to the lack of far-sighted official policies or to the pursuit of myopic economic interests,” Benedict said, stressing that future generations cannot be saddled with “the cost of our use of common” natural resources.

The pontiff said it is important to acknowledge the “historical responsibility of the industrialized countries”, among the causes of the “present ecological crisis”.

But he also stressed that less developed nations, and in particular, emerging economies, “are not exempt from their own responsibilities with regard to creation” and thus should also adopt measures to protect the environment.

Benedict however, warned against the effects of “ecocentrism and biocentrism”, which he said could lead to a “pantheism tinged with neo-paganism”.

These harmful notions, according to Benedict, seek to put humans on the same level as that of other living things, when in fact God has made man the “steward and administrator,” of creation, “a role which man must certainly not abuse, but also one which he may not abdicate”.