會議地點：越南胡志明市；時間：2009.12.18 - 2010.01.03；大會主題：傑出的女性修行者與典範=Eminent Buddhist Women
摘要
Environmental consciousness, commonly referred to as environmental ethics, is the foundation for our attitudes towards the environment. Environmental ethics raises deep questions about individual responsibility for the well-being of nature, which is linked to our very survival on this planet. Women in traditional societies tend to be conservationists, because of their responsibilities for securing food, fuel, and water. Realizing that their labor burdens increase due to scarcity or depletion of natural resources, rural women have a high level of interest in conserving natural resources. These women are the most severely affected when there is shortage of fuel or when their environment is degraded, for example, by the pollution of water sources or deforestation.
Several forums in the international arena, such as The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), have helped draw attention to the issues of women and gender in resource and environmental management. As a result, rural women are viewed in a new light and their contributions to environmental integrity have been recognised. At the other end of the spectrum are urban women whose lives are minimally connected to their natural environment, if at all. Being cut off from the natural environment invokes a false sense of independence, which further alienates them from understanding the link between environmental integrity and their own well-being, a connection that is generally well understood by rural women.
At this point, it would make absolute sense to reflect on Buddhist women and the environment. First, the vast majority of women from Buddhist countries lives close to their natural environment and are steeped in poverty. These women generally perform subsistence-based work, with little or no cash return. The low wage-earning power of women in traditional societies contributes to the low status of women in household and society, effectively silencing their voices in the community, including their ability to voice their concerns about the degradation of their environment. In contrast, urban women have more rights to self-determination, which they seldom utilize either to stand up for their rural sisters in safeguarding their natural environment or to adopt a lifestyle with a minimal impact on the environment. Although urban Buddhist women are intricately interconnected with their rural sisters in the complex web of life, they often forfeit the opportunity to indirectly contribute to the well-being of their sisters in developing countries or in rural areas in their own countries.
The primary objective of this paper is to showcase the link between environmental protection and global poverty, and its impact on women and Buddhists generally in developing countries. The paper also aims to raise awareness among urban Buddhist women about the importance of environmental protection by prescribing a combination of ethical, scientific, and economic responses to environmental degradation. It is founded on the premise that “It is no longer possible to discuss environmental change without addressing social change; moreover, it is not possible to address women's oppression without addressing environmental degradation.”
