Good Lands
= project that aims for the ecological use of land owned by catholic religious communities [1]
URL = http://www.good-lands.org/
Description
1.
"GoodLands is mobilizing the Catholic Church to use her land for good. We provide the information and tools to help the Church use her property wisely to enhance all her existing ministries and missions -- to care for creation, to end homelessness, to welcome the stranger, to deliver programs and services to the right places and at the right times, and to support her own fiscal sustainability."
2.
"His Holiness Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ invites us to contemplate the earth as a resplendent illustration of God’s infinite creativity and love, and a gift which we must tend to with care. He discusses the grave consequences that not caring for our common home have in a world where life’s most basic functions and needs are integrally interconnected. We have an urgent mandate to care for our common home and regenerate places and ecosystem functions that humanity has destroyed.
GoodLands is founded on the belief that the way we use our properties has a moral dimension. Well coordinated land-use and land-management strategies foster a clean environment, promote public health, address social justice concerns, add beauty to the world, support life in its many species, and allow us to glorify God through our care for Creation. Well planned buildings help current programs thrive, and can support urgent community development programs, housing, and be sources of fiscal sustainability for communities.
GoodLands works with dioceses, religious orders, foundations, large-scale institutional landholders, and other Catholic decision-makers to increase their understanding of their landholdings and to facilitate informed planning of their landholdings so that they may be leveraged as a powerful force for positive environmental and social change, while helping them meet their own community's needs.
GoodLands Research studies how ecclesiastical lands are currently affecting and could positively impact ecosystems, health, habitat, and communities. Our research is supported by partnerships with major technology companies, student work with top research institutes (such as Yale's Forestry and Environmental Science School), and a network of contributing experts. We made history as the first organization to make a global map of all ecclesiastical jurisdictions tied in with decades of demographic and property data about the Church. We have mapped tens of thousands of Catholic-affiliate properties within the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops and information about them, and we are working with our Spatial Data Infrastructure partners to develop a dynamic map of Catholic property around the world. We combine our geospatial database of Catholic information with environmental and social information that is linked to geographies that help us to understand the environmental, social, and economic contexts of each property.
Pope Francis states, “In the face of possible risks to the environment which may affect the common good now and in the future, decisions must be made based on a comparison of the risks and benefits foreseen for the various possible alternatives. This is especially the case when a project may lead to a greater use of natural resources… or significant changes to the landscape, the habitats of protected species or public spaces” (Laudato Si’, par. 184). A strong foundation in scientific analyses lays the foundation for our holistic land-use planning and reduces the risk of environmental destruction and social conflict from poor land-use decision making." (http://www.good-lands.org/ecclesiastical-land-planning.html)