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Notes from the Field- Ethics in Action for Sustainable and Integral Development

Casina Pio IV, Vatican City- October 31-November 1, 2016: Ethics in Action (EIA) convened for the first time, establishing its goal of advancing “sustainable and integral human development through an effective collaboration among world religions for the purpose of articulating universal values and ethical imperatives and indicating how such values and ethics might be applied in practice to address pressing global challenges.” This partnership, co-hosted by the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Religions for Peace, and the University of Notre Dame was founded by the Blue Chip Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, Christina Lee Brown and Jacqueline Corbelli.

EIA seeks to achieve its goal through three objectives:

  1. Build and give expression to a multi-religious ethical consensus on the moral obligation to address the eight global challenges;

  2. Develop strong global partnerships among multiple stakeholders in religious communities and throughout society who will collaborate to foster this consensus and set about its implementation;

  3. Mobilize religious communities themselves for robust advocacy in pursuit of activating the consensus for local-to-global problem solving.

Established during this meeting:

Achieving the three core goals of sustainable development — eliminating poverty, ending exclusion, and protecting creation—demands the application of universal ethical principles such as human dignity, social justice, the common good, and shared wellbeing. As Laudato Si’ demonstrated, the major world religions can and must play a pivotal role in both articulating and achieving common goals for our “common home.” The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are remarkable in their testimony to the powerful convergence of values and aspirations resonant in so many disparate nations of the world.

This extraordinary and promising synergy among religious, social, and political leaders needs, for its full realization, a renewed orientation and re-commitment to the values and ethics that would inform and inspire any effective global response to eight global challenges:

  • Global climate change and the destruction of the intricate web of life, caused by heedless economic activity;

  • Poverty and deprivation of “work, shelter, land and energy,” in the midst of great plenty;

  • Modern forms of slavery, human trafficking, forced labor, inhumane work conditions, the sale of organs, commercial sex work, and diverse forms of organized crime;

  • Corporate power and structures of corporate abuse unmoored from public purpose and free from public oversight;

  • Mass migration caused by regional violence and environmental degradation;

  • Inter-communal violence exacerbated by failing states and rapidly widening economic inequalities;

  • The dramatic shortfall of educational opportunities, with half of the world’s children not receiving an adequate education or remaining out- side of school entirely due to poverty, conflicts, environmental disasters, forced migration, modern slavery, or other abuses.

  • Restraining corruption, impunity, and organized crime in the public and private sectors. We experience today a global epidemic of corruption, abuse and arrogance of power in all social strata that weaken the sovereign power of the people and participatory democracy, and the repeated failure of political leaders to relinquish power on constitutional timetables.

These challenges are pressing for each of the great religions, across all geographic regions. The new project on Ethics in Action (EIA) will bring together a select group of religious leaders, academics, business and labor leaders, development practitioners, and activists, to identify values and ethical approaches to the eight challenges outlined above and advance concrete actions.

The Blue Chip Foundation is a Founding Member of EIA, and Jennifer Gross was present at the meeting as a Foundation Leader. This first meeting of EIA was a success from Blue Chip’s perspective. In addition to participating in drafting the statement excerpted below, Blue Chip pledged to see a Global Fund for Education started within the next five years. The Gross Family Foundation, of which Jennifer Gross is a member, has donated $300,000.00 to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network to host meetings in 2017 to begin the dialogue between Education Leaders around the globe as a result of the EIA meeting. Blue Chip would like the Global Fund for Education to mobilize the incremental $40 billion needed each year to provide universal education to secondary level in all low-income countries. Blue Chip is also committed to ensure an effective and predictable transfer of resources from the rich countries to the poor countries so that these countries can achieve the SDGs to end poverty.

Jennifer Gross shares that an unforgettable aspect of this event was having been honored to stay at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where the Pope lives, and to briefly meet Pope Francis. She thanked him for all that he does and says, “I am hoping that he will give a voice to the poor that have none and that it will resonate to world leaders and affect policy.”

Excerpt from post-event statement:

…The EIAWG believes that the most effective way to end both extreme and relative poverty is to support all individuals, especially all children, to develop their capabilities to the maximum extent possible through universal access to education (SDG 4), health care (SDG 3), decent nutrition (SDG 2), and basic infrastructure including water, sanitation, and modern energy services (SDGs 6 and 7). All individuals should be enabled to enjoy a livelihood with human dignity and labor rights (SDG 8). Abusive labor practices such as child labor and all forms of modern slavery should be ended (in particular SDG 8.7). Discrimination and violence against girls and women and minority groups are important causes of poverty and should be ended (SDGs 5, 10, and 16).

…The Ethics in Action Working Group supports a combination of the following measures to ensure an effective and predictable transfer of resources from the rich countries to the poor countries so that these countries can achieve the SDGs to end poverty.

  • Establish a Global Fund for Education to mobilize the incremental $40 billion needed each year to provide universal education to secondary level in all low-income countries.

  • Divert up to 10 percent of the current global military spending— approximately $1,700 billion a year—to finance initiatives to reduce poverty and exclusion. This could be called the “Isaiah fund” or the “Pope Paul VI fund.”

  • Tax anonymous wealth held in tax havens at a rate of up to 1 percent, raising as much as $200 billion per year.

  • Establish a billionaires’ Fund for the SDGs endowed by at least $200 billion.
    Urge all wealthy countries to honor the commitment to 0.7 percent of GDP in ODA.

In addition to financial support, the poor need global solidarity to defend their basic human rights, including labor rights and environmental rights. The EIAWG supports the following measures to defend the rights of the poor:

  • Intervene in areas like the Niger delta, to correct the social and environmental devastation brought about by the unjust practices of multinational corporations and governments.

  • Support grassroots movements and unions so that the poor can become dignified agents of their own development.

  • Recognize the ownership rights of slum dwellers and smallholders, allowing them access to vital public services.

  • Change laws and regulations to emphasize a company’s duty to a broader array of stakeholders.

EIA believes that global education in basic ethics (human rights, labor rights, support for the poor, social solidarity, environmental sustainability) and sustainable development can support a more peaceful, equitable and sustainable world and promote the achievement of the SDGs. In this regard EIA supports the following measures:

  • Reform educational curricula in schools to teach the ethics of sustainable development (a core component in all virtue traditions).

  • Reform business and economics curricula to better incorporate ethics and pro-social values, in particular, social justice, solidarity towards one’s peers and future generations, as well as friendship and convivencia.

  • Establish a youth movement for peer educational efforts on ethics and sustainable development.


Global religious and secular ethical leaders should organize special and sustained efforts to promote the ideas of Laudato Si’, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the shared ethical underpinnings of the world’s religious traditions, such as human dignity, freedom and peace, in order to achieve sustainable and integral development. The EIAWG endorses the following steps:

  • The preparation of an Ethics in Action handbook on sustainable development, building on Laudato Si’ and related texts, that emphasizes the shared ethical underpinnings of sustainable and integral human development in the major faiths, and the importance of a new “virtue ethics” to promote the fulfillment of the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement.

  • Enlist high-level religious and other ethical leaders to play a leading role in restoring social and moral capital, including through participation in official processes such as the UN High-Level Political Forum and the G20.

  • Empower and equip religious communities and congregations around the world for multi-religious action centered on the values of hospitality and share wellbeing and partnerships for Laudato Si’ and the SDGs.

If you would like to join our cause, please contact religious leaders in your community, share the Ethics in Action statement, vision and course of action and ask your religious leaders to speak with community leaders, mayors, etc. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created when Jesse Jackson and Bono were reading scripture and called George Bush. A simple phone call can sometimes be very effective.