The Dalai Lama Says We Have an ‘Urgent Responsibility’ to Protect Wildlife and the Planet

The Dalai Lama has spoken out about the need to protect wildlife and the environment amid global warming concerns.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said “we have an urgent responsibility” to protect the planet and its inhabitants.

He wrote in a Facebook post, “the destruction of nature and wildlife populations is a result of ignorance, greed, and lack of respect for the earth’s living things. Our actions affect others. We human beings are the only species with the power to destroy the natural world as we know it.” 

“Yet, if we have such a capacity for destruction, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect wildlife and the environment,” he added. “We have an urgent responsibility to do so.”

The Dalai Lama Speaks Out Against Climate Change

The Dalai Lama has advocated for global action on climate change in the past.

In 2015, he issued a plea for action in the form of a video. The message was part of a campaign launched by the Tibetan government-in-exile. He said, “this is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home.” He added, “there’s no other planet where we may move or shift.”

While attending an event for the Northern Irish charity Children in Crossfire in Derry∼Londonderry in 2017, the Dalai Lama criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He said the move made him “quite sad.”

The main aim of the Paris Agreement—first drafted in 2015—is to strengthen the global response to the climate crisis. It aims to limit global temperature increases. The U.S. announced it would withdraw from the agreement in June 2017.

In 2018, the Tibetan spiritual leader sent a message to the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Known as the COP24 Climate Conference, the event, in Katowice, Poland, brought together delegates from around the world. Their aim was to create a roadmap for implementing the Paris Agreement.

The Dalai Lama said in his message that the world needs “to take serious action now to protect [the] environment and find constructive solutions to global warming.”

“Experts tell us that human beings are responsible for global warming and the change in weather conditions,” the Dalai Lama wrote. “We human beings have a responsibility to reduce problems that we have caused, and finally to eliminate them.”