The Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori) has called for Ireland to adopt a development model that has sustainability at its core.
Fr Sean Healy of Cori
In its latest report, the body argues there is a growing demand worldwide to find new models "that will conserve the planet and its resources and empower people to meet their own needs and the needs of others".
Central to this should be a move away from "money-measured growth" as the principal economic target and measure of success, and an emphasis on sustainability in terms of real-life social, environmental and economic variables, Cori said.
Fr Sean Healy of Cori warned that the scale of Ireland's poverty problem is "sometimes easy to overlook". According to figures from Cori, there were over 900,000 people technically living in poverty in Ireland in 2003 out of a population of nearly four million.
He said sustainability was the key to tackling poverty, not just in Ireland but globally. "There is a growing awareness that sustainability must be a constant factor in all development, whether social, economic or environmental," he said.
Fr Healy also welcomed Ireland's commitment to reaching the emissions targets of the Kyoto treaty. "These emissions are a major cause of climate change, and it is in all our interests to ensure that the limits agreed in the Kyoto protocol are met," he said.
However, he warned that "major changes" are required if we are to reduce our emissions towards this target.