Ecological Crisis and the Jesuit Way of Proceeding in the Mission of Henri de Laulanié
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Year:
- 2025
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Jesuit Studies
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 4
- Language:
- Abstract:
Henri de Laulanié, S.J. (1920–95) was a French agronomist whose mission to Madagascar shows how the Jesuit way of proceeding may be applied in the ecological crisis we face today. For thirty-four years, Laulanié worked with Malagasy peasant farmers to help them become self-sufficient while restoring degraded land and protecting more land from slash-and-burn farming. Laulanié can be placed in a four hundred-year arc of Jesuits who have confronted ecological crisis and called for regeneration. Laulanié took his mission into the fields, where he was guided by necessity and the resources available to him. His greatest achievement was the empirical development of a new, agroecological approach to rice cultivation known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Laulanié combined transplantation of young seedlings with wider spacing of plants and sparing use of water to double yields or more. Subsequent research has validated Laulanié’s observations and shown that SRI also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. SRI has spread to most rice-producing countries, become a Project Drawdown solution, and been included in the Nationally Determined Contributions of a dozen countries. Nonetheless, scaling has proven difficult, as is the case with agroecology in general. Laulanié’s mission may encourage a new generation of agricultural entrepreneurs to make agroecology the foundation of food sovereignty and a regenerative food system. This transformation is urgently needed if we are to meet the needs of people and planet. It can only be achieved if we follow Laulanié in doing what is necessary and working with what is available now.
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Publisher URL:
- Page Range:
- 521-547
- ISSN:
- 2214133222141324
- DOI: