This year the theme of the forum was "Environmental problems and the crisis of values of modern industrial society." In accordance with this wording, most of the participants considered the issues of the environment in the context of the overall value crisis of modernity, in particular, the crisis of culture.
In addition to the analysis of general trends, existing and in development of international environmental concepts, the participants expressed concerns about specific problems of conservation, from the use of energy-saving lamps to the building of a new ring road in the Moscow region.
Presentations were made by representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, Moscow Theological Academy (MTA), St. Tikhon's Orthodox University of the Humanities and other secular and religious HE schools, as well as the clergy.
In particular, Dr Archpriest Dimitry Leskin (Togliatti) spoke of the anthropological crisis of modernity. The human person, in his words, has an absolute value only when seen as being in the image and likeness of God. Secular humanism reduces human beings to the biological level, which affects the relation of humanity to the environment. Continued criticism of the secular world came from Fr Stephen Domuschiev, teacher at the Moscow Theological Academy, who said that secular morality and ethics, including environmental, may exist, but they cannot be reproduced from generation to generation. Fr Alexander Timofeev (MTA), described his report on the environmental catastrophes of ancient civilizations – from Palaeolithic mammoth hunters to farmers of Mesopotamia – and dispelled the myth of harmony with nature of pagan peoples.
On the same basis, the Christian relationship between man and nature was described by Fr Oleg Mumrikov, another representative of the MTA. Man has to rule over nature and is responsible before the Lord, as has been said many times in the Scriptures and by patristic tradition. And the first in the history of the environmental crisis was the fall of the first people, the violation of the natural hierarchy, when God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you." At the end of the conference, participants expressed a desire for the establishment, with the participation of the Church, of teachers' training centers which can convey to a new generation ideas of cultural and environmental responsibility.