The Vatican’s top official on justice issues has said giving women greater access to education is imperative to achieving global development goals, as debate heats up before a UN meeting on the topic in September.

“Investing in women can take us a long way towards achieving forms of development,” Cardinal Peter Turkson told the Guardian on Friday. The Ghanaian cleric was reflecting on comments made at the Vatican by Mary Robinson, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for climate change, who said there needed to be more focus on the education of girls and women.



Robinson was at the Holy See for a two-day conference on the pope’s environmental encyclical, which criticised world leaders for inaction on climate change and urged people to change their wasteful lifestyles.



Turkson said that in discussing environmental damage it was necessary to debate development. “The discussion of the encyclical and climate change really leads to sustainable goals, so the two usually go hand in hand,” he said.



At the UN meeting in September, governments are due to commit to sustainable development goals.



Focusing on the encyclical, Turkson warned against discussing the document as solely a commentary on climate change, a misinterpretation he observed while visiting the UN’s headquarters in New York last month. “[The encyclical] was about ecology, which is far broader than climate change. It’s a mistake to talk about an encyclical on climate change,” he said.



The papal letter has nonetheless won the backing of climate change activists globally and brought some unlikely non-Catholic campaigners, such as the anti-capitalist author Naomi Klein, to the heart of the debate.



Turkson followed the pontiff’s inclusive message and stressed that care for the environment was not just up to Catholics. He said: “The pope said nothing is too small or insignificant; everyone can support a line of action to respond to the needs that we have and changing their lifestyles. There’s something for everybody.”

