This event will address the role of religious ethics in environmental management and the potential of religion to serve as a mobilising force for environmental preservation and climate action.
On June 18th 2014, Pope Francis released the encyclical letter Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home in which he proposed an integral approach to ecology, economics and equity for the wellbeing of both people and the planet. As head of the largest religious organisation in the world, his statement was particularly significant in highlighting the role of religion in providing the ethical norms to reform humans’ approach to nature for a sustainable future, marked by respect, moderation and harmony.
In the past decades, faith-based environmental initiatives, coalitions and organisations have taken on the mission of mobilising faith communities for the protection of the environment, by building capacity within the communities, providing training to religious leaders but also by facilitating interfaith dialogue on this issue. These include the UNEP’s Faith for Earth Initiative, the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, Religions for Peace, GreenFaith, Faith for the Climate Coalition, and so forth. Governments from Tanzania to Qatar to Indonesia to China have attempted to harness this potential by integrating religious or spiritual metaphors and precepts in their sustainability awareness-building campaigns to personalise issues such as water conservation, biodiversity loss or climate change.
As it inspired and supported previous social movements from national independence struggles to the Civil Rights movement, religion is called upon to enable greater collaboration by tapping into the trust, sense of belonging and social capital present within faith communities. However, this movement suffers certain challenges including the instrumentalization of religious leaders. Moreover, belief systems can also run counter to environmental protection or climate action. Depending on their representation of free will and fate as well as their conceptualisation of humans’ role and place in nature, religions can sustain fatalist narratives which complicate climate change adaptation or science-denying attitudes which reject the critical nature of environmental problems, the anthropogenic origins of climate change or the role of humans in addressing these issues.
To discuss these synergies and challenges, we are delighted to welcome Reverend Fletcher Harper, Dr Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Professor Anna M Gade.
Rev Fletcher Harper is the executive director of GreenFaith, an interfaith coalition for the environment. A pioneer of the global religious environmental movement, he helps spearhead the faith-based fossil fuel divestment movement, organises faith turnouts at major climate mobilisations, and is co-founder of Shine, an international campaign that support community-led renewable energy access initiatives in Africa and India. He is the author of GreenFaith: Mobilizing God’s people to protect the earth.
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of the Environment as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She teaches in the joint MA program in religion and ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale. She is the author of numerous books on Asian religions and ecology. Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans Buddhism and Ecology: The Interaction of Dharma and Deeds.
Professor Anna M Gade Anna M. Gade is a scholar of Islam, religion, Southeast Asia and environmental studies and is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s the author of Muslim Environmentalism: Religious and Social foundations.
