Religion and environment : exploring the ecological turn in religious traditions, the religion and development debate and beyond

Abstract

Achieving ecologically sustainable societies necessitates fundamental social and cultural transformations. Religion has the potential to foster the required paradigm shifts in mindsets, behaviour and policy. Moreover, in many religious communities there is increasing engagement with questions of environment, climate change and ecological sustainability. This has led to an increasing corpus of literature engaging with the nexus between religion, environment, development and sustainability. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of recent ecological trends in religious traditions as well as the literature on religion and sustainable development and on religion and ecology. While an ecological turn is evident in many religious communities and has been well documented in the literature, it emerges that more research is necessary on the way that this phenomenon manifests in environmental action at individual and institutional levels.