Religion and Environmentbetween religion and environment, and it has developed a reﬂexive criticism on what counts asreligionandwhoseideaofnature,ecology,or environment the relation

EG36CH18-Jenkins ARI 19 September 2011 8:12

Religion and EnvironmentWillis Jenkins1 and Christopher Key Chapple2

1Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut 06511; email: [email protected] of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles,California 90045; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2011. 36:441–63

First published online as a Review in Advance onAugust 1, 2011

The Annual Review of Environment and Resourcesis online at environ.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-042610-103728

Copyright c© 2011 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1543-5938/11/1121-0441$20.00

Keywords

culture, ethics, science and religion, social movements, sustainability

Abstract

Understanding the interaction of human and environmental systemsrequires understanding the religious dimensions to the integration ofecology and society. Research on the significance of religion to envi-ronmental problems and of ecological ideas to religion has emergedinto a robust interdisciplinary field. One sign of its vitality lies in themethodological arguments over how to conceptualize and assess thatsignificance. Another lies in the diversity of research projects, whichappear within most religious traditions, from many geographical con-texts, and in several different disciplines. This article introduces majorapproaches to the field and key questions raised, and then briefly assessesrecent work in three broad areas of tradition.

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Contents

1. INTRODUCING THE FIELD . . . . 4421.1. Ecological Worldviews . . . . . . . . . 4431.2. Religious Environmentalisms . . . 4431.3. Religion and Nature . . . . . . . . . . . 4441.4. Ecotheology as Doing Religion

for the Earth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4451.5. Gender, Nature, and Justice . . . . 4461.6. Sustainability as an

Interdisciplinary Challenge . . . . . . 4471.7. Religion and the

Environmental Sciences . . . . . . . . . 4481.8. Religion as Cultural Ecology . . . 4481.9. Rise of Pluralism and

Pragmatism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4492. ASIA AND ASIAN

TRADITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4502.1. General Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4502.2. Religion and Ecology

in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4512.3. Yoga and Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4512.4. Buddhism and Ecology . . . . . . . . . 4522.5. Lifestyle Critiques and the

Challenge of Globalization . . . . . . 4533. CHRISTIANITY AND

ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4534. DEVELOPMENTS IN

ABRAHAMIC ANDINDIGENOUS TRADITIONS . . . 4554.1. Abrahamic Traditions . . . . . . . . . . 4564.2. Indigenous Traditions . . . . . . . . . 456

5. TRENDS AND DIRECTIONS . . . . 457

1. INTRODUCING THE FIELD

As ecological problems stimulate critical reflec-tion on relations between society and environ-ment, a lively interdisciplinary literature hasemerged examining relations between religionand environment. Within a few decades, schol-arship in the area has grown tremendously,working across many traditions and disciplines.It has also generated methodological contro-versies over how to conceptualize relationsbetween religion and environment, and it has

developed a reflexive criticism on what countsas religion and whose idea of nature, ecology, orenvironment the relation involves. Those con-troversies over interpretation indicate a robustfield, hosting multiple research programs.

Shared amid the debate is an investigativeinterest in connections between patterns ofenvironmental thought and practice as well aspatterns of religious thought and practice. En-vironmental studies and religious studies shareresearch phenomena where human interactionwith environmental systems is influenced byreligious systems and where religious traditionsor forms of experience themselves change in re-lation to changing environments. This sectionintroduces major questions and methods in un-derstanding the overlap by reviewing recentlypublished introductions to the field. Eachconstructs its own program for integratingreligious and environmental studies, with theresult that each establishes its own objectivesfor successful research in the field (1).1

The field is usually called “religion andecology,” although not without controversy.Since 1991, that has been the name of theAmerican Academy of Religion’s programgroup in the area. Moreover, public notice thata new field was emerging was established by agroundbreaking series of books from HarvardPress, entitled Religions of the World and Ecology.The series established a multireligious, inter-disciplinary project with 10 books organizedby tradition (Buddhism and Ecology, Christianityand Ecology, etc.) (2–11). Work on that projectcontinues through the “Forum on Religionand Ecology” and in the journal Worldviews:Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology (12).

Scholars have sometimes criticized theHarvard series for how it invites connections ofreligion and environment and for the objectivesit sets for the field. The Journal for the Studyof Religion, Nature, and Culture curates some ofthis criticism, and its editorship has preferred“religion and nature” to designate the field,

1This section expands literature reviewed in Jenkins, “Reli-gion and Ecology: A Review Essay on the Field” (1).

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for reasons we explain below. Others wouldexamine religion and environment within thedisciplines of cultural ecology or environmentalanthropology, especially for cases where reli-gion seems a misleading category for interpret-ing traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).This review follows the prevailing conventionof “religion and ecology,” while explaining themultiple approaches to the field and the criticalquestions that attend them. For a device ofoverview, we introduce each approach with arecently published introduction to the field.It is important to note, however, that thesebooks do not so neatly represent alternativemethodological camps for in every case thescholars collaborate with one another, con-tributing essays to one another’s introductionsand cultivating the emergence of a shared field.

1.1. Ecological Worldviews

The idea that the nexus of religion and environ-ment deserves critical study and that it couldsupport ongoing academic research was estab-lished by the Religions of the World and Ecologyseries. Edited by Tucker & Grim, its 10 booksforged the possibility of intelligible conversa-tion around shared objectives among scholarsof diverse disciplinary commitments and manyincompatible views of religion and of ecology.It did so by combining several powerful the-ses to make religious traditions at once en-vironmentally significant, ecologically vulner-able, and open to reform. These include thefollowing: (a) that religious worldviews shapeenvironmental behavior; and (b) that a globalenvironmental crisis therefore represents a re-ligious crisis, which, in turn, requires that(c) scholars reexamine religious traditions withthe ecological ideas needed to develop moresustainable worldviews.

By conceptualizing religion in terms of anaction-shaping worldview and ecology in termsof a crisis between environment and society,Tucker & Grim (2–11) frame a research arenain which religion has high ecological signifi-cance yet also requires critical transformationin light of ecological ideas. Religious traditions

are therefore strongly relevant to environmen-tal problems and yet vulnerable to the reformsthat addressing those problems seems to re-quire. As we discuss below, subsequent workin the field sometimes questions this strong in-terpretive role for religious worldviews. Somethink it exaggerates the role of religious ideas,appropriates an abstract idea of ecology for reli-gious reform, concentrates too much on worldreligions, or situates the scholar in an inappro-priately activist stance.

Some of those questions and the alternativerelations of religion and environment that theyanticipate debate the legacy of Thomas Berry.Tucker and Grim were students of Berry, whoexerted major influence on the the field of re-ligion and ecology as a historian of the world’sreligions who sought to open religions to a newstory of the universe. Berry described the task ofreligion in a cultural transition to an ecozoic erain which humans live in adaptive, animate re-lation to the living world around them. Tuckerand Grim are editors of two recent collectionsof his essays: The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spiri-tuality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Centuryand The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth(13, 14). These essays describe a deep intellec-tual vocation in cultivating the connection ofreligion and ecology: In Berry’s account of cos-mological transition into an ecozoic era, it isthe scholar’s task to open ideological possibil-ities for a more sustaining human presence onthe planet.

1.2. Religious Environmentalisms

Resting the relation of religion and ecology ina commitment to changing worldviews raisesan important question: How does the fieldrelate to environmentalist social movements?In three recent works about the field of religionand ecology, Gottlieb (15, 16, 17) answers thequestion with a definite political commitment,making “religious environmentalism” thecentral phenomenon of the field. Religiousenvironmentalism could refer to at least threedifferent movements: (a) the environmentalactions of religious leaders and communities,

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(b) political environmentalism bolstered byreligious resources, or (c) the environmentalmovement interpreted as a religious move-ment. Tucker’s and Grim’s (2–12) sense ofreligion and ecology tends to celebrate thefirst, noting the wide response to environ-mental issues from leaders of all the worldreligions. Outside the field, this greening ofreligion is sometimes missed, but communitiesof all sorts—conservative, moderate, andprogressive—exhibit significant response toenvironmental problems (18, 19).

In A Greener Faith (15), Gottlieb focuses onthat second sense of religious environmental-ism: as a “diverse, vibrant, global movement” ofideas and activism that “roots the general envi-ronmental message in a spiritual framework”(17, p. 215, p. 231). Here the “ecology” of“religion and ecology” stands for environmen-talism, and its “religion” for normative sourcesthat can inspire and mobilize it. Gottlieb’s ed-itorship of The Oxford Handbook of Religion andEcology (16) is also oriented to this sense ofreligious environmentalism, and it serves as avery useful guide to the field from a perspectivecommitted to the task of reform. Its openingsection, “Transforming Tradition,” comprisestwelve essays, each offering a one-chapter in-troduction to the way(s) some major religioustradition is responding to global environmen-tal challenges. Contributors here include sev-eral editors of other important anthologies inthe field, including Kaza & Kraft, editors ofDharma Rain (20); Foltz, editor of Worldviews,Religions, and the Environment (21); and Grim,editor of Indigenous Religions and Ecology (7); aswell as Chapple, editor of the journal World-views. These chapters often describe key fea-tures of a tradition in relation to trajectoriesof environmentalist change within the religion,which makes them lively and accessible to en-vironmental studies students.

Gottlieb thinks that social change shapesthe object of religion and ecology, and thefinal section of the Handbook (16) focuses onhis sense of religious environmentalism. Therelation of religion and environment is thuspolitical, organized toward the emergence of

environmentalism as a social force. That visionalso serves as the selection device for Gottlieb’srecent four-volume collection of signal essays inthe field (17). A sense of cultural crisis connectsthe power of religion to the politics of ecology.

So powerful is Gottlieb’s sense of environ-mentalism (analogous to responses to the holo-caust, he says in Greener Faith) that it comesnear the third sense of religious environmen-talism in which the environmental movementmight bear its own unique sense of religiosity.Perhaps environmentalism could stand alone asa kind of religious experience or could over-whelm the religiosity of the inherited traditionswith a more powerful or authentic form of ex-perience. Interpreting environmentalism withthe categories of religious studies and theologyhas been explored by Dunlap (22) and Nelson(23).

If environmentalism is its own kind ofreligious phenomena, says Taylor (24), thenthe arena of relevant religiosity greatly ex-pands. Consider why people may be drawn toa nature-based religious experience in an era ofsustainability crises, and the future of the greattraditions seems in doubt (24). More impor-tantly, looking for the religious dimensions ofeveryday environmental practices and popularaffinities for nature may illuminate relationsof religion and environment left hidden by afocus on the global traditions.

1.3. Religion and Nature

What idea of religion frames the field’s workon religion and environment? Taylor (25)thinks that response to environmental crisis hasoverdetermined what counts as religiosity, andhe has been roundly critical of the role norma-tive politics plays in shaping ideas of religionand ecology. Focusing on worldviews and ac-tivism, he claims, has resulted in a narrow no-tion of religion and a moralized idea of ecology.(Here, we focus on notions of religion, turningto ideas of ecology in another subsection.)

Scholars in the field, says Taylor, facea choice between an inherited “confes-sional/ethical” approach that works on


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transitioning world religions into an ecologicalconsciousness, and a “historical/social scien-tific” approach that describes a wide array ofenvironment-related religiosity (25, p. 1376).Taylor endorses the latter as the proper objectof academic study, thus minimizing the firsttwo senses of religious environmentalism whileshowing interest in social scientific descriptionof religious phenomena. The relevant reli-giosity here includes nature-focused practices,like fly-fishing and kayaking, or may reside indimensions of environmental practices, likehabitat restoration (26, 27).

What counts as relevant religiosity mightthen be marginal to the mainstream tradi-tions, implicit in environmental practices, orembodied in popular culture. As editor ofthe Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Tayloruses open definitions of religion and nature“to invite the widest variety of perspectivesto engage the meaning and relationships thatinhere to the human religious encounter withnature” (25, p. x). Between “Abbey—Edward”and “Zulu War Rituals,” the Encyclopediapresents nearly 1,000 articles on everythingfrom the conventional (Hebrew Bible, Sufism)to the unexpected (Disney, surfing).

The Encyclopedia is notable for its atten-tion to nature religions, which have sometimesbeen overlooked by a focus on the major tra-ditions. Taylor and his students criticize thefield for focusing on the mainstream ideas ofworld religions to the exclusion of marginalspiritualities, especially contemporary naturereligion (28, 29). Animism, Wicca, pantheism,neo-paganism, and New Age represent bothself-identifying communities as well as cur-rents of ecological spirituality that appear inpopular culture. Moreover, the diverse experi-ences within the conventional religions mightbe missed by an idea of world religions thatthinks of religions in terms of ideal worldviews.So the Encyclopedia offers multiple entries oncontemporary nature spiritualities, with an eyefor creative hybrids, marginal movements, andimplicit spiritualities.

The Encyclopedia thus depicts a field of “reli-gion and nature” characterized by descriptive

phenomenology of nature-related religiosity.Its turn toward interpretation of lived experi-ence opens more possible relations of religionand environment. However, although the plu-ralism and the focus on practice it representsappear in other approaches to the field, not ev-eryone agrees that pluralism in method requiresa move away from confessional activism towarddescriptive analysis. Taylor provocatively mapsthat divide onto a tension in the academy of re-ligion between theology and religious studies,arguing that the field’s task “is properly to an-alyze religion rather than to defend or engagein it,” which would be a confessional or theo-logical approach (25, p. 1374). But other schol-ars think that the character of environmentalproblems warrants some form of constructiveengagement—perhaps even a kind of theology.

1.4. Ecotheology as Doing Religionfor the Earth

To what degree should responsibility to a con-text of ecological problems shape how scholarsunderstand the relations of religion and envi-ronment? In Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophiesfor the Earth, Kearns & Keller (30) convene apluralist, self-critical conversation for the pur-pose of engaging religion with a sustainablefuture. Contributors from multiple disciplinespursue analyses, offer poetic invocations, andpresent guild-crossing theories in order to helpfacilitate ecosocial transition.

The editors describe the mode of theirtask as a kind of theology, saying that thevolume gathers multiple disciplines “into abroad, not readily nameable, transdisciplinaritythat may be called ‘ecospirituality,’ or in aself-critically widened sense of the theological,‘ecotheology’” (30, p. xii). Their “nonliteralist,open-ended theology” intentionally supportsan activist pluralism, alive to many emergentmovements for sustainable change. Scholarsshould study religion in ways that help create,accompany, nurture, and realize appropriateecosocial possibilities as well as “to transmutesimple emergency into complex emergence”(30, p. xii).


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Theology is conventionally about God, andthis ecotheology project does offer a kind ofconfession. By “its root intuition of the divinerelation to the world, a relation in which allearthlings in our ecosocial lives are called toparticipate, it confesses the holiness of diver-sity, the goodness of the nonhuman, the multi-plicity of truth” (30, p. xiii). But contributors toEcospirit are less interested in defending a con-fession than constructively working with cul-tural inheritances to better relate to a vulnerablelife world. It is theological primarily in that it isopenly constructive, engaged, and normative.

Ecospirit develops a theological methodas an intellectual strategy for facilitatinginterdisciplinary confrontation with the socialand environmental complexity of sustainabilityproblems. Its active, engaged sense of religionis shaped by the kind of intellectual activityrequired by adequate confrontation with acomplex crisis. The broader point here, inrelation to other approaches to the field, is thatan intellectual commitment to understand theworld from an ethical commitment to its futureopens work that is both pluralist and activist.Ecospirit destabilizes relations of religion andecology precisely in order to help stimulateimaginations of sustainability.

1.5. Gender, Nature, and Justice

That broad sense of theology—as norma-tive participation in constructive religiousargument—has also informed ecofeministapproaches to the field, which have insistedthat the question of responsibility for eco-logical problems cannot be asked apart fromresponsibility for social problems. Ecofemi-nism investigates how gender relations connectto human/environment relations and therebyraises a broader question about how ideologiesof injustice connect with ideologies of envi-ronmental exploitation. How should the fieldconceptualize the connections of social prob-lems and ecological problems? Ecofeministapproaches usually insist that those are not twoseparate categories of problem but require anintegrated analysis and response.

Ecofeminist scholars have been crucial indeveloping religion and ecology as a field, andtheir work continues across traditions and con-texts (31, 32). Reuther is an especially importantfigure here with a groundbreaking early work,New Woman, New Earth (33), and coeditorshipof the Christianity and Ecology volume in theHarvard Series (3). Her recent book, Integrat-ing Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Reli-gions (34), summarizes the relation of ecofem-inist analysis to work in religion and ecologythrough an evaluation of ecofeminist responsesto globalization.

Ecofeminism, as Reuther presents it,illustrates an ideology of domination—a“dominology”—running through patriarchalattitudes toward women as well as human at-titudes to nature (34, p. 124). Violence againstwomen, from battering and rape to exclusionfrom education and health care, is supportedby patriarchal ideologies that devalue women byidentifying them with their bodies and identify-ing their bodies as the rightful property of men.Violence against nature runs by a similar logic,identifying the rest of Earth as property subjectto the disposal of the powerful. The dominol-ogy extends to other social relations, includingrace, class, and ethnicity. If so, then transform-ing societies toward sustainable human-naturerelations includes a task of social transformationtoward social justice.

Reuther complains that work in the field,even when it acknowledges the importanceof ecofeminism, generally fails to incorporategender analysis. That indicates, she says, abroader problem for the field connecting eco-logical problems to problems of social justice—especially race and poverty. Reuther offers herown summary of each of the 10 traditions inthe Harvard series, incorporating observationson gender. Her summary of Hinduism, for ex-ample, treats the problematic of goddess ven-eration, which is ambiguous for the treatmentof women and of nature. Her point is that re-ligions convey an integrated world of moralvalues, so scholars should criticize them in anintegrated way. By way of example, she sum-marizes ecofeminist work in areas sometimes


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overlooked by the field, including work fromthird-world scholars, neo-pagan scholars, andantiglobalization protesters.

Integrating Ecofeminism thus starts to ad-dress a complaint that the field of religionand ecology insufficiently incorporates socialjustice concerns and inadequately attends tothe religious environmental perspectives of op-pressed or marginalized communities. Page infact makes that complaint against Ruether’sown work (35). Scholars working on environ-mental justice or political ecology have crit-icized the inherited field for failing to inte-grate analysis of social violence and—when itdoes—for conflating minority environmentalperspectives with an urgency for social justice(36–38).

Ruether’s book (34) does not fully answerthose objections, but it does insist that environ-mental sustainability and social justice dependon uprooting a common logic of destruction.She thus presents a pan-religious task toconfront the ideologies that underlie multiplekinds of exploitation. Instrumentalist attitudestoward nature and women are supported, sheargues, by spiritual and economic individualism(especially when infused with otherworldlyideas of disembodied salvation), as well as byelitist patriarchalism. The sciences, too, areshaped by violent ideologies insofar as theyimagine nature as instrumental to humanobjectives. Cultivating alternatives requirescultivating holistic worlds, which seems areligious facility.

1.6. Sustainability as anInterdisciplinary Challenge

Another way into the field of religion and en-vironment treats the idea of sustainability as aninterdisciplinary arena of deep cultural ques-tioning. Whether or not the received religioustraditions or emerging religious experienceshave a causal effect on environmental behavior,the imperative of sustainability raises questionsabout the foundations and purposes of humansociety. Do those questions have a depth thatmight be called religious?

Using the term spirit to open a pluralistarena of inquiry into the religious, ethical, andcultural dimensions of the challenge of sustain-ability, The Spirit of Sustainability (39), editedby Jenkins & Bauman, is the first volume ofThe Encyclopedia of Sustainability. Supposing thatthe multiple social and ecological problems thatmake up the challenge of sustainability invitemany competing interpretations, the editors in-vite contributors to explain how a philosophy,religion, problem, or topic bears on the ques-tion: What must we sustain?

That question bears a paradoxical depth, atonce minimal and comprehensive (40). It seemsto inquire after a merely decent survival of thehuman species, but by doing so, it raises issuesabout the value of nonhuman life, the goals ofeconomies, the role for a human presence onEarth, and the kind of futures humans shouldwant. It forces reflection on what fundamentallysustains societies and on what sustains humansin their humanity. How do human and ecolog-ical systems relate? What are the conditions forthe human spirit?

As the integrated ecological and social prob-lems confront political societies with decisionsabout how to protect what sustains us, it pushessweeping moral questions into public visibil-ity. Global society may not need to find an-swers in religious traditions, but it may needsomething like a religious facility to make senseof their scope and complexity. The sensibil-ity of this volume is therefore pluralist andpragmatist, supposing that answers to the basicquestion of sustainability will come as societieslearn how to meet complex problems with theirmoral and cultural inheritances. This approachsupposes that the idea of sustainability doesnot represent a worldview or applicable value,but rather it represents a conceptual arenato combine knowledge from the sciences andfrom received cultural traditions to confrontnew problems. Religion attends that arena be-cause “for many people a fulsome answer aboutsustenance must involve some reach towarddepths typically described as religious—towardbeauty, mystery, spirit, love, faith, or God” (39,p. xxii).


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1.7. Religion and theEnvironmental Sciences

We have seen that some introductions to thefield displace the morally charged term ecologywith one more pluriform—nature or sustain-ability. Doing so raises a question about field’srelation to the environmental sciences. Howdoes religion and ecology relate to the scienceof ecology?

The field exhibits multiple approaches.Most often ecology seems to refer to an idea ofinterconnectedness, taken by religionists as thesummary point of ecological science and devel-oped into moral theory. Here, science suppliesa basic picture of reality, a standard of nature, towhich religionists endeavor to make traditionsconform. Sometimes it seems that religionshould also assist civic-minded scientists by sup-plying moral dimensions or advice in persuad-ing religious constituencies. In other works,religionists critique prevailing metaphors ofnature, for example, nature as a mechanism orinformation. Usually scholars suggest that reli-gionists and environmental scientists should bein some kind of dialogical collaboration (41).

In Religion and the New Ecology, Lodge &Hamlin (42) observe that the science of ecol-ogy has changed over the decades that the fieldof religion and ecology has developed. Ecolo-gists have been distancing their research fromcultural appropriations of it as depiction of aninterconnected nature by complicating what itdescribes. Several essays in the volume showhow ideas of balance, interdependence, andharmony have influenced American religiousthought, even while the science of ecology hascome to emphasize flux, complexity, and insta-bility. Moreover, human systems increasinglyinfluence environmental systems, further desta-bilizing any function for ecology as nature’sstandard for ethical change. “It is not a matterthen of doing things nature’s way, but rather ofdeciding which of nature’s forms we want to es-tablish, maintain, restore or change” (42, p. 7).

If so, that changes how religionists andscientists should collaborate. Rasmussen’sessay (43) in the book proposes that adaptive

management opens an arena for religiousengagement with science-based approaches tospecific problems. Insofar as environmental sci-entists work through social policies to addresscomplex problems, they may need interpretersfluent in the dynamics of moral culture. Forunderstanding complex, anthropogenic envi-ronmental problems, the science of ecologydepends on moral decisions about how humansystems should interact with its environment.In those cases, it seems that religion-sciencecollaboration needs religion scholars with thesort of constructivist, reformist engagementwith religious communities that facilitatesconfrontation with the ambiguous science ofcomplex environmental problems (44).

In any case, the role of the environmentalsciences in shaping relations of religion andenvironment remains open and ambiguous.Scholars working in the systemic uncertaintiesof the “the new ecology” may be tempted,as Bauman observes (45), to grasp for foun-dationalisms of nature or of creed to guideresponses to difficult environmental problems.Where religionists and scientists work outnonfoundationalist approaches to real prob-lems, based in science and attentive to livedmoral culture, they demonstrate ways to resistthose temptations.

1.8. Religion as Cultural Ecology

The field borrows ecological ideas in a differentway when it uses the concepts from environ-mental and biological sciences as a heuristic tointerpret religious and cultural systems. Insteadof thinking about how religion relates to ecol-ogy, scholars might think of religion as itself akind of ecology and therefore as one part of aculture’s more or less adaptive relationship withits environment. Here, ecological ideas gain in-terpretive control over the meaning of religionand, in some cases, allow scholars to avoid thecategory altogether. (We show both instancesin this section with two different introductorypublications; see below.)

In the opening article of the first issue ofThe Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature,


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and Culture, biologist Kellert (46) arguesthat religion and science are both culturalexpressions of a genetic human affinity fornature. The various creative expressions of thisbiophilic disposition can be evaluated by theiradaptive function. Sometimes these culturalinstitutions work to facilitate the ongoingadaptive connection of humanity to its habitat,and sometimes they prove dysfunctional.Kellert’s point (46) is that a biologically basedconcept of adaptive fit allows for a convergentinterpretation of religion and science.

In the concluding article of the sameissue (47), religionist Taylor asks, “What ifreligions had ecologies?” Taylor wants thefield to analyze how natural history shapesreligious communities (47). Environmentalscientist Hillel’s Natural History of the Bible(48), which explains the rise of Middle Easternmonotheism as a response to a particularhuman environment, provides one example ofthe work she anticipates. In turn, Taylor wantsto interpret religious communities as a kind ofecology—a system of embodied interactionswith a particular environment. Her projectis different from Kellert’s, but her use of ascientific idea to interpret religious systems asenvironmental systems is similar.

Interpreting lived religion as an adaptive re-lation to Earth can warrant renewed attentionfrom the sciences to the ecological knowledgeresident in the religions of indigenous peopleand other populations living in ancient or tradi-tional patterns of inhabitation. Here, however,religion may be an imposed and misleadingcategory, used by an alien culture to dissectholistic aspects of lived culture. Relations of re-ligion and environment might be better treatedas a matter of environmental anthropology orcultural ecology, investigating TEK (49, 50).

In Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natu-ral Resource Management, contributors focus onhow indigenous cultures that have developed inplace over millennia can teach outside societiesabout sustainability, especially sustainableresource conservation over time (51). Theirwork follows a groundbreaking monographby Berkes on TEK in Sacred Ecology (52). The

environmental sciences have had an ambiguousrelationship to TEK, in part, because of theirassociation with primitive religion. Researchscientists have sometimes ignored or disre-garded TEK because of its embeddedness incultural narrative, cosmologies, and spiritualpractices. Understanding culture in terms of anadaptive ecological relation, however, allowsscientists to take seriously TEK despite itssuspiciously religious dimensions. In fact, pre-cisely because it “is grounded in a spiritual andreciprocal relationship between the people andtheir environment,” TEK is holistically andhistorically embedded in a culture (51, p. 10).

Engaging with TEK, even its spiritual di-mensions, may not require religious analysis atall, if all its terms are evaluated instead in termsof evolutionary fit with an ecological context.The ambiguous words spiritual and sacred maybe sufficient to capture how certain elements ofknowledge function in a pattern of inhabitation.While using ecological ideas to frame TEK ina way safe for engagement from the sciences,some religionists and anthropologists may ob-ject that interpreting culture entirely in termsof adaptive environmental relations misses livedworlds of meaning.

Interestingly, Berkes and colleagues (53, 54)see TEK as model for the cultural challenge ofsustainability to nontraditional societies, and asan example of what we might want from a broadadaptive management process. This links sci-ence to social policy in a broad cultural move-ment toward a more adaptive relation of societyand environment.

1.9. Rise of Pluralism and Pragmatism

What to make of these many different ap-proaches to the field? As religion and ecologyhave enjoyed the ferment of multiple ap-proaches to the field, a rising generation ofscholars has signaled an interest in sortingout the methodological debates. Two recentanthologies, both coedited by Bauman, Bo-hannon, and O’Brien (55, 56), offer a snapshotof current work and controversies in the field.Both volumes celebrate the pluralism thatcharacterizes the field, and both nudge the


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field toward more productive, more pragmaticcollaborations.

Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to theStudy of Religion and Ecology (55) clarifies theuses of central concepts (including religion andecology) and explains the state of debate onkey issues (including gender, animals, justice,and sustainability). To illustrate the tensionsat issue in the field, it employs two chapterscentered around dialogue and two around casestudies (55).

While Grounding Religion is helpful toclassroom discussions, especially after studentsbegin to reckon with complexity at issue instudying religion and environment, the secondbook is especially exciting for scholars workingin the field. The result of a collaboration of adiverse group of scholars, working in the fieldwith the various tools and approaches of itsmethodological schools, Inherited Land: TheChanging Grounds of Religion and Ecology (56),suggests where the field may be headed.

The essays, many of them sharply perspec-tival, assess most of the questions raised in thissection: the role of the sciences; gender andecofeminism; global and marginal notions of re-ligion, ideas, and uses of justice (28, 35, 36, 41).Without intending it, they also seem to demon-strate some shared sensibilities, despite thediverse approaches represented by the contrib-utors. It may be fairly said that the book showsan interest in moving beyond study of world-views while not abandoning the usefulness ofcosmology, a concern for reflection on method-ology; an interest in marginal, embodied reli-gion; an interest in ethnographic approachesto lived practices; closer collaboration with thesciences; and an interest in analysis of specificproblems and particular geographic places.

2. ASIA AND ASIAN TRADITIONS

The field of religion and ecology in regardto Asian religions has found many voices inAsia, Europe, and North America. Building onearlier series of books published in the 1990s bythe World Wide Fund for Nature and HarvardUniversity’s Center for the Study of World

Religions, work with Asian religions andecology has blossomed over the past decadethrough the appearance of many new encyclo-pedias, monographs, and journal articles.

Work in Asian traditions tends to reflect fourcommitments found among the approaches tothe field of religion and ecology identified in ourintroduction. It often reflects the view that themajor religious traditions can and must respondto environmental problems as a moral issue,that environmental activism may itself be a formof religion, that social justice and gender issuesmust be considered, and that more attentionneeds to be given to the experience of natureitself as engendering a sense of spirituality orreligiosity. On the question of nature religionsand global faiths, many Asian traditions tendto blur the distinction between traditional andnature religions, as seen in writings on yoga,plant life, rivers in India, and the Buddhistliterature on environmental virtue ethics.

2.1. General Works

In its coverage of Asian traditions, The En-cyclopedia of Religion and Nature provides keysummary entries on the major traditions ofAsia in light of ecology, including Buddhism,Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism,Sikhism, Yoga, Shinto, and others (25). TheOxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology in-cludes longer articles on Asian traditions, in-cluding extensive studies of Jainism, Hinduism,Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism (57–61).These articles build on and draw from pri-mary sources in original languages, refer to theReligions of the World and Ecology series,and give contemporary examples of ac-tivism in Asia. The Encyclopedia of Environ-mental Ethics and Philosophy (62) and thefirst volume of the Berkshire Encyclopedia ofSustainability, The Spirit of Sustainability (39),include several articles on Asian religious ap-proaches to the task of sustainability.

Representative current research within anAsian context appears in an anthology pub-lished in English and Korean by the Academy ofKorean Studies under the title 2008 Civilization


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and Peace (63). It includes essays on restoration,conservation, and localization, as well as surveyarticles on environmental dimensions of Asianthought from Pak, Tucker, and Chapple (63). AFrench language resource, Crise ecologique, crisedes valeurs? Defis pur l’anthropolgie et la spiritu-alite (64), includes many articles on world reli-gions and broader cultural issues surroundingthe discourse of sustainability. Among them,the Parisian anthropologist Galey contributes acompelling chapter on the Tulu of South India,and Chapple writes on Jaina nonviolence (64).

Asian worldviews exert influence on con-structive work in the field, as demonstrated bythree other recent books. Berry’s The SacredUniverse (13) speaks of the pan-Asian imageof the relationship between microphase andmacrophase as essential for the development ofa feeling of sensitivity to the earth. Berry identi-fies this with key terms in Sanskrit and Chinese:Brahman, maya, nirvana, karma, dharma, li,tao, t’ien, jen. Taylor’s Dark Green Religion:Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (24),although seeking a postmodern, nontheistic re-sponse to the problems of global environmentaldestruction, draws heavily from Asian religioustraditions. Asian influence and inspiration forenvironmental studies in the Western human-ities is further evidenced in Ecology and the En-vironment: Perspectives from the Humanities (65),which includes an essay on “Cultivating Naturein East Asia” by Tucker and an extensive discus-sion of Thai Buddhist environmental activism.

2.2. Religion and Ecology in India

Three significant case studies on religion andecology in India must be noted. Belief, Bounty,and Beauty: Rituals around Sacred Trees in India(66) by Nutgeren draws upon traditional litera-ture from the Vedas, the Dharma Shastras, andthe literature of Buddhist Tantra to explain thesignificance of tree worship in India. It cites thecontemporary examples of the harvesting ofsacred trees for worship in Puri during the timeof the Jagannath festival and the ongoing influ-ence of the Chipko tree protection movement(66). Plant Lives: Borderline Beings in Indian

Traditions (67) by Findly addresses plantsentience, stability, and karma. It includes asurvey of traditional literature from Hinduism,Buddhism, and Jainism, and it cites numerousexamples of religiously inspired environmentalactivism, as found in Auroville, the Ashramof Ammachi, the work on behalf of seedpreservation by Vandana Shiva, and the ThaiBuddhist tradition of forest protection (67).River of Love in an Age of Pollution (68) byHaberman documents the ravaging of one ofAsia’s great rivers through industrial pollutionand neglect. Drawing from traditional lore,science, and his own experience, Habermandescribes the flow of this river from theHimalayas through the megalopolis of Delhidown into the sacred region of Braj, narratingits decline and the attempts at its revitalization.He includes original translations of religioussongs and poems in praise of the river (68).

2.3. Yoga and Ecology

As the Yoga tradition has become a globalizedvoice for Asian religious traditions, practition-ers and scholars have begun to explore the eco-logical values of Yoga as expressed in the Hindu,Buddhist, Jaina, and Gandhian practice of non-violence (ahimsa). (See the sidebar Green Yoga.)Frawley, a popular writer and advocate of theHindu view of life, suggests in his book Yogaand the Sacred Fire: Self-Realization and Plane-tary Transformation (69) that the experiences ofmeditation and ritual can help people reconnectwith the bare essentials needed for humans toflourish. Feuerstein & Feuerstein give practicaladvice in their books Green Yoga (70) and GreenDharma (71), supported with traditional prac-tices and textual resources in light of what theauthors regard to be a new ethical imperative.

Yoga and Ecology: Dharma for the Earth (72),edited by Chapple, presents a more scholarlyapproach. It opens with essays on the Vedicheritage of honoring the earth (73–79), partic-ularly as found in the Atharva Veda. Whicher& Foulks examine “earth-friendly” aspects ofPatanjali’s Yoga Sutra. The influence of theBhagavad Gita on Naess’s theory of ecosophy


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GREEN YOGA

Consider the complex interaction of religious tradition, global-izing culture, popular spirituality, and environmental conscious-ness reflected in the Green Yoga Values Statement, which appealsto Yogic teaching to orient practitioners toward sustainable rela-tions with earth:

“The health of our bodies depends on clean air, clean water,and clean food. Yoga is grounded in an understanding of thisinterconnection. Historically, Yoga developed in the context ofa close relationship with the earth and cosmos and a profoundreverence for animals, plants, soil, water, and air. This reverencetowards life is the basis of the Yogic teaching of ahimsa, or non-violence, non-injury, and non-harming.

Today, the viability of earth’s life systems is in danger. If hu-manity is to survive and thrive, we must learn to live in balancewith nature. Now is the time to cleanse and heal the earth andto establish a sustainable relationship with the environment forgenerations to come” (79).

is documented by Jacobsen (77), and Lidke (78)examines the world-affirming aspects of Tantrathrough an ecological prism. Finally, Cornelladvances eight models for Yogic environmen-talism through a reinterpretation of knowledge(jnana), devotion (bhakti ), the forest (aranya),the body (hatha), the mind (manas/raja), action(karma), community (sangha), and integration(tantra) (72).

2.4. Buddhism and Ecology

Studies of Buddhism and ecology appear inseveral genres. Kaza (with Kraft) has editedtwo volumes that focus on resources for ethicallifestyles (20, 80). A second genre probesBuddhism and environmentalism throughthe prism of philosophical ethics. Sahni (81)discusses what he characterizes as conser-vational and cosmological approaches to anenvironmental Buddhist ethics and opts forthe approach of Buddhist vow–based virtueethics. In Buddhism, Virtue, and Environment(82), Cooper & James emphasize the centralityof compassion, equanimity, and humility toa Buddhist environmental virtue ethic. De

Silva (83) notes that, according to Buddhism,harm to the environment arises from egoismand greed and cites the Buddha’s objection toanimal sacrifice as an indication of a need toovercome anthropocentrism.

A third genre sees environmentalism asone of a cluster of social issues being taken upby Buddhist communities worldwide. ActionDharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism (84)includes an essay by Darlington on Buddhismand development in Thailand, which shefurther develops in TransBuddhism (85), whereshe gives an update on environmental actionsundertaken by Thai Buddhist monks, who dur-ing the 1990s initiated the practice of ordainingtrees to prevent their felling. Environmentalconcerns in Tibet and Thailand are taken upby King’s Socially Engaged Buddhism (86) inconnection with philosophies of deep ecology,a movement that advocates simple living. Kingcriticizes Chinese land-use policies for theirharm to the Tibetan plateau and explores fourglobal leaders of Engaged Buddhism, who sheviews as deep ecologists: Joanna Macy, JohnSeed, Gary Snyder, and Thich Nhat Hanh (86).

Some scholars suggest that Buddhist ecol-ogy is a modern romantic construct influencedby Western culture and perhaps even exportedto Asia from North American thought (87). YetBuddhist activist practitioners, both Westernand Asian, continue to set forth treatises urginga connection between Buddhist philosophyand ecological values. Jones (88) fully embracesa Buddhist-inspired “socially radical culture ofawakening.” Loy (89, 90) advocates a Buddhistapproach to ecological healing, examining thepoisons of greed, ill will, and delusion as theroot causes for the current state of environ-mental degradation. Thai Buddhist activistSivaraksa gives examples of monastic and layBuddhism advocacy for the preservation ofThailand’s endangered forests and waters andof the need to be wary of food impurities (91).Balsys (92) develops ahimsa as vegetarianismideal for human and environmental health.

Buddhism and science continue to be activeareas of dialogue. Noting the Dalai Lama’slife-long fascination with science, Lopez (93)


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surveys the history of Buddhist appropriationsof scientific language. Also working on thisissue, Zajonc (94) presents transcripts of theDalai Lama in conversation with scientistsand humanists interested in how the scien-tific worldview is affecting ethical discourse.Dependent origination, often invoked byBuddhist environmentalists, is examined byAmes and others in a similar anthology (95).

2.5. Lifestyle Critiques and theChallenge of Globalization

Global environmental changes are disruptingtraditional life patterns in Asia. In Earth Democ-racy (96), Shiva criticizes cultural and biologicaldestruction, including “food fascism.” She ad-vocates the honoring of local village lifestylesas an antidote to creeping global consumerism,which she see as the root of Asia’s environmen-tal challenges (96). Guha makes a convincingcase for social ecology as the best alternative toscientific industrialism or subsistence farmingin How Much Should a Person Consume? Envi-ronmentalism in India and the United States (97).Guha’s sense of social ecology stands in contrastto North American deep ecology with its em-phasis on simple living, which he decries as ir-relevant to the needs of India’s huge population.

For a contrasting note, Nand (98) criticizestendencies to romanticize the traditional in-sights of the Hindu faith or overstate theirrelevance to contemporary life. Likewise, inBiodivinity and Biodiversity (99), Emma Toma-lin contests assumptions that religious systemshave the equipment to develop a valid approachto environmental ethics and suggests that re-ligious environmentalism entails a dishonestprojection of Western values onto local soci-eties. There is “no simple, linear relationshipbetween religious and cultural values and howpeople relate to their natural environment” (99,p. 181). The one-time close relationship be-tween Hindu fundamentalists and the environ-mental movement was abandoned soon afterthe former gained power. Clearly, questionsabout Western, Asian, and indigenous ideas ofecology will continue to attract study (100).

The complexity and scope of Asian reli-gious environmentalism appears in the rangeof scholarly work appearing over the past fiveyears. While Chapple (101) traces ascetic envi-ronmental practices across Jainism, Buddhism,and Yoga, Stibbe (102) considers Zen and envi-ronmental education in contemporary Japaneseanimation. The range includes Christian oppo-sition to mining in the Philippines, ecofeministcomparative analysis of Hindu and Christiantraditions, and interpretation of specific Swad-hyaya practices (103–105). As Asian economiesdevelop and continue to cope with a range ofecological issues, from pollution to agriculture,urbanization, and habitat depletion, bothconceptual and activist resources are necessary.Analyses of development theory, economics,and environmental science need to include un-derstanding of religious dimensions, communi-ties, and activism, pointing to the need for inter-disciplinary engagement with religious studies.

3. CHRISTIANITY ANDENVIRONMENT

Studies of Christianity and environment in-clude analyses of the environmental practices ofparticular Christian communities, evaluationsof the ecological significance of Christian be-liefs, research on relations of environmental sci-ences to Christian views of creation, “green”renditions of the faith, and constructive pro-posals for ecologically reforming the tradition.Across methods and foci, research in the areais generally informed by a sense that contem-porary environmental problems pose a seriouschallenge to this major moral tradition. Thechallenge might require retrieval of forgottenvalues by adherents, reconstruction of beliefs byreformers, or the reconfiguration of Christian-ity’s relations with the sciences and with socialmovements.

Framing inquiry into Christianity and envi-ronment in terms of a public crisis with religiouscauses traces to the influential 1967 article ofWhite, “The Historical Roots of Our EcologicCrisis” (106). Writing in Science, White’strenchant critique of the role of Christian ideas


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in shaping modern attitudes of environmentalexploitation simultaneously established thesignificance of religion for environmentalproblems and assigned Western Christianityideological culpability. The first point, aboutthe cultural depth of environmental issues, hasbeen influential in the fields of environmentalethics, religion, and ecology. The second point,about Christian culpability, has occasionedvigorous responses from Christian theology,from defensive denial to revisionary agree-ment. So influential has been White’s critiquethat scholars in all three fields have begun toreassess its legacy in shaping inquiry (107).

As in the general field of religion andecology, ecofeminist work has been importantfor shaping critical reexaminations of theol-ogy. Eaton’s Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies(31) summarizes the key points of scrutiny,including relations among metaphors of God,images of humanity, and ideas of nature.Important criticisms portray environmentalproblems as symptomatic of deep culturalpathologies. Views of nature as passive matterbefore human freedom may be supportedby masculinist metaphors of God as a tran-scendent dominating power and embodied inpatriarchal legacies of instrumental, exploita-tive views of women (31). Bauman (108) hasrecently developed ecofeminist, neocolonial,and postfoundationalist theories to trace agenealogy from the doctrine of creation exnihilo to the imperialist idea of terra nullius(empty, uninhabited land) and modern sciencemodels of nature as inanimate mechanisms.

Perhaps, then, Christian theology shouldlearn to do without problematic ideas of nature.In Without Nature? (109), theologians dialoguewith researchers in ecology, genetics, geog-raphy, and anthropology in order to considerthe fate of religious reasoning in an era whenhuman powers are reshaping ideas of nature.In an era of climate change and biotechnology,nature is always hybrid. However, the collec-tive answer to the book’s title turns out to besurprisingly negative. Although its contribu-tors agree that theology must work differently,theology has no new way for making sense of

human-environmental systems without somereconstructed concepts of the natural (109).

The pluralist turn from one nature tomany cultures of nature has led scholars to gobeyond measuring religion with ecology to alsoinvestigate what might be called the ecologiesof religion. Some do so through constructivetheological accounts of how particular tra-ditions interpret lived human-environmentrelations, whereas other scholars do so throughdescriptive interpretations of contemporarycommunities.

As an example of the former, in Ecologies ofGrace: Environmental Ethics and Christian The-ology (110), Jenkins describes three differentstrategies of Christian response to environmen-tal problems, each shaped by a different back-ground tradition with its own logic of natureand grace. Rather than look for a commonChristian worldview assessed against an eco-logical worldview, Jenkins examines how differ-ent accounts of the experience of God producedifferent interpretations of the human experi-ence of Earth. Those various ecologies give riseto different ethical strategies for confrontingenvironmental problems (110).

Two other works demonstrate this recentturn toward interpreting the sources of partic-ular theological traditions on their own termsof nature and grace. In Theological Foundationsfor Environmental Ethics (111), Schaefer revis-its the ancient and medieval sources of herCatholic tradition. Schaefer organizes a richsurvey of important theological texts aroundvirtues that matter for an era of ecological prob-lems: appreciating beauty, reverencing sacra-ments, respecting creation’s agency, and co-operating with creation (111). Theokritoff, inLiving in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives onEcology (112), does something similar within theEastern Orthodox tradition. To Western read-ers, Orthodox theologies can seem exotic fortheir narrative of Christian life as divinization ofthe cosmos and the intense veneration of theirtradition on patristic fathers and ascetic heroes.Theokritoff explains the distinctive ecologicalrelations produced by a view of life with God asdeification, including patristic views of humans


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as cosmic priests and asceticism as a training inbeauty (112).

Renewed research into the environmentaldimensions of theological traditions reflectswide interest from Christian communities forways to support environmental protection withthe distinctive reasons and rhetoric of their ownstyle of faith. A burst of popular books fromreligious publishing houses shows interest fromacross the Christian spectrum.2 However, thesignificance of that interest and those reasonsfor a particular community depend on howenvironmental relations matter for the livedexperience of particular communities.

Rather than reinterpret creedal traditions,other researchers focus on the lived theologiesand ecologies of specific Christian communi-ties. One of the most interesting is Taylor’sGreen Sisters (114), which describes a networkof vowed Catholic religious women (nuns)who have begun to ecologically revise theircommunity life and—to various extents—theirCatholic theological tradition. In Taylor’spun, the sisters have begun to “reinhabit” theirtradition by reinhabiting ecological commu-nities (and thereby symbolically change thenun’s “habit”). Her work picks up an emergingmethodological focus on embodied environ-mental life and creative religious expressions,exhibited in research such as Peterson’s Seedsof the Kingdom (114, 115).

Some recent work has focused on a nexuswhere reinterpreting tradition and lived the-ology meet, i.e., in the rituals and creativitythat make up Christian liturgy. Two recentworks—one from a liturgist and one froman ecotheologian—explore the importance ofworship practices in an era of environmentaldistress and the ways they might change. In HolyGround (116), Lathrop devotes one of a three-volume reconsideration of liturgy to the wayliturgy shapes participants into a sacred cos-mology. Ecotheologian Santmire (117) agrees

2This review does not cover books of popular Christian en-vironmentalism. For a broad and accessible treatment, seeVan Dyke’s Between Heaven and Earth: Christian Perspectiveson Environmental Protection (113).

with Lathrop (116) that by reconnecting sensesand soul with an earthly context, liturgy canwork as a site of disruption from pathologicalcultural habits and reorient participants to theearth.

All this environment-driven ferment inChristian theology has begun to open freshinterchanges with the environmental sciences.Moving beyond the usual fissures of religionand science into new tensions, environmen-tal theologies have had to reconsider how theecological sciences do (or should) inform thevarious ecologies of belief. For one interestingexample, liberal ecotheologies that otherwiseprivilege ecology as a guide for theology havepaused over the moral implications of evolu-tionary ecology, which seem to trouble Chris-tian hopes for an ecology of peaceful harmony(118, 119). This tension often surfaces in thequestion of animal ethics (120).

Finally, theology has demonstrated a turnnot only toward particular traditions but towardparticular problems. Although a reference toecology often names a sense of general environ-mental crisis, a number of works in theologicalethics have begun to confront particularenvironmental problems. O’Brien’s Ethicsof Biodiversity (121) is a good example of aproblem-focused ethical interpretation thatengages theological tradition with the multipledisciplines related to the problem. As evidenceof this turn toward problems, more thana half-dozen monographs on theology andclimate change have recently been published(122–128).

4. DEVELOPMENTS INABRAHAMIC ANDINDIGENOUS TRADITIONS

This section represents work within tworeligious categories so broad and so differentthat some religion scholars would deny theirusefulness and complain about their treatmenttogether. Yet significant work in religion andecology continues to locate itself in one ofthese categories, and there may be a common


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ecological driver at work in the emergence ofthese two planetary traditions.

4.1. Abrahamic Traditions

As members of the global religions workon shared global problems, they look forshared moral and interpretive resources thatmight support collaborative work and mutualunderstanding across human communities.Thus, adherents of Judaism, Christianity,and Islam, which share some common textsand a narrative beginning in the family ofAbraham, may look for a shared perspectiveon the environment or common methods forconfronting environmental problems.

Studies of textual interpretation are an espe-cially rich area of work here, but first considera note on some other religion and ecology lit-erature focused specifically on Judaism and onIslam. These two world religions obviouslymerit sections of their own in any overview.In recent years, however, there have been rel-atively few books focusing on each tradition.After Judaism and Ecology (10) and Judaism andEnvironmental Ethics (129) at the beginning ofthe decade, recent work in Judaism includes TheWay into Judaism and the Environment (130).

In Islam, Nasr’s 1967 Man and Nature (131)was pathbreaking for the entire field of reli-gion and ecology. Nasr has kept up a steadystream of publications since, including the 2009Islam, Science, Muslims and Technology (132).Since Islam and Ecology (8), there have beenfew English-language books engaging religiousanalysis with environmental crisis in general.An exception is the nonscholarly Green Deen:What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet(133). There is, however, work on particulartopics, such as Foltz’s book on Animals in Is-lamic Traditions and Muslim Cultures (134). Dueto traditions of adaptive beauty in Islamic ar-chitecture, there is also continued interest inIslam and sustainability in built environments,e.g., Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and PlanningPrinciples (135).

Shared Abrahamic interests and ideas de-velop around the reception and interpretation

of scriptures for societies with new (ecological)moral problems. Religious scholars workingin all the traditions, as well as a few environ-mental scientists, find environmental issues anoccasion to rethink methods of interpretation,look for values of responsibility, and open newhorizons of meaning within texts (136–141).Davis’s Scripture, Cultural, and Agriculture(142) does all three by using agrarian ideas torevisit the hermeneutics of reading the HebrewScriptures, yielding both values for a contem-porary agrarian ethic and textual insights lost tomodern cultures alienated from the land (142).

Because these three are “religions of thebook,” even when research focuses on onetradition’s scripture, the interpretive questionsmatter regarding how all three confront en-vironmental issues. The shared hermeneuticalchallenge created by environmental issuesthus becomes an occasion for developingshared Abrahamic perspectives on humanecology. Johnston (143), for example, developsa shared ethic of trusteeship for creation fromclose readings of “Genesis” and the Qur’an.For Johnston, the task of reading scripturesbecomes a point of interfaith dialogue withthe potential to yield shared principles ofenvironmental responsibility (143).

Finally, it must be noted that in NorthAmerica, where the market for Christian Biblesproduces a scriptural package for every culturalniche, it was perhaps inevitable that we wouldeventually have The Green Bible (144) in whichthe editors have selected environment-relatedpassages to print in green.

4.2. Indigenous Traditions

In contrast to the global Abrahamic faiths, themoniker indigenous traditions stands for waysof living marked by locality and names a culturaldiversity as various as regional context. Yet, asthey confront planetary ecological problems,which often pose threats to ways of life shapedto a local bioregion, indigenous peoples havesometimes presented themselves as bearers ofa common wisdom, and they increasingly meetin regional and global councils. Thus, a global


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society of indigenous traditions is emerging toface global environmental problems, and withit, perhaps, is the emergence of a somewhat oxy-moronic planetary indigenous tradition.

As we noted in the Introduction, religionmay not always be an appropriate category ofanalysis, even where it is used as a useful plat-form for social expression in the global arena.For example, indigenous peoples may find ituseful to claim a human right to religious ex-pression in jeopardy of some noxious land use,even while uncertain about the notion that they“have a religion” (145). Rights and religionsmay then be concepts appropriated to defenda way of life that resists the very sort of culturethat needs such terms. The point of an indige-nous religion might be that religion and spiri-tuality are isolable components of life and areunderstood only within environmental and so-cial relations. The words “land culture” mightoffer a better way of expressing the intimacy ofecology, history, and spirituality at issue (146).

If it is ambiguous as to whether and howindigenous traditions are religious, it is nomore certain that they are ecological—atleast in the way that writers on religion andenvironment would like them to be. Thatdebate is taken up in Native Americans and theEnvironment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian(147). However, as long as representatives ofan indigenous tradition continue to speak outon environmental problems, as they do withincreasing visibility and voice around climatechange, there will continue to be interest inwhat some call the “original instructions.”Perhaps indigenous cultures hold needed wis-dom about how humans should live intimatelyand adaptively with Earth (148). That impulseto recover ancient nature-based wisdom alsospurs renewed cultural and scholarly interest inanimism: A term that was once almost a relic ofWestern anthropology returns to the culturalscene with new ideological life (149).

5. TRENDS AND DIRECTIONS

Connections of religious and environmentalstudies, we hope to have shown, are multiple,

strong, and in productive ferment. Thatis promising for interdisciplinary studies ofhuman complexity and environmental sustain-ability. In an era of integrating human and en-vironmental systems, understanding religiousdimensions of human behavior will becomeincreasingly important for investigating howEarth’s systems and communities interact. Inclosing, we note four areas of emerging inter-disciplinary focus, where religious studies havebegun to work with other humanities and thesciences.

For environmental thought, the question ofthe individual animal has occasioned intenseethical debate. How to understand, treat, andinteract with animals tests connections of holis-tic sciences and embodied moralities. Perhapsfor that reason, studies of animals in religioustraditions have burgeoned in recent years, and“religion and animals” is an emerging subfieldof its own with a constructive and tensive rela-tionship with religion and ecology. More stud-ies have appeared than can be here mentioned,but one could start from the programmatic in-troduction in A Communion of Subjects: Animalsin Religion, Science and Ethics (150).

A second area of interdisciplinary emer-gence makes site itself an object of study.Religious studies have taken their own geo-graphic turn with new interpretations of localcommunity informed by ecological relationsand environmental studies, constructive the-ologies reshaping the meaning of paradise withagrarian thought, as well as methodologicalreflections on the importance of place tounderstanding religion and culture (151–154).

In line with those practical and particular-ist directions, a third trend is the movementto focus on particular environmental problems.Sometimes informed by a pragmatist commit-ment to avoid abstract arguments about reli-gion and ecology, these studies focus on howparticular moral communities interpret specificproblems, such as climate change or biodiver-sity loss (120–127, 155). Problem-focused in-vestigations may allow for closer collaborationof religionists and scientists in broad ecologicalmanagement processes (41, 44). They may also


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allow scientists to explore the ethical, cosmo-logical, and/or spiritual dimensions that attendresearch into environmental decline (156).

Finally, amid the pluralist ferment and prac-tical trends, important work maintains thefield’s initial focus on the broad evolutionarycontext for the questions of religion and ecol-ogy. Cosmology—as both a moral worldviewand an account of humanity and Earth in theevolution of the universe—remains a source of

awe and wonder. In Journey of the Universe (157),religionist Tucker and cosmologist Swimmenarrate the emergence of humanity from ex-ploding stars and the deep history of the cos-mos. In an era of ecological transition, theysummon religious and environmental studies toremember their greater context, a story granderthan that of specific cultural traditions and oneera’s ecological problems—and in which theirmeaning finally lies (157).

SUMMARY POINTS

1. Religion and ecology is a robust interdisciplinary field growing in both diversity andsignificance.

2. Researchers in the field face critical questions over the meaning of religion, nature, andecology.

3. Responses to environmental problems are driving changes within religious traditions,and those changes influence broader social and political interpretation of environmentalchange.

4. Religion and ecology has been and should continue to be a productive interaction amongscience and religion, especially among researchers in environmental studies and religiousstudies.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. Will social support for sustainability policies require a shared global ethic, or canglobal governance for planetary problems find support amid many cultural and religioustraditions?

2. Is there a general pattern of ecological response across religious traditions? Are new formsof religiosity and ethical orientation emerging? Is there evidence of a wide greening ofreligion or signs of ecozoic cultural transition?

3. What is the relation of religious environmental projects and science-based environmentalpolicies in social change toward sustainability?

4. What is the ethical and epistemological grounding for sustainability sciences?

5. What is the relation of cultural change and environmental change?

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

While the authors have sought critical objectivity, this review may reflect the following affiliations:Christopher Chapple is editor the journal Worldviews and Willis Jenkins teaches at Yale University,which hosts the Forum on Religion and Ecology.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Rebecca A. Henriksen for research assistance in developing this article.

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Aust.: ATF Press155. Bergmann S, Scott PM, Jansdotter Samuelson M, Bedford-Strohm H. 2009. Nature, Space, and the Sacred:

Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Burlington, VT: Ashgate156. Sideris L, Moore KD. 2008. Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge. Albany: SUNY Press157. Tucker ME, Swimme B. 2011. Journey of the Universe. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press158. Hamlin C, Lodge D, eds. 2006. Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in

Flux. South Bend, IN: Univ. Notre Dame Press


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Annual Review ofEnvironmentand Resources

Volume 36, 2011 Contents

Preface � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �v

Who Should Read This Series? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �vii

I. Earth’s Life Support Systems

Improving Societal Outcomes of Extreme Weather in a ChangingClimate: An Integrated PerspectiveRebecca E. Morss, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Gerald A. Meehl, and Lisa Dilling � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Ocean Circulations, Heat Budgets, and Future Commitmentto Climate ChangeDavid W. Pierce, Tim P. Barnett, and Peter J. Gleckler � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �27

Aerosol Impacts on Climate and BiogeochemistryNatalie Mahowald, Daniel S. Ward, Silvia Kloster, Mark G. Flanner,

Colette L. Heald, Nicholas G. Heavens, Peter G. Hess, Jean-Francois Lamarque,and Patrick Y. Chuang � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �45

State of the World’s Freshwater Ecosystems: Physical, Chemical,and Biological ChangesStephen R. Carpenter, Emily H. Stanley, and M. Jake Vander Zanden � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �75

II. Human Use of Environment and Resources

Coal Power Impacts, Technology, and Policy: Connecting the DotsAnanth P. Chikkatur, Ankur Chaudhary, and Ambuj D. Sagar � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 101

Energy PovertyLakshman Guruswamy � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 139

Water and Energy InteractionsJames E. McMahon and Sarah K. Price � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 163

Agroecology: A Review from a Global-Change PerspectiveThomas P. Tomich, Sonja Brodt, Howard Ferris, Ryan Galt, William R. Horwath,

Ermias Kebreab, Johan H.J. Leveau, Daniel Liptzin, Mark Lubell, Pierre Merel,Richard Michelmore, Todd Rosenstock, Kate Scow, Johan Six, Neal Williams,and Louie Yang � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 193

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Energy Intensity of Agriculture and Food SystemsNathan Pelletier, Eric Audsley, Sonja Brodt, Tara Garnett, Patrik Henriksson,

Alissa Kendall, Klaas Jan Kramer, David Murphy, Thomas Nemecek,and Max Troell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 223

Transportation and the EnvironmentDavid Banister, Karen Anderton, David Bonilla, Moshe Givoni,

and Tim Schwanen � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 247

Green Chemistry and Green Engineering: A Framework forSustainable Technology DevelopmentMartin J. Mulvihill, Evan S. Beach, Julie B. Zimmerman, and Paul T. Anastas � � � � � 271

The Political Ecology of Land DegradationElina Andersson, Sara Brogaard, and Lennart Olsson � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 295

III. Management, Guidance, and Governance of Resources and Environment

Agency, Capacity, and Resilience to Environmental Change:Lessons from Human Development, Well-Being, and DisastersKatrina Brown and Elizabeth Westaway � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 321

Global Forest Transition: Prospects for an End to DeforestationPatrick Meyfroidt and Eric F. Lambin � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 343

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest DegradationArun Agrawal, Daniel Nepstad, and Ashwini Chhatre � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 373

Tourism and EnvironmentRalf Buckley � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 397

Literature and EnvironmentLawrence Buell, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 417

Religion and EnvironmentWillis Jenkins and Christopher Key Chapple � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 441

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 465

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 469

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Environment and Resources articles maybe found at http://environ.annualreviews.org

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Documents

Religion and Environmentbetween religion and environment, and it has developed a reﬂexive criticism on what counts asreligionandwhoseideaofnature,ecology,or environment the relation