ABSTRACT
Introduction: religion and environmental change Global and local environmental change not only transforms the ‘conditions of life’ but also radically changes culture, religion (understood here as a cultural system – cf. Geertz 1973) and the very ‘conditions for faith’. As the scientific study of climate impact clearly and irrefutably demonstrates, anthropogenic climatic changes have an impact on all parts of the Earth’s ecosystem, continually altering living conditions for all current and future beings, and these changes are rooted in the development of human socio-physical activities within the last 200 years, since the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, if environmental change in modern times is becoming increasingly anthropogenic – as the ‘anthropocene theory’1 has recently contended (Steffen et al. 2007) – it becomes even more necessary to explore the human and cultural dimensions of global environmental change, including the reciprocal interaction between religion and environmental and climatic change. As religious beliefs always include a narrative about the origin, meaning and future of life, dramatic changes in the natural environment may also have an impact on beliefs in a divine creator and/or life-giving forces, causing people to doubt or critique their religious beliefs. However, while ‘conditions for faith’ might be transformed in this way, religions have also been transformed as the close relationship that sometimes exists between religious beliefs and practices and nature (particularly within many ‘indigenous communities’) has been severed by climate change. Nonetheless, there are many examples of where religions have produced an active and critical response to environmental and climate change through applying religious teachings to support strategies to mitigate and prevent further damage. Religions are not static over time, and the impact of environmental and climate change is but one example of different factors that are shaping religious change and generating what Brunn has called ‘a new global map of religions’ (2014). Thus, one of the key questions to be addressed in this chapter is: how does climate change alter religion, and what can religions do to address climate change?
