Religion and Sustainable Development: Analysing the Connections

2016

The nexus between religion and development is now well recognised in scholarship but the implications for development policies have been relatively unexplored. The challenge with analysing religion as a policy construct is to ensure that its rich anthropological dimensions are not lost; rather, these inform the conception and implementation of development planning, especially in diverse, multireligious societies. The aim of this special issue is to unpack the complex anthropological, sociological and even theological dimensions of religion that can enable development policymakers to identify the ways in which religion shapes the society, the environment and the economy. Therein also lies the opportunities to articulate policies that are truly responsive to serious structural issues of inequalities and oppressions. The authors address five foci that are central to sustainable development policymaking – urbanisation and spatial equality; gender justice; environment and human/animal tensions; economic growth; and postsecularity and governance.

Papers on Global Change PAS, 2017

This article presents religion's potential where the promotion and implementation of the concept of sustainable development are concerned. First inspired by Lynn White in the 1960s, discussion on religion's role in the ecological crisis now allows for an honest assessment of the ecological potential of various religious traditions and their contribution to the building of a sustainable world. This article on the one hand points to the religious inspirations behind the concept of sustainable development, and on the other highlights the joint action of representatives of religion and science in the name of sustainable development, as well as the involvement of religions in the concept's implementation.

The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 2019

Religion is a major cultural, social, political, and economic factor in many official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries and understanding religious dynamics and the role of faith communities and actors is crucial for sustainable development. While faith communities have endured and thrived the world over, a wave of modernist, secular social change dominated development practice and discourse from the second half of the 20 th century. It was assumed that religion had become outdated and would eventually disappear. However, faith communities, actors, and assets continue to occupy a critical space. Accordingly, development discourse and practice have seen a new wave indicating a turn to recognizing the significant role of religion. Many faith actors have also been involved in development policy, including a commitment to join the global collaboration around achieving the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two factors underpin this paper. First, the process to decide the SDGs involved the largest civil society consultation ever held in the UN's history. Second, over the past decade or so increased attention has been paid to the collaboration between faith actors and secular global development actors. Considering these two factors we wanted to better understand the role that faith actors are playing in the SDG process. The paper is based upon findings from a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-"Keeping Faith in 2030: Religions and the SDGs"-that has been led by the three authors of this paper.

Religion & Development Discussion Paper 03/2018, 2018

Development policy and research increasingly recognize the potential contribution of religious communities to sustainable development. The emerging discourse on religion and development, however, is contingent on Western discursive contexts that operate on the basis of a “secular distinction” between the religious and the secular. Development is located in the secular sphere and the resultant approach to religion is functional. We show this for the case of German development policy by investigating key policy documents on religion and development. The secular notion of development stands in contrast to the perspective of development by religious communities in “developing countries”, which we highlight using the example of African Initiated Churches. In these churches’ view, people’s spiritual and material needs are intertwined, and sustainable development as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be separated from religious dimensions of life. Notions of development, we hence argue, constitute forms of situated knowledge dependent on their discursive contexts. If development cooperation is to engage with religious communities at the level of values, ideas and beliefs, it must also engage with their notions of development as ends of mutual partnership.

This paper seeks to contribute ideas and insights over religious based development. In the past few years, numerous criticisms toward the models and development approaches undertaken in developing countries have emerged. Development as practiced so far, despite being said is done in the name of human interest, but more oriented to the importance of productivity than human interest itself. The real human development which is the main goal of development tends to be forgotten. Various development programs have shown success in the increasingly evolving aspects of the economy, but not in the aspect of social justice and environmental sustainability. Poverty and social inequities that come from injustice tend to increase over time. Meanwhile, industrialization as one of the logical consequences of the development process has contributed significantly to environmental damage, such as global warming, environmental pollution (land, air, and water), deforestation and so forth. The difficult...

Article for Forum for the Future on the significance of the major faiths for sustainability. Until recently sustainable development movements in civil society have failed to grasp the importance of engagement with religious institutions and communities. These remain of immense scale and significance worldwide, and leaders of the major faiths have taken increasing interest in environmental issues and the challenge of sustainability. The article reviews the opportunities, problems and developments that sustainability advocates need to consider in relation to religion.

2016

The Jahangirnagar Review

Attempts to break away from the domination of economistic and modernizing perspectives have paved way for more socially and culturally meaningful development practices. Many of the academics and practitioners have started to look for the ways in which ethical frameworks, moral orders, belief systems, spiritual underpinnings, or religious practices pertinent to local peoples' lives can be taken more perceptively on board while policies, programmes and interventions are conceptualized, designed, operationalized, or evaluated. The main aim of this write-up is to explain the relationship between religion and development in its historical context, and it also attempts to show how the Western-secular bias has created ground for inadequate and misleading appreciation religion's role in the life of people of the developing countries. We first explore the ways in which mainstream development narrative has treated religion in most part of its history: as a phenomenon to be ignored or unaccounted for. Then we briefly examine the contemporary contexts which pave way to bring this understanding to the fore that religion could play a substantial role in the process of development. If development is conceptualized as responsible, ethical and shared way of living, there would be greater scope for religion to become relevant and influential.

Religion Compass, 2010

Beginning with the first wave of environmentalism in North America and Europe around the turn of the 20th century, this article briefly characterizes the emergence and globalization of the idea of sustainable resource management, and later sustainable development and sustainability, focusing specifically on the religious dimensions of these social movements. Religious ideation, language, imagery, and metaphor have been important in the ways that sustainability has been framed in the public sphere, particularly in the past one hundred years. Interestingly, it is through the medium of these spiritualized public discourses that disparate, affectively oriented sustainability narratives contact each other and sometimes cross-pollinate. Manifestations of sustainability and sustainable development discourse from the global North intersect the religious dimensions of sustainability discourse deployed by indigenous and other marginalized cultures, which have advanced their own understandings of such terms and their own constitutive values. In such cases, sustainability discourse is both decidedly religious and highly political.

2017

Religious values and institutions are key to achieving sustainable development in many countries. Yet when studying the role of Faith-Based Organisations in the early implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Ethiopia, India, and the UK, we found very limited engagement on the grass-root level, despite considerable interest. This is due to structural and political constraints, which hinder the activation of religious actors in the implementation of the SDGs in the interest of truly localised, sustainable development. This policy brief presents our key findings and shows how the SDGs can better integrate the potential of religious development actors.