Social Science Research Council Research AMP Mediawell
Citation

Religion and Climate Change in Comparative Regional Perspective

Year:
2015

As is evidenced by the recent papal encyclical, religious actors (including leaders, institutions, and social
movements, among others) are increasingly actively engaged with both the causes and impacts of climate
change. But religion also affords a diversity of social and cultural contexts within which moral and
political debates about climate are framed. A robust approach to the engagement of religion with climate
change must encompass both the public responses of religious actors as well as the social contexts and
cultural conditions afforded by religious traditions. How best to account comparatively for the salience of
religion with respect to environmental issues, which cannot be reduced to the responses of particular
religious groups? This session considers the various ways religion intersects with climate change, as both
a moral conception of the world and as a specific response, and the relation between these.