Faith traditions and sustainability: key discourses and emerging field

Historically, academic debates on the sustainable development discourse have tended to sideline the influence of religion faith traditions. However, in the last two decades, with the growing instability in the social, economic, and environmental realms of the global economy, there has been intensive search for new paradigms and frameworks to guide human understanding of the interrelationship between human well-being and environmental protection and foster new forms of environmental activism at the ground level. This work intends to contribute to this emerging area of research by presenting how faith traditions can help to provide alternative explanations to deal with contemporary environmental challenges by creating alternative models of production and consumption in society, as well as providing individual motivation for pro-environmental behaviors. The chapters presented in this edited volume weave together the economic, ethical, cultural, and societal dimensions of varied Eastern and Western faith traditions and discusses their applicability to contemporary environmental problems. The work presents three main pathways through which faith-based traditions can help in steering mainstream sustainable development discourses in a new direction – promotion of ethical values, fostering new forms of ecological activism, and inculcating pro-environmental behaviors. The introductory chapter presents an analytical basis for understanding the causes behind sustainability challenges from a faith-based perspective and how these would lead to alternative adaptation and mitigation policies, discussed in the subsequent chapters.