The religio-spiritual and sacred dimensions of climate-induced conflicts A research agenda

• Published in: African Perspectives on Religion and Climate Change Vol. 1; pp. 186 - 202
• Main Authors: Tarusarira, Joram, Parsitau, Damaris S.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2022; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Religion In Zimbabwe; Alien Spirits; Mapara; Human Environment Nexus; Payments; Vice Versa; Spiritual World; Saltwater; Avalanche; Earth Observation Technologies; African Indigenous Religions; Divisible Resources; Indigenous Religion; Non-human Animals; Human Environment Relationship; Climate Change; Economic Problem Solving; Judeo Christian Ideas; Translate Climate Change; SDG; Van Baalen; Ancestral Spirits; African Indigenous Communities; Violent Conflict
• ISBN: 0367707713; 9780367707712; 0367616076; 9780367616076
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003147909-13

This chapter charts a research agenda that transcends established perspectives of responding to climate-related conflicts by arguing for the interrogation of how religion, spirituality, and the sacred influence violence and conflicts that are induced by climate change. In what follows, we first discuss the relationship between climate change and violence. We then consider the current scholarly, practical, and policy responses, and the place of religion in them, before pointing out the lacunae in the existing literature, as well as in practical and policy responses. After exposing these gaps and their scholarly and practical implications, we bring religion, spirituality, and the sacred into the discourse on climate change and violent conflict. To ground our discussion, we focus on African indigenous communities, especially the Shona in Zimbabwe, and their sacred relationship with their natural environment to distil the cognitive, emotional, and moral meanings that emerge from that relationship and show how they mediate climate-related conflicts. Drawing on our findings, we conclude by re-stating the need for a research agenda that critically considers how religion and spirituality or any similar phenomena, such as traditional knowledge of ecological systems, mediate climate-induced conflicts. We argue that marginalizing the influence of religious, cultural, spiritual, and moral orders not only results in a failure to comprehend why some climate-induced conflicts become intense, impassioned, and intractable, it also hinders the development of locally grounded sustainable peace-building and conflict transformation strategies. This chapter contributes to advancing SDG13: Take urgent action to combat climate and its impacts. We argue that addressing SDG 13 should not only be about mitigation and adaptation, but also about the consequences such as climate-induced conflicts when climate change exceeds adaptive capacities of the communities. This chapter charts a research agenda that transcends established perspectives of responding to climate-related conflicts by arguing for the interrogation of how religion, spirituality, and the sacred influence violence and conflicts that are induced by climate change. The impacts of climate change are increasingly undermining human, national, and international securities. Statistical analyses of large N-studies and propositions for technological and economic problem-solving currently dominate research on the climate-conflict nexus. Religion and spirituality are conspicuous by their absence from research into the possible mechanisms and conditions that shape how climate change does or does not translate into violent conflict. Indigenous sacred beliefs and practices can hinder attitudes of respect for non-human animals and environmental systems. In most African contexts, caring for the environment and the climate has always had religious and spiritual roots in human motivation. Religion, spirituality, and the idea of the sacred thus provide the reader with insights into how human and cultural factors frame human-environment relationships.