Transnational Faith-Based Engagement on Climate Change Governance

Religious actors have played an increasing role in transnational civil society activism on environmental governance, as evidenced by Pope Francis’ encyclical on ecological justice, and responses to it (including scientist, Jewish, Buddhist and Muslim leaders). The research discussed here includes participant-observation and interviews comprising “event ethnography” on COP22 (Marrakech, 2016), Parliament of the World’s Religions (Salt Lake City, October 2015), and the Interfaith Summit on Climate Change (September 2014).

Climate change was one of 4 major themes at the Parliament, and two major faith-networks, plus numerous other faith groups , are operative in the civil society sector at the COP22 international negotiations. This researcher’s active participation in these faith networks at each event, is compared also with observation of the Climate Action Network (CAN) at COP22. Frames, motivations, resources, meeting practices, efforts to engage in media relations, coalitions with other civil society sectors, and efforts to mobilize broader constituencies are all items of consideration. The faith-networks and CAN operated differently in most of these efforts. Religious groups do not attend to climate-related and sustainable development inequalities in the same ways. Similarly, faith-based actors do not uniformly identify and enact the role of “spirituality” in their engagements. Other civil society and government agents query what religions bring to the climate meetings, other than the potential mobilization of religious publics. In response, faith-based actors and organizations position themselves in a cosmopolitics that extends beyond the human sphere. This points to the different topographies of the social fields of environmental civil society and religiously-environmental civil society and their interactions on the political field. Faith groups such as Tzu Chi (Buddhist), ACT Alliance (Christian), and Islamic Relief operate across borders, making them important elements of transnational civil society.