Ecological and Environmental Issues: A Study of Religious Perspective

Abstract

The field of environmental ethics, an emerging branch of philosophy, emerged most significantly in the 1960s from an increasing awareness of global environmental condition. It emerged as a reaction to the perception of growing environmental crisis. Specific ideas occur frequently in the western philosophies of Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza and the humanists. Contribution from the non-western cultures and religions are based on different metaphysical understandings. Spiritual ecology and its contributors contend that there are spiritual elements at the root of environmental issues. They suggest that there is a critical need to recognize and address the spiritual dynamics at the root of environmental degradation. “Religion and ecology” is an emerging area of academics that embraces multiple disciplines including Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, History, and Environmental Sciences. Religions are often thought to primarily focus on God-Human relations but they also emphasize the importance of social and ethical relations between humans. Religions with the passage of time have acknowledged the importance of environmental issues. The alignment of the passage of human life with natural systems constitutes a profound dynamism of religious energy expressed in cosmological myths, symbols and rituals. The present paper will provide brief insights into major world religions and their texts regarding the ecological and environmental issues and remedies provided thereof.