Berg, Thijs van den (2022) Religion and Climate Change. Bachelor thesis.
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Abstract
While climate change and religion might not always have gone together very well, climate change has become a hot topic in religious discourse in recent years. While certain worldviews such as anthropocentrism in the Abrahamic religions have been criticized for being a bad influence on people’s behaviour and even contributing to climate and ecological degradation, on the individual level, people have found ways to connect their beliefs to a concern for climate and ecology. As a consequence people have become more aware of the options and have already started to be more careful about their own lifestyles in connection with the climate. In practice, other than on an individual level, climate adaptation activities, projects or financing by religious organisations have still been very limited. One of the reasons might be that the organisations that are actively busy with charitable causes and community projects mainly focus on people, where the work that one is doing is way more visible. This paper tries to answer the question: how do people from different faith-based communities perceive climate change and climate change interventions within the urban fabric of Groningen? It is an in-depth case study that wherein one focus group with members of a Buddhist community and six interviews with people from Jewish, Mormon and different Protestant communities in Groningen, were conducted. The interview data is combined with statements on climate change by religious leaders and data on different (planned) climate change adaptation projects in and around Groningen. Findings suggest that people from different religious organisations have found ways to connect the importance of climate change action to their religious beliefs and values. Most welcome climate change adaptation projects in the city of Groningen if they do not reduce practicality significantly, or result in hindrance to a particular group of people. Some organisations have started actively participating in climate adaptation of their own, church communities like the protestant municipality Groningen-Zuid. Whether the start of projects like this is a trend that will continue to happen among the religious community of Groningen or in general remains to be seen. Charitable projects and community involvement from different religious organisations are still often focused on helping people directly instead of climate adaptation projects or charities that only help people indirectly.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
|---|---|
| Degree programme: | Spatial Planning and Design |
| Supervisor: | Turhan, E. |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Jul 2022 12:17 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Jul 2022 12:17 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3857 |
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