Faith and Climate Change: Towards a Research Agenda

Climate change is an urgent – possibly existential – challenge to continued human flourishing on this planet. Clearly, it is a defining challenge to our longer-range future as a species. So much so that it might be difficult today to respond to that most important spiritual question – ‘What is a good life?’ – without reference to some discussion of environmental values and ecological virtue, and particularly to climate change. Yet, the climate policy discourse is nearly entirely in the language of science and economics with little effort to link these to the moral dimensions of human values and behavior.

The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University are collaborating on a future-oriented, interdisciplinary, and structured research initiative to explore the moral dimensions of climate action and the possible role of faith-based values in encouraging positive environmental and climate behaviors – particularly in the context of Islam and Muslim societies.

As part of this initiative, we are organizing two roundtables – one in Oxford, UK, and one in Boston, USA – to explore the dimensions of a possible research agenda on faith and climate change, particularly in the context of Islam and Muslim societies. Each roundtable will bring together scholars, policy experts, and activists from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to discuss and identify a set of key research questions that might constitute the core of a research inquiry into faith and climate change.

The first Roundtable took place in Oxford on May 27-28 at OCIS and also included a discussion panel, open to the public, on the evening of May 27. The Roundtable was structured to be interactive and interdisciplinary. Participants were asked to identify and discuss what they believe to be some of the most important and useful research questions working on which could advance understanding and action on environmental values and ecological virtue; particularly, but not solely, in the context of Islam and Muslim societies.

The second Roundtable will be held in Boston at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future on September 19-20, 2024, and will bring together US-based scholars and practitioners to discuss the topic in a similar format. The second Roundtable will also include a public panel discussion on September 19. The goal of the initiative is to produce a policy paper that identifies such an agenda and outlines some next steps towards its realization (expected early 2025).

The initiative is co-led by Prof. Adil Najam, a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow (2024-26) and the Mahathir Mohamad Fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and by Prof. Shahid Jameel, the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and head of OCIS’s Program on Science, Technology, and Environment in Muslim Societies.

Join the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), and the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs (CURA) for a panel discussion exploring the moral dimensions of climate action and the possible role of faith-based values in encouraging positive environmental and climate behaviors.

The event will feature İbrahim Özdemir (Uskudar University, Turkey), Afreen Siddiqi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Mary Evelyn Tucker (Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology), and will be moderated by Pardee School of Global Studies Dean Emeritus Adil Najam.

The discussion will take place on Thursday, September 19, 2024 from 4:00-5:30 pm at the Pardee School of Global Studies at 121 Bay State Road. Please register to attend below