Environmental sustainability of religious practices

Abstract

Religion is sometimes defined as the relationship between people, often in supernatural terms, and what they consider to be holy. Nine of the biggest faiths in the world represent billions of people around the world. They include 750 million Hindus, ten million Jains, 700 million Buddhists, 12.5 million Jews, less than two billion Christians, 1.4 billion Muslims, 16 million Sikhs and five million Baha'is (UNEPGC, 2001). All faiths throughout the world share a common ethic based on harmony with nature, although there is often a significant gap between the religious texts and the current practices of those religions ' adherents. Some religious practices affect the environment harmfully, which is paradoxical to the teachings themselves. Environment means different things to different people, and this has increased religiously and spiritually in pilgrimage sites as the most visible. With change in time, the beliefs of different religions are changed and their essence is ended up losing, which causes damage to the environment (element of nature) once worshiped. For their teachings and practices and their impact on the environment, this study is conducted for two different religions. The study's objective is to evaluate the environmental sustainability of religious practices on religious sites. This is going to be done under three goals. The first goal is to study the current scenario of religion and religious practices, followed by the second goal of identifying and evaluating the tenets and religious practices for their environmental sustainability concerns. And the third goal is to develop religious site sustainability strategies. To begin with the study, various religion and their activity were studied with their impact on environment, weather positive or negative. It was identified that various activities have negative impact on environment and have changed over the period of time. To select the study area, the religion with highest population and with the lowest population were selected and at the same time with the similar influx of pilgrim were identified. From this Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh for Hindu religion and Shikharji, Jharkhand is selected for the study. For these areas various festivals celebrated were identified and also the tenets of these religion were studied to see the gap between the practices and teachings. Since both the sites v Environmental Sustainability of Religious Practices are located near natural feature and are small villages, the impact of pilgrim activities is studied and the behaviour toward the nature. For the study areas, the initial survey is one for pilgrim perception toward the activities and to observe the awareness between them. Discussion is done with various stakeholders related to activities, principle of religion and how they have observed the changes in that place. It can be observed from the analysis that the tenets of both the religion are linked with the environment. But in Hindu religion that is at Omkareshwar the practices followed are polluting the river Narmada. And pilgrims are less concerned about the impact of their activities on environment. on the other hand, in jain religion that is at Shikharji, religious activities are environmental friendly and their teaching by religious leaders are about the environmental conservation. But here issues are related to the supporting activities concerned with the pilgrim movement on trek, or physical infrastructure. Through the analysis, the main issues are identified. These issues pertained to the religious activities performed in Omkareshwar and on the other side, jain religious site Shikharji, Jharkhand were practices are environmentally sustainable, there are the issues related to the activities of pilgrim over the trek. And both the places carrying capacity are in negative at peak season, hence the mitigation measure should be such that it increases the capacity of the environment to absorb the pollution. These religious activities cannot be changed but can be can be practiced in a sustainable manner. Various strategies are proposed for making activities sustainable and to create awareness among pilgrim for conserving environment. The study will be led to strategy or initiatives which the municipal corporation, religious leaders and pilgrim can take to improve the overall scenario which is leading to unsustainability of religious practices. Such strategy along with extensive awareness programmes can led to behavioural change in the pilgrim and local people to make the site environmentally sustainable. And these strategies can be copied to other pilgrimage site with similar practices and natural features.