The global environmental crisis is a crisis of modern society, which raises fundamental ethical questions on progress, global justice and the meaning of sustainable development. While the role of environmental NGOs has been widely recognized, religious environmentalism has only attracted scant attention of political science scholars so far. Yet, religious belief systems may well provide visionary ideas on progress and how to lead a ‘good life’, to some extent at least outside the growth-paradigm. In global environmental politics, faith-based actors (FBA) actively participate in international political negotiations as well as public debates on sustainable development. Whether they re-imagine environmental beliefs and reflect on alternative solutions within or outside of neoliberal approaches to sustainability in market-economic terms, remains to be seen.
This paper inquires how FBAs influence sustainable development discourses. It contrasts their ideas with other existing ideas on sustainable development through a discourse analysis of FBA’s submissions in context of the UN Summit Rio+20, asking: What visions of the good life are contained in current articulations of faith-based actors with respect to sustainable development? In what way do they differ from other ideas on sustainable development? And how can these ideas on the good life influence and activate political and individual action to meet the challenges of the global environmental crisis?
