How social movements use religious creativity to address environmental crises in Indonesian local communities.

[Display omitted] • Synthesized data from 244 studies on Indonesian environmental movements 1990–2022. • Found 571 examples of lived religion used to create new environmental practices. • Movements blended official religions, Indigenous religions, and local knowledges. • Movements adopted many religious and other strategies to respond to local contexts. • Movements faced huge opposition, increasing their creativity and vulnerability. Religions play an important yet poorly understood part in how social movements motivate societies to respond to environmental crises and the rapidly changing climate. Indonesia sits on the global frontline of environmental crises, with a rich history of religious diversity and environmental activism. Using framework synthesis, we analyzed 244 empirical studies (English and Indonesian) on 208 environmental social movements operating in local communities in Indonesia from 1990 through 2022. We developed a conceptual model showing how grassroots movements used lived religion to create new environmental practices and motivate environmental behavioral changes in diverse local communities. Our study inventoried 571 examples of lived religious concepts, practices, rituals and systems that movements used to create environmental concepts and practices. We found three patterns in the creative process: 1) conceptual hybridization, meaning that movements often blended official religions, Indigenous religions, and local knowledges and traditions (often called cultural practices), and they fused these aspects of lived religion with economic, legal and scientific concepts; 2) contextual imagination, meaning that movements adopted multiple religious and other strategies to respond to local economic, environmental, political, and religio-cultural contexts; and, 3) contestation-driven improvisation, meaning that movements faced intense opposition, and this dynamic both motivated improvisation and increased the vulnerability of movements and of local communities adapting to rapid environmental change. We propose that future studies on adaptation and sustainable transitions could include lived eco-religion as a meeting point for critical partnerships between environmental scholars in the sciences and the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Global Environmental Change Part A: Human & Policy Dimensions is the property of Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)