Can religion contribute to the protection of the natural environment?
I come from a region or a continent where the environment, primarily the fauna and flora are so important to the people. It serves for their food and for their protection. However I have seen how year after year since my birth food has been hard and protection has reduced and calamities have multiplied. It has been caused by us men and also by the people that to over our countries. The traditional African religions in the region encouraged the people to have the right attitude towards the environment and the synergy balanced with the people. With the arrival of missionaries and with them the foreign states they represented. They have affected the ecosystem of the areas and the natural environment is no longer the same. It is for this reason that I want to research and write an essay on this topic. Hoping that we can end up having a good base for our various religions to help protect the environment or conclude that there is no way for the religions to do anything for that.
Introduction
These are two extract from an article by Dr. Rowan Wilson archbishop of Canterbury.
“Last Monday, at the Lambeth Conference, Bishop Winston Halapua from Polynesia spoke about a meeting of churches from various Pacific islands where the subject for discussion had been neither social justice nor personal ethics, but the bare fact of rising ocean levels. Within a very few years, the likelihood is that several small islands will simply become uninhabitable.
“For believers, and very clearly for Christian believers, this is connected with the recognition that the world is God's before it is ours – never just a possession – and that we are in God's hands in life and death. But even a person who does not share the basic conviction might think what a politics would like that went beyond conventional "right" and "left" stereotypes to work out how we coped meaningfully with real, non-negotiable limits – not resentfully or in wilful disregard of reality, but