Comprehensive Security and the Environment: The Challenge for Religions

Abstract

With the environment growing as a crucial component of comprehensive security, this article presents the case for an active role of religious actors in environmental security. Descriptively, religious actors need to be acknowledged as providers of literacy on the ecological crisis and security threats, as well as agents of multilevel dialogue projects. At the same time, prescriptively, they should be challenged, from within their communities and from outside, about what they could and ought to improve in literacy, partnerships, and agency. It is argued that the resulting transformational process might decisively affect the redefinition, trajectories, and impact of environmental security as a crucial component of comprehensive security.