Could religion provide answers for climate anxiety?

Simon Fraser University's faculty of environment and its Multifaith Centre have collaborated on a pilot project to help students dealing with climate anxiety. The Ecological Chaplaincy Project launched in January. (Simon Fraser University faculty of environment)

Climate grief is a growing issue among youth in Canada, and as extreme weather events become more frequent, universities such as Simon Fraser University in Vancouver are looking at implementing ways to tackle the accompanying anxiety.

The school's faculty of environment and its Multifaith Centre have collaborated on a pilot project to assist students with this problem. The Ecological Chaplaincy project, which was spearheaded by religious studies and environmental ethics lecturer Jason Brown, launched on Jan. 29. 

"My students have expressed just the sort of low-level and background anxiety about … what's happening when there's weird weather or wildfire smoke," Brown told What On Earth host Laura Lynch. 

"Some of them admit, almost flippantly, they don't want to have kids or they think it might be irresponsible to have children. Others feel hopeless and helpless, so they are almost not sure why they're continuing with their degrees if it feels like the future is kind of slipping between their fingers," said Brown, who is SFU's first appointed ecological chaplain.

According to a 2023 study out of Lakehead University in Ontario, young Canadians aged 16 to 25 are experiencing a sense of loss related to climate change. The study reported that more than 50 per cent of study participants experience fear, anxiousness and feelings of powerlessness. Meanwhile, more than 70 per cent claim the future frightens them and more than 75 per cent report the climate crisis is affecting their mental health.

The Ecological Chaplaincy project was born of Brown's need to support students in processing their climate-related emotions. But his students aren't the only ones. Ernest Ng, SFU's Buddhist chaplain, has heard similar sentiments from his students.

Ng believes religion helps people understand their relationship to themselves and the environment and is a useful device in tackling ecological grief.

"I think one important [Buddhist] teaching and one important perspective is to see our interconnectedness with nature in the world," Ng said. "Very often … we talk about nature or we talk about the ecosystem as if we are outside of it, like we are not part of it."

Ng maintains that humans are inseparable from the natural world and that we must become more aware of how our actions and behaviours affect the planet. Practising mindfulness is an essential part of reducing harm to the environment, he said.

Despite just launching in January, Brown is already thinking of ways to incorporate chaplains from other religious traditions to ensure the project is as inclusive as it can be.

"The interesting thing that we're seeing in our times is that a lot of people are letting go of labels and identifications with religion," Brown said. "And so one of the words that I use for that is an 'interpath' dialogue. That would include dialogue with Indigenous peoples, conversations about reconciliation, but also the unaffiliated or the none-of-the-above category."

Brown hopes to arrange talking circles with the chaplaincy program, forest walks in nearby Burnaby Mountain and other activities that incorporate mindfulness and encourage students to connect to a sense of place in the world, away from their desks and without phones.

Brown hopes these kinds of activities can help students process their climate anxiety and replace it with hope.

"Grief and love [for the planet] are deeply entangled and deeply intertwined," Brown said. "And so if we want to talk about climate grief, we have to talk about love."

— Dannielle Piper

This piece was originally published on CBC Radio - What on Earth on February 22 2024.

Islam and the Environment

When Islam is featured in popular media, it's often in the context of conflict: extremism, radicalism, fundamentalism. But Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, has a surprising perspective on his own faith: that it's deeply predisposed towards environmental stewardship. In a public lecture and later interview with IDEAS host Paul Kennedy, Dr. Nasr explains why Islam may well be seen as a 'green' religion.

To hear the complete episode, please visit the Ideas website. 

Islam: Is it the Green Religion? by IDEAS producer David Gutnick

These recent headlines from mainstream media around the world highlight how the words "Muslim" and "Islam", are often mentioned in the context of terrorism.

But according to a world-renowned scholar, there's another word that should be associated with Islam -- and it may surprise you -- environmentalism. Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, believes Islam is more disposed towards environmental stewardship than other faiths, and may well be regarded as the 'green' religion.

"Christianity in the West," said Nasr to CBC Radio One IDEAS, "has had a tremendous problem: how to come to terms with the environment at a time when its most devout followers have not shown much interest in the environment. If you take all the verses of the New Testament, there is no reference to nature."

Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born in Iran. He holds undergraduate degrees in math and physics from M.I.T, a Masters in geology and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard University.

"The Qur'an addresses not only human beings, but also the cosmos," says Nasr. "It is much easier to be able to develop an environmental philosophy. Birds are called communities in the Qur'an. Human beings, bees, it is so easy to develop an authentic Islamic philosophy of the environment."

Nasr's interest in science, religion and the environment spans five decades. He's published dozens of books including Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man. In it, Nasr compares how Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, particularly its Sufi expression, see humankind's relationship with the environment.

"As long as men lived according to religion there was no environmental crisis," says Nasr.

"St. Francis of Assisi wrote, ''Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.'"

But Christianity's sensitivity to the natural world changed in the 1600's, says Nasr, when the Catholic Church burned its hand with the trials of Galileo. Catholic and Protestant Christian theologians became less interested in thinking about the cosmos, with the world of nature.

Nasr says the scientific revolution in Europe "left nature in the hands of two forces: modern science where the meaning of nature is totally irrelevant, and -- of course - greed."

"Islam was never secularized as Christianity was," says Nasr. "Muslims did not lose faith in the same way that happened in the Christian West. You had a very different dynamic in the phenomenon in what has to do with nature."

Nasr's views have been both celebrated -- and censored. He acknowledges that there's a considerable rift between his understanding of the Islamic faith and what's actually practiced in Islamic nations: "In almost every Islamic country, what the preachers preach on Friday is ordered by the government,"says Nasr. "One of the things these governments do not like is anything that will stultify what they believe to be economic progress. So there is a very strong opposition to environmental issues."

Nasr says that when he talks about pollution in countries like Pakistan and Iran, he hears people say that the West will somehow find a solution. "That is the attitude of most people with an inferiority complex," he says. "That is why the Muslim minorities living in North America play such a huge role in the future of the rest of the Islamic world."

Nasr has criss-crossed the globe speaking to religious and environmental leaders trying to build consensus on how to best raise awareness about what he calls a 'worldwide crisis.'

"We human beings cannot be happy without the happiness of the rest of creation," he says. "We have killed enough, massacred enough of God's other creatures,"

"God will judge us in the future on whether we are able to live in harmony and peace with the rest of his creation or commit suicide," he says. There is no third choice."

To hear the complete episode, please visit the Ideas website.