Teachings of the People: Environmental Justice, Religion, and the Global South

Abstract

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Faith for Earth initiative calls for religiously inspired social action on local and global levels, focused on the seventeen interdependent sustainable development goals toward a just and peaceful world. Environmental justice must include an intersectional human rights approach to these issues by addressing the multiple and intersecting nature of lived experience, including gender, race, and socioeconomic status. My paper takes as its point of departure the UNEP Faith for Earth's recognition that environmental conditions have different impacts on the lives of men and women due to existing gender inequality. As both UN and UN Women have confirmed in their reports, women disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, especially in the global South. Environmental justice must address the critical link between environmental problems, and the rights of women and girls. Sustainable Development Goal five on gender equality includes addressing violence against women, sexual health and reproductive rights, and peace and security. I discuss how faith-based initiatives, specifically Buddhist and African Indigenous Christian, have a positive role in grassroots environmental justice in the global South. My discussion includes the work of African Indigenous Christian, Nobel Laureate, and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai, and the Theravada Thai lay Buddhist teacher and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sulak Sivaraksa. Their faith-based grassroots initiatives for environmental justice anticipate and are exemplary models for the UNEP Faith for Earth call to action. They emphasize a 'think global, act local' approach to environmental justice, by drawing on the wisdom and teachings of the people. I focus specifically on how religion has a critical role in these faith-based initiatives.

Introduction

In 2017, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) partnered with faithbased organizations to create the Faith for Earth Strategy.¹ This partnership focuses on environmental justice to encourage, empower, and engage faith-based organizations toward achieving the 2030 agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Climate change SDG 13 is both integral to and interdependent with the other SDGs, including gender equity, eliminating poverty, health, education, and peace.² In 2018, the Parliament of World Religions added a fifth directive to its Global Ethic protocol and its values of unity with a commitment to sustainability and care for the earth. This became the catalyst for the UNEP Faith for Earth strategy. These interfaith initiatives for unity in diversity, and commitment to the SDGs, are integral to environmental justice. The shared religious ethics of diverse faith communities guiding this commitment include non-harming, our interdependence with all life and the ecosystem that supports life, the importance of inter- and intra-faith dialogue, and respect for human rights. The Faith for Earth Coalition for environmental justice sustains religiously inspired social action on local and global levels guided by an ethic of care "to leave no one behind" and to co-create a just and peaceful world.³ In recent decades, the UN has recognized the critical role faith-based initiatives have in addressing environmental justice, and how environmental sustainability and degradation are human rights issues. The right to a healthy environment is first and foremost a human rights issue; it is integral to the right to life and related rights. An intersectional approach to environmental justice must recognize the multiple and intersecting nature of lived experience, which includes gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.⁴ UNEP Faith for Earth call to action recognizes that environmental conditions impact women because of existing gender inequality, especially in the global South.⁵

The UNEP Faith for Earth Call for Action begins by reaffirming the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), a modern template for international human rights law stipulating that every person, regardless of difference, is equal in rights and in dignity. Article 29 of the UNDHR invokes the responsibility we each have as members of the global community in protecting one another's rights.⁶ In recent decades, diverse faith-based approaches have emphasized the need for balancing rights and responsibilities guided by the Golden Rule.⁷ The UNEP Faith for Earth and the Global Ethic's Fifth Directive⁸ focus on the need to balance human rights and responsibilities and the positive role of faith-based initiatives in addressing environmental justice.⁹ In recent decades, however, religious right-wing views in our global community have opposed human rights, and justify violence toward others, especially women, girls and LGBTIQA+ individuals.¹⁰ Highly politicized women's movements in the global South with diverse cultural and religious identities have challenged these views.¹¹ In addition, faith-based feminists have reinterpreted traditional beliefs and practices to support the human rights of women and girls.¹² As UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy says, peace and justice will be neither achievable nor sustainable without equitable and inclusive development and the recognition of the full range of human rights for women and girls.¹³

What is distinct about the UNEP Faith for Earth call to action is the recognition that "environmental conditions have different impacts on the lives of men and women due to existing gender inequality."¹⁴ Both the UN and UN Women have confirmed to date that women and girls disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change and environmental hazards especially in developing countries.¹⁵ This means that there is a critical link between environmental justice and the rights of women and girls, especially in the global South. The term global South refers to communities impacted by colonial and neocolonial violence. These not only include Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East but also Indigenous and diasporic communities located geographically in North America, Europe, and Oceania. In this view, SDG 5 on gender equality is integral to other SDGs addressing environmental justice, violence against women, sexual health, and reproductive rights,¹⁶ and peace and security. This year, the important link between gender equality and sustainable development was addressed during International Women's Day and the sixty-sixth session on the Commission on the Status of Women.¹⁷

My paper discusses the positive role of faith-based initiatives addressing environmental justice in the global South. I focus on the life and work of African Indigenous Christian, Nobel Laureate, and founder of the Green Belt Movement Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai, and Theravada Buddhist Thai lay teacher and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sulak Sivaraksa. Their faith-based grassroots initiatives for environmental justice in the global South anticipate and are exemplary models for the UNEP Faith for Earth call to action. They emphasize a "think global, act local" approach to environmental justice, by drawing on the wisdom and teachings of the people. I focus specifically on how religion plays a critical role in these faith-based initiatives.

Environmental justice, religion, and women of the global south

Indian economist and neo-Gandhian, Devaki Jain, has written extensively on the development of women's rights under the UN system from the perspective of a woman of the global South.¹⁸ She argues that religion has a powerful role in mobilizing grassroots women's movements to bring about positive change, peace, and justice.¹⁹ For example, Jain emphasizes the Gandhian ethics of democracy whereby policies and practices addressing environmental justice and human rights focus on empowering the poor and marginalized, especially women and girls.²⁰ In the global South, environmental justice must address the feminization of poverty, and neocolonial practices prioritizing short-term gains (like deforestation) that have devastating long-term consequences. The 2013 UN Women report addressing gender equality and sustainable development draws upon Amartya Sen's capability approach to highlight the critical link between environmental justice and women of the global South:

The capability approach puts emphasis on people's substantive freedoms and sees development as a process of enlarging those freedoms. These substantive freedoms include capacities 'to be and to do' and to live a life that one has reason to value, such as the freedom to be nourished, to be educated, to be healthy, to choose whom and when to marry, to freely decide on the number and spacing of children, and so on … People's aspirations to live fulfilling lives are also directly relevant to, and deeply affected by, environmental sustainability. As a result, these concerns are at the core of the capability approach. The most disadvantaged people carry a double burden of deprivation, since they are more vulnerable to the wider effects of environmental degradation but must also cope with threats to their immediate environment posed by indoor air pollution, dirty water, and unimproved sanitation. For women, with their greater reliance on subsistence agriculture and on common property resources (e.g., forests, village commons) for meeting their households' subsistence needs, environmental concerns are becoming increasingly urgent. But women can also be an important part of the solution to environmental degradation through their active participation in the governance and management of natural resources. That women and girls are at the center of sustainability concerns has long been recognized in intergovernmental agreements United Nations Conferences on Environment and Development, and the Beijing Platform for Action.²¹

This UN Women report shows why the capabilities approach is central to environmental justice, a human rights issue. There is an emphasis on concretely realizing gender equality and women's substantive freedoms. We must consider these issues when considering the right to a healthy environment, which is always informed by race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. Faith-based initiatives addressing environmental justice must also consider that religion and culture have a complex and often ambivalent relationship to human rights in both thwarting and/or being instrumental in expanding women's capabilities, freedoms, and agency. This complex influence on attitudes and priorities further highlights why social, environmental, and gender development issues must be addressed in an integrated way.

For example, African American eco-womanist, Dr. Melanie L. Harris says, "Black lives matter in the work of environmental justice."²² This requires eradicating systemic violence in the form of environmental practices (social, political, economic) that are "complicit with a logic of domination, promoting the rights of some species, and devaluing those of people of color."²³ These violate the human rights of people of color by de-humanizing them through systemic violence, which includes violations of basic human rights beginning with the right to life.²⁴ The 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit proposed the seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice with the active participation of Christian churches.²⁵ By 2019, this coalition included interfaith alliances with Jewish and Muslim faith communities. This call is based on the leadership of people of color, Indigenous people, and low-income people to address environmental degradation and sustainability as a human rights issue. Their call for environmental justice emphasizes an end to colonization, oppression, and genocide. Liberation is on political, economic, and cultural levels, as well as being spiritual in reestablishing the sacredness of the environment, and interdependence of all life.²⁶ They affirm that all peoples of color are equal in right and in dignity in accordance with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and international human rights law. Policies and acts of environmental degradation that harm people of color, Indigenous people, and people of low income are a violation of these human rights, which include acts defined in the Convention on Genocide.²⁷ Latina Christian feminist Maria Pilar Aquino draws a clear link between environmental degradation, violence against women, and religion: "the realities of degradation, poverty, violence lived by women around the world express the negation of the presence of God and all pervasiveness of sin in the world."²⁸ Here, "sin" refers to the injustice manifesting in the neocolonialism of a capitalist and corporate global market that deems greed and profit more valuable than human life or the environment.²⁹ This causes human rights violations, and conflicts fueled by the scarcity of resources, the feminization of poverty and without any concern for environmental justice.³⁰

In recent years, there have been diverse grassroots initiatives for environmental justice in the global South. These are concrete examples of the right to self-determination of peoples. One example is Maite Nkoana-Mashabane's Thuto ya Batho:, Teachings from the People, on women of the global South adapting to climate change.³¹ At the global level, there have been several UN initiatives addressing the link between gender and climate change from an intersectional human rights lens focusing on religion. These include the 2019 UN Convention on Climate Change highlighting the link between gender and climate change, and the CEDAW General Recommendation no. 37 on gender-related dimensions of climate change from an intersectional human rights context. The recent UN Women report on Gender, Climate and Security emphasizes the critical link between environmental degradation with goal sixteen on peace as the result of climate change, humanitarian crises, and conflicts due to scarcity of resources and unstable political and economic systems.³²

The late African Indigenous Christian environmentalist and Nobel Laureate Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai was the founder and leader of the UNEP sponsored Green Belt Movement, focusing on environmental justice, and ending systemic injustice in her native Kenya. Her leadership is an enduring example of how faith-based initiatives can support grassroots advocacy for women's rights and environmental justice. As Maathai observed: "In degrading the environment, we degrade ourselves and all humankind."³³ This speaks to the deep connection between human rights and the environment she advocated in the Green Belt Movement. Human dignity is possible when we create and protect the conditions to support human rights for all people, especially the marginalized and poor. Maathai's work to create a sustainable environment was at the same time cocreating the causes and conditions for, and opportunity to participate in the right to a healthy environment, and its intrinsic link to the right for self-determination for African peoples, especially women.³⁴ What is significant about Maathai's work is how environmental justice and human rights were approached from her faith-based perspective, both Christian and African Indigenous. For example, Maathai emphasized "the forgotten ethos of care for creation and ecological justice"³⁵ profoundly resonant with interfaith and ecumenical partnerships like the UNEP Faith for Earth Initiative, the Earth Charter, and the Global Ethic's Fifth Directive on environmental stewardship.

Drawing on her African Indigenous roots, Maathai was guided by the ethic of interdependence called Ubuntu. The late South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, leader of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, defines the spiritual fusion of Ubuntu with Christianity: "Africa is the birthplace of Ubuntu, the ancient spirituality of humanity, oneness with our creator, the other, and nature. Together with humanity's team, I dream of a new world and a new humanity—a humanity that expresses ubuntu. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu—I am because we are. We are all one."³⁶ Similarly, Maathai's work toward environmental justice emphasized the interconnectedness of all life and the ecosystem that supports life. To develop her liberative vision of Christianity informed by Ubuntu, Maathai challenged the dominant form of Christianity established by European colonialism in Kenya. As she says, the latter "held the faithful captive by serving political and economic systems that exploited and dehumanized the poor."³⁷ By drawing on liberation theology and African American Christian civil rights movements in keeping with the Biblical tradition of the prophets,³⁸ she urged Indigenous Africans, and especially rural women, to free themselves from oppressive structures by nonviolent means to bring about peace and justice.³⁹ This was in keeping with the prophetic tradition of the Bible of speaking truth to power while simultaneously promoting peace based on equity.⁴⁰ She would teach rural women the liberative teachings of the Gospels, its preferential option for the poor and oppressed, and a call to serve and work for the common good.⁴¹ These liberative Christian values guided Maathai's leadership for environmental justice with a focus on empowering rural women and became influential in eventually establishing a democratic Kenya.⁴² Maathai says that the Bible was the means of communicating with the people, especially local rural women empowered by participating in the Green Belt Movement.⁴³ Maathai's feminist liberation theological interpretation of the Bible brought spiritual, political, and personal meaning for the women as they engaged in environmental justice and human rights.

In Replenishing the Earth, Maathai asks: "How might Christian spirituality and a commitment to service manifest itself in caring for the earth?" She would cite the biblical passages Genesis 1:26-30 and 2.7-24 on the divinely sanctioned responsibility of human beings to care for creation, and for one another, in contrast to the dominant colonial interpretation of asserting dominion over both others and nature.⁴⁴ She emphasizes the Christian ethic of free will, that is, that human beings have a choice about their actions—either to destroy or protect the earth, and one another. This entails awareness of the ethical consequences of our actions and their impact on all life forms and the ecosystem that supports life.⁴⁵ Maathai would cite Num 11:33, and other references to divine punishment manifesting as environmental degradation, scarcity of resources, disease, and conflict due to humanity's immoral behavior.⁴⁶ There is a direct link between human actions and the impact of these actions on others and the environment; when morally evil, these actions lead to sin⁴⁷ defined as human suffering, systemic violence, and a break with the spiritual covenant between God and the people. In spite of this, however, Maathai focused on the critical agency of free will that humans have to destroy or protect the environment, one another, and all life forms.⁴⁸ The Green Belt Movement under Maathai's leadership urged women not to wait for divine intervention, but to give themselves to the cause, rise up, and take action.⁴⁹ In this way, she empowered the rural women to exercise their right to self-determination and create a sustainable future for their children and future generations. This awareness of how their freedom is exercised in relation to interdependency contrasted with "the other worldly orientations of popular forms of Christianity in Kenya based on praying to God for intervention rather than taking responsibility."⁵⁰ The liberatory Christian teachings, harmonized with Ubuntu, informed Maathai's leadership and work with the Green Belt Movement focusing on environmental justice. The right to a clean and healthy environment was understood as a human rights issue. From an intersectional human rights lens, the impact of environmental degradation is informed by multiple intersecting oppressions which include race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.⁵¹ As Maathai observed, "it is often the wealthy who have the means to create and enforce [this] right [to a healthy environment]. Those who are poor or marginalized do not have the same options. For instance, they may live in an environment where they are forced to drink filthy, unhygienic water, even as others can sample the purest water in the world."⁵²

In her 2004 Nobel laureate speech,⁵³ Maathai explains how her UN-subsidized NGO, the Green Belt Movement, empowered local rural women impacted by environmental degradation (such as deforestation) and the unjust international economic dynamics between North and South. The focus on tree planting addressed basic needs of the rural women which included providing fuel, food, shelter, and income. This eventually became a way of challenging oppressive government policies and promoting peace and justice. Through the Green Belt Movement, thousands of ordinary citizens were mobilized and empowered to take action and effect change. In the African Indigenous tradition, trees are regarded as sacred and a symbol of peace. Trees, says Maathai, are "a token of God's presence."⁵⁴ For her mother and African ancestors, honoring the sacredness of trees was important.⁵⁵ By planting African Indigenous seeds and medicinal plants, Maathai encouraged environmental sustainability and healing of environmentally degraded areas negatively impacted by colonial and neocolonial practices that continued to exploit local natural and human resources. She explains: "as a consequence of religious and political colonialism, African Indigenous peoples lost their ancestral land and were placed in residential reserves as squatters and native Kenyans were forced to farm foreign crop varieties and with methods foreign to their experience which caused poverty and scarcity and a form of eco-racism."⁵⁶ From a colonial and neocolonial Eurocentric lens, nature and Indigenous Africans were viewed in terms of profit gained by any means necessary. This led to the exploitation and dehumanization of African people and degradation of the ecosystem that supported life. Maathai's call for the right to self-determination of African peoples, and especially African women, was "a decolonial eco-agency" grounded in African Indigenous wisdom.⁵⁷ The African Indigenous fig tree is not only revered as "a tree of God" (muti wa ngai) but also as a source of ecological wisdom. This tree and others like it are sacred because they protect the ecosystem and the many living beings it supports. Maathai refers to the water resurging from a previously deforested area where Indigenous plants have been replanted as "a miracle from God like Moses striking the rock and seeing water gushing forth into the desert."⁵⁸ Thus, killing or harming these trees would mean destabilizing the soil and making conservation of, and access to water more difficult.⁵⁹ At the same time, she calls this an immoral act against God and what is sacred. The sacred groves in Kenya are now UNESCO heritage sites reclaiming the culture and ancestral land of Indigenous African people with its biodiversity destroyed by European Christian colonialism.⁶⁰

In unifying this ecological and right-based vision with a Christian call to serve, Maathai invokes a traditional African story that has deep resonances with the Buddhist Jataka story of the baby quail.⁶¹ In her version, a hummingbird attempts to put out a raging forest fire by carrying drops of water in his/her small beak.⁶² The larger animals stand by watching and criticizing the small bird's efforts. This is a metaphor describing her work toward environmental justice. There are great challenges in addressing the potentially catastrophic effects of poverty, injustice, and environmental degradation. However, insignificant and vulnerable we may feel (as she also did), like the hummingbird, we must persist, be committed, and be patient.⁶³ This is particularly challenging, as it was for Maathai, because she did this at great risk to her own life by those unjust forces that she challenged. Her radical political activism for pro-democracy and women's movements lead to her being imprisoned, assaulted, and her life threatened repeatedly.⁶⁴

Maathai's deep commitment to environmental justice was also instrumental in establishing democracy in Kenya, and the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi.⁶⁵ These are a testament to the impact of her life and work for future generations. Her lifelong call to service took on a new urgency when she became a grandmother to newborn Ruth Wangari. Like every new life, her very existence calls upon us to reflect on the world she will inherit based on the actions of present and past generations. We are faced, says Maathai, with the critical urgency of environmental degradation which threatens all life forms, and we are called to assist the healing of ourselves and the Earth, and to embrace our sense of belonging to an extended family of life.⁶⁶ In this way, both Christianity and Ubuntu provide an alternate vision of the sacredness of life and the path that respects this by cocreating the causes and conditions for environmental justice. Maathai endorsed the Earth Charter, which she said enshrines a reverence for life and values that are important for our survival on the planet—these being what she had tried to achieve through the Green Belt Movement.⁶⁷ After her untimely death, the Green Belt Movement continues, and has had a lasting and sustainable impact on environmental justice and women despite the ongoing impact of neocolonialism.⁶⁸ This is one example of a deep faith commitment to realizing the SDGs of gender equity, and its link to addressing poverty, climate change, and peace.

Socially engaged buddhism, environmental justice, and the global south

Maathai often emphasized the need for continued interfaith dialogue to guide action in cocreating environmental justice. She expressed her profound respect for, and resonance with faith-based initiatives for environmental justice in the global South like those of neo-Gandhian founder of Navdanya, Dr. Vandana Shiva and her empowerment of rural women in India and the Himalayan regions, and the Theravada Buddhist and Thai lay teacher, and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sulak Sivaraksa.⁶⁹ As a complement to Wangari Maathai's Ubuntu-Christian community-based vision, I now turn to Sivaraksa. He defines environmental sustainability as "not taking from the earth, world, society, each other, life more than we can give back."⁷⁰ In his view, ecological suffering is rooted in a global political economy that sustains privilege by creating poverty, systemic violence, and the unequal relationship between North and South. Sivaraksa explains that neocolonialism has a negative impact on the global South: Its mandate of extracting wealth at any cost leads to deforestation, extinction of wildlife, scarcity of resources, and a culture of impunity that violates the rights of the people, especially those who are poor and marginalized, women and girls.⁷¹ Thus, the environmental crisis is rooted in systemic violence and human rights violations.

As a Buddhist of the global South, Sivaraksa understands these corrupting or unwholesome tendencies as deeply rooted in human ignorance, selfishness, and attachment. Because of this, action toward environmental justice requires a religious response and training that counteracts these tendencies.⁷² This perspective has been central to his leadership in the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. This contrasts to other forms of activism that are not based on the spiritual values of compassion, wisdom, and interdependence, but rather on anger and aggression rooted in the individualistic focus of competing rights.⁷³ In light of this, Sivaraksa encourages an explicitly interreligious position on environmental justice: "there is a pressing need for religious leaders to transcend the labels of religion, to forget whatever outward differences they have because of their practices, rituals, places of worship, etc. and connect to the spirituality within us all."⁷⁴ This interfaith partnership is guided by the spiritual ethics of compassion, non-harming, and a deep sense of interconnectedness of all beings and the environment. His call for environmental justice, like that of Wangari Maathai, is prophetic by anticipating and being profoundly resonant with the UNEP Faith for Earth Initiative. For Sivaraksa, environmental degradation is first and foremost a human rights issue linked to gender equality, poverty, and cocreating the causes and conditions for all people, especially those who are poor and marginalized. This dhammic approach to environmental justice has engaged other teachers and practitioners in both Theravada and Mahayana traditions in the North and South.⁷⁵ One of these is Thai Buddhist feminist Ouyporn Khuankaew, who cofounded the International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice and Buddhist Education for Social Transformation. She speaks to the need for addressing peace and justice for marginalized peoples by transforming a dominant culture that normalizes and institutionalizes violence.⁷⁶ This is central to her socially engaged Buddhist peacebuilding in local and international interfaith contexts to relieve the suffering of women, minorities, and disempowered people, which includes grassroots sustainable development projects.⁷⁷

Sivaraksa's work integrates the teachings and practices of the Buddha, as preserved in the Theravada tradition, with socially engaged action in addressing environmental justice. These teachings define the root causes of ecological suffering from a Buddhist perspective and provide practical steps for realizing our potential transformation toward realizing environmental justice. Sivaraksa begins with the most fundamental insights of Buddhism. As he explains, "the root of the word Buddha means to be awake. When we are awakened to the simplicity and humility of the suffering engendered by greed, hatred and ignorance, our consciousness is restructured. We become mindful about ourselves and others and naturally try to restructure society."⁷⁸ He identifies the root causes of environmental suffering as greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and ignorance (moha).⁷⁹ These are the cause of all forms of suffering manifesting along a spectrum of intensity from personal, interpersonal, to societal levels. Here, suffering or dukkha has a specific meaning, which is our response to the vicissitudes of the universal human condition, including illness, aging, dying, separation, loss, and conflict. What is key is how we respond, whether in skillful and wholesome or unskillful and unwholesome ways, to our human experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant. In the Buddhist teachings, the moral law of kamma refers to the impact of our intentional actions of body, speech, and mind in the long and/or short term on ourselves and others. To liberate ourselves from suffering means to train our hearts and minds to skillfully relate to our human experiences in a radically different way. This training is based on ethics (sīla), meditation (samādhi), and wisdom (paňňā). As a socially engaged Buddhist, Sivaraksa emphasizes the importance of individual spiritual training in working toward environmental justice. For example, Buddhist mindfulness concerns how we skillfully recognize, work with, and transform greed, hatred, and delusion within ourselves into generosity, compassion, and wisdom, respectively.⁸⁰ We can see how these tendencies within us manifest in the world and in our communities. Greed is the cause for sustaining privilege that creates scarcity of resources and poverty; hatred is the cause for conflict, war, and all forms of violence; ignorance, combined with greed and hatred, leads to human rights abuses and environmental degradation. Skillfully transforming these tendencies on the individual level by way of Buddhist mindfulness and ethics is a form of inner disarmament and peacebuilding, which manifests in our actions in the world to the benefit of others.

In clarifying environmental suffering, Sivaraksa explains the Buddha's teaching on the four noble truths in a socially engaged way: we recognize how we create suffering (first noble truth), the cause of this unskillful response (second noble truth), the way to decondition unskillful, and recondition skillful responses in alignment with Buddhist ethics based on non-harming, and cultivating calm and insight in tandem (third noble truth), and we cultivate the Noble Eightfold path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga) to genuine freedom, peace, Nibbāna (fourth noble truth). The latter is based on, and integrates eight interdependent aspects of daily life, including right or wise intention (sammā saṅkappa, wise speech (sammā vaca), wise action (sammā-kammanta), wise livelihood (sammā-ājīva), and mindfulness (sammā sati). These Buddhist teachings are resources that can transform individuals and their actions in the world, helping to dismantle oppressive systems and create a culture of peace.⁸¹ This socially engaged approach to Dhamma is aligned with Buddhist responses to environmental justice developed in other contexts.

For his part, Sivaraksa explicates the cohesion between the core Buddhist teachings and practices with external as well as internal transformation: "By applying these four truths to situations of conflict we can acknowledge the problem, find the root causes, and prevent unwanted consequences through mindful living—mindful of our actions, environment, brothers and sisters, and neighbors. What are the causes of ecological suffering? How can we stop or uproot them? To what extent are we part of the problem … [and] are we reproducing ecological suffering through our way of life …?"⁸² Central here is developing insight into how we respond to external conflict as conditioned by the attitudes and expectations informing our understanding. Buddhist mindfulness, supported by the other interdependent eightfold path factors, facilitates deeper awareness of the causes and conditions we create that harm ourselves and others, as well as those that are of benefit to a harmonious way of being.

In the Sedaka Sutta, the Buddha defines the aim of mindfulness practice as protecting oneself and others, guided by the ethics of non-harming, care, compassion, and patience.⁸³ Spiritual education with a focus on Buddhist ethics and mindfulness are foundational to Sivaraksa's engaged teaching and leadership with the International Network for Engaged Buddhists and with the Inter-Religious Climate and Ecology Network. He emphasizes how this is a profound way of transforming one's perceptions and cultivating skillful actions in the world.⁸⁴ As a socially engaged Buddhist, Sivaraksa sees Buddhist mindfulness as a powerful resource "to restructure our consciousness and help us to develop critical self-awareness. We become more able to see the structural violence within ourselves and in the world."⁸⁵ The changing nature of our experience, especially our perceptions, helps us to see that change is possible and liberating—especially, in deconditioning unskillful ways and cultivating skillful ways of seeing and doing on the individual level. These, in turn, inform our actions in the community to be of benefit to others. Khuankaew says that Buddhist mindfulness helps us "to uncover the interconnectedness of conditions, how people are directly or indirectly complicit with conditions of harming and how to challenge and change these."⁸⁶ She draws on the Buddha's teachings of the four noble truths to address violence against women by deconstructing patriarchy and the multiple intersecting oppressions of women's lived experiences.⁸⁷ Additionally, in cultivating insight into the changing nature of experience, we can transform deeply rooted conditioned patterns of harm on the individual, interpersonal, and structural levels.

It is equally essential, as Sivaraksa explains, that the potential of Buddhist mindfulness to transform on individual and social levels must be grounded in ethics.⁸⁸ In the Abhisanda Sutta, the Buddha refers to the five lay ethical precepts as gifts to oneself and others by offering freedom from danger, animosity, and oppression.⁸⁹ Cambodian monk, Maha Ghoshananda, the Gandhi of the Killing Fields, was instrumental in bringing peace and democracy after the Khmer Rouge genocide through interfaith and multilateral talks, by teaching Buddhist mindfulness and compassion practices, and by leading peace walks (Dhammayietra). He emphasized how the five lay precepts are consistent with human rights, beginning with the right to life.⁹⁰ Because environmental justice is a human rights issue, Sivaraksa says that the five lay Buddhist precepts are essential in daily life, and essential to balancing rights with responsibilities in engaged social action. The first precept is nonharming (ahiṃsa) and includes both refraining from being complicit with all forms of violence (personal, interpersonal, and systemic) toward all life (including self, other human and non human beings, and the environment) and cultivating the conditions to protect all life forms and the environment.⁹¹ In socially engaged action, we apply the unity of means and ends: violent and nonviolent means will lead to violent and nonviolent ends in the short and/or long term. The other four precepts are: to refrain from stealing, and instead to cultivate generosity (dāna) and share resources (second); to refrain from all forms of sexual violence and instead support and protect others, especially women and girls who are often devalued in society (third); to refrain from false and harsh speech but to engage in wise speech that is kind, timely and true (fourth); and to refrain from intoxicants (alcohol, recreational, and illegal drugs) but to have a simple, clean lifestyle that supports the clarity and integrity of body and mind (fifth precept).

These five lay Buddhist precepts cultivate internal and external peace and support genuine freedom for self and others, and skillful action in addressing environmental justice.⁹² This contrasts with values of the dominant culture emphasizing self-gratification, materialism and exploitation which views freedom as based on the survival of the fittest, and exploiting others and nature by any means necessary.⁹³ Sivaraksa cites the Dhammapada, which says that one's intention, good or evil, will bring about peace or suffering, respectively; and that only wise compassion can eradicate hatred and violence.⁹⁴ For the Buddha, the five lay ethical precepts are the basis for the moral law of kamma,⁹⁵ whereby we are responsible for our actions, and the impact they have on ourselves and others in the short and/or long term. Of course, the impact is a complex matter which must consider a web of corelated causes and conditions. In the context of environmental justice, everyone is equal in being encouraged to be responsible for their actions, and in their complicity with injustice, violence, and environmental degradation.⁹⁶ Thus, kamma as a moral law is rooted in the practice of Buddhist mindfulness.

Sivaraksa summarizes the interconnection between internal transformation and action in the world in the following way: "Let us meditate for world peace, social justice and environmental balance beginning with our own breathing … Once I have seeds of peace and happiness within me, I will reduce my selfish desires, and transform my consciousness. With less attachment to self, I will understand the structural violence in the world … and see the world holistically as a sphere filled with living beings who are all related to me. I expand my understanding with love, to help build a more nonviolent world."⁹⁷ He also draws on a valuable and supportive practice of cultivating the brahmavihārās or the sublime attitudes.⁹⁸ The Buddha offers this practice as a way of supporting mindfulness by radiating good will and peace to all beings (friendly, neutral, and difficult) including oneself.⁹⁹ As an invaluable support in social and environmental justice, it helps us to transform our perceptions and ways of relating to ourselves and others.¹⁰⁰ This practice is especially vital in relating to those we deem enemies, whose behavior we do not justify, but understand as arising from ignorance and suffering. In doing so, we do not reciprocate hatred with hatred. It is essential, says Sivaraksa, to engage in environmental justice based on compassion and wisdom, rather than anger and aggression. These Buddhist practices support the inner development that is necessary to skillfully work toward environmental justice: "every time a tree is planted … every time we look upon each other with eyes of compassionate understanding, our commitment to interdependence is restored."¹⁰¹ Thus, inner peacebuilding and disarmament that results from Buddhist mindfulness and compassion practices inform socially engaged peacebuilding in the world through dialogue, deep empathic listening, reconciliation, restorative justice, and grassroots reform. This commitment to alleviate suffering and benefit oneself and others is embodied in the Buddhist Jataka story of the little parrot who saves many beings by putting out a raging forest fire.¹⁰² Buddhist ethics and meditation practices as a way of spiritual development will lead us to be less dependent on material things, to place more emphasis on spiritual development, simplicity and nonviolence, and decentralization of power politically and culturally.¹⁰³ In a related discussion, Sivaraksa shows that the way forward in fostering environmental justice is by way of interfaith dialogue, which includes learning from one another's spiritual traditions.¹⁰⁴ Like Maathai, he emphasizes that the way forward is unity within diversity, and a shared commitment to social and environmental justice guided by a deep sensitivity to our interdependence with all life, and the earth that supports life.

Sivaraksa's socially engaged approach to Buddhism does not reject an imperfect world, but rather sustains a deep commitment to social and environmental justice. Buddhism, like many other religions, aims at both personal transformation and social change as the essence of spiritual practice fully engaged in the world.¹⁰⁵ He differentiates his socially engaged Buddhist approach, or small "b" Buddhism from established Buddhism.¹⁰⁶ The latter, he says, often justifies injustice by understanding the Buddha's teaching on kamma as deterministic, which means that unjust conditions are predestined and cannot be changed. By contrast, Sivaraksa says kamma is dynamic in that our present actions, if skillful and ethical, can sow the seeds that cultivate the causes and conditions for positive future change. Thus, Buddhist mindfulness and compassion should not be practiced only within the confines of the meditation hall, but rather should be brought into the world, so "that we sow seeds of peace and bring critical self-awareness to our engagement in the world through nonviolent social action."¹⁰⁷ In the Theravada Thai Buddhist context, Sivaraksa offers examples of socially engaged Buddhist action on environmental justice by both monastics (Phra Sekkiyadhamma) and lay people (like Assembly of the Poor).¹⁰⁸ Another example is Thai Bhikkhunī Venerable Dhammananda (formerly, Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh), abbess of Sondhammakalyani Monastery, who explains, "The contemporary crisis is a result of so called development focusing on physical and material needs; a happy society must also be developed both physically and spiritually."¹⁰⁹ In keeping with this, she and the other nuns engage in environmentally sustainable practices supported by Buddhist ethical precepts, for example, recycling and organic gardening with GMO free seeds and supporting the needs of the local community, especially women and girls at risk in a culture of impunity.¹¹⁰ For her, the sacred and natural environment supports the female monastic residence, which is focused on overcoming suffering, educating, empowering and protecting the rights of the people and especially those of women and girls.

In summary, the UNEP Faith for Action initiative will be effective if environmental justice is addressed from an intersectional human rights approach on realizing the SDGs, which include gender equity, poverty, climate change and peace. However, the necessary changes in thinking and acting cannot simply be imposed from above or externally at the global level. Rather this is most effective when religion mobilizes grassroots movements guided by the wisdom and teachings of the people. Faith-based initiatives draw on the resources of spiritual and religious traditions to help us cultivate the necessary ethical development and awareness to effect positive change as individuals and in community. Both Maathai and Sivaraksa show concretely how faith-based initiatives can mobilize grassroots movements in positive and concrete ways. They each contribute in complementary ways to the intersectional nature of environmental justice and establish common ground and a shared cause. Both anticipate and are exemplary models of the UNEP Faith for Earth call to action. Importantly, their socially engaged faith-based initiatives, Buddhist and African Indigenous Christian, aim to transform individual, interpersonal and systemic violence in realizing environmental justice. This is a profoundly spiritual and religious endeavor that is both individual and communal; it informs the skillful responses necessary to bringing about environmental justice.