Sustainability and Interreligious Dialogue

In the wake of the promulgation of encyclical Laudato si’ (Pope Francis, 2015), there has been a renewed interest in the role religions and Faith-Based Organizations can play in fostering sustainability, as well as in the possibilities and limits of interreligious dialogue related to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in the UN Agenda 2030 and the Paris Climate Accord. This article claims that a growing interreligious discursive convergence on ecology has its roots in the acknowledgment of a set of ecological meta-problems, rather than in a common, single meta-narrative. The emergence of distinctive inter-denominational and interreligious discourses is increasingly shaping a shared, pluralistic narrative grounded in social justice, care for creation and intergenerational solidarity. Moreover, religious organisations are already bringing an integral, holistic perspective to the socio-environmental debate, filling in an interstitial place in the sustainability arena, while performing four key functions: bridging, binding, deepening and sustaining. The medium and long-term impact of the recent interreligious discursive convergence in catalyzing action and bringing behavioral change on ecological matters still lacks, however, a robust, evidence-based analysis.