Finding Common Ground

There are hundreds of community groups across Scotland tackling the climate change and developing sustainability initiatives on a local level. These groups often struggle to establish collaborative partnerships with other groups in the same region, particularly across religious differences. Launched with AHRC/ESRC funding in 2013, the Ancestral Time (AT) project is the most sustained empirical study of religious environmentalism to date. It was precisely with these barriers in mind that we sought to develop a more nuanced account of how and why religious groups mobilise around environmental issues in Scotland. Over the course of conversations with third sector practitioners we became aware that a lack of understanding around possible "common ground" served as a barrier to collaboration between secular and religious community groups on areas of common concern. These groups often have overlapping purposes and stakeholders, but can struggle to bridge differences in language and narrative concerning environmental care. We have also found that there is a significant desire to collaborate with community-level environmental practitioners by major British environmental charities (especially WWF and RSPB), Scottish government agencies and businesses targeting sustainability.

This follow-on project seeks to mobilise the new knowledge generated in the AT project among new audiences. In collaboration with representatives from our project partner Eco-Congregation Scotland, we will seek to address the existing gap in understanding through a series of 7 separate regionally-hosted participatory workshops. Each workshop will draw together representatives in a different region from a range of local community groups for a participatory discussion in the form of "open space" (Owen, 2008; Chambers, 2011). At each workshop representatives from each practitioner group, including Eco-Congregation Scotland will be invited to share the story behind their work. Aspects of group dynamics will be illuminated through brief presentations by project researchers. The overarching goal will be to find common ground, bridging apparent differences and finding common language and strategic goals around which secular and religious groups can cooperate on environmental care. Participants will be invited to work together to identify resources, barriers, and 'shared ground'. The project researcher will keep a record of these discussions in order to generate a series of case studies which can provide the basis for a collaboratively authored summary of best-practices for community-level collaborations on environmental issues in Scotland, highlighting possible ways for secular and religious groups to find 'shared ground'.

The final symposium, to be hosted at the University of Edinburgh, will draw on participants from the seven workshops and the research team to present case studies and best practices to an audience including scholarly researchers, civil servants, local authorities, leaders of environmental charities and representatives from the business sector who provide technology and finance to communities involved in sustainable initiatives. The symposium will emphasize participation and collaboration through select plenary addresses, "open space," short oral presentations, and world café style discussion. Not only will this project generate new partnerships to address climate change mitigation efforts in Scotitsh communities, but it will also help third sector groups to generate new understanding of roadblocks to collaboration and modes of environmental action which our team will feed back to the research community. By drawing academic practitioners into engagement with well-informed practitioner group representatives we expect to generate a new research nexus between the fields of religious studies, human geography, social anthropology, and sociology around grounded research of grassroots environmental activism in a religious context.

This project will promote new collaborations among third sector environmental practitioner groups, illuminate new areas for research in environmental mobilisation studies and generate models for creative academic / third sector partnerships in sustainability studies. Pathways through which we will realize project impact include the following:

Religious communities and third sector environmental groups: there is a wide range of opinion in religious communities towards the environment, and a lack of clarity regarding the possible benefits which these communities might bring to environmental problems. This project will highlight the possible positive impacts that can be contributed by religious communities in facing environmental change and crisis and in so doing create the possibility of increased investment on the part of these groups. We will also help religious communities recognise possible areas of collaboration with other local secular environmental groups. Other third sector environmental groups in turn have expressed increasing interest in engagement with religious groups on matters of climate change advocacy and conservation work particularly after the strong input from faith communities in the COP21 summit in Paris and the general public reaction to the recent encyclical on the environment by Pope Francis. By highlighting the range of work underway in religious environmental groups and highlighting areas both of unique contribution and common concern we expect that third other third sector environmental groups will be emboldened to pursue collaborations with the large number of religious groups already involved in environmental care in Scotland.

Business and finance: Scottish finance and business is uniquely strong in sustainability and towards this end, but resources and collaborations can tend to be strongest on a National level. Through this project we will highlight the range of resources and initiatives underway in community groups and draw new levels of attention to the local level as a possible area for collaborative partnership towards sustainable investment and development.

Policy-makers: there are a number of government initiatives which fund in whole or part religious environmental groups as part of a broader behavior change agenda. By clarifying the role and agency of these groups in responding to environmental change, we will provide new contexts for engagement by policymakers with this part of the public.

Media and public awareness: coverage of religious groups on environmental issues has been either minimal or largely negative. By publicizing the workshops, symposium, and disseminating our findings in the form of best-practices we will provide a new perspective to media sources regarding the possibility of partnerships across secular and religious groups. Throughout the project we will seek to extend the reach of our findings to interested members of the public by engaging local and national broadcast and print media related to the events and activities.