A Search for the Spiritual Roots
of Sustainable Development—Justice,
Peace and the Integrity of Creation
Lars Rydén
Abstract The concept of sustainable development (SD) refers to a development
within the physical capacity of our planet to provide material resources, but already
from its beginning it is clear that researchers and others concerned with SD also
saw it as an existential issue and referred to its spiritual content and roots. In this
paper I will investigate in which way this has been manifested in the conferences
of the World Council of Churches and its agendas, especially Justice, Peace and
the Integrity of Creation, as well as by the orthodox and catholic churches. In the
environmental movement the spiritual character of SD has always been present and
clearly expressed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN,
and its ethics working group and the 1991 conservation strategy, Caring for the
Earth—A Strategy for Sustainable Living. Similarly the spiritual character of SD has
been in focus in several civil society initiatives, in particular the Earth Charter and
more recently in the so-called Spiritual ecology movement.
Keywords Sustainable development · Spiritual roots · World council of churches ·
Integrity of creation · Environmental ethics · Spiritual ecology
1 Sustainable Development Is a Global Concern
The first traces of the concept of sustainable development (SD) takes us back to the
early eighteenth century (Grober 1990) and the insight that the ongoing use of forest
resources was too drastic and would undermine the long term availability of those
resources. The modern discourse may, however, be more properly connected to the
understanding that the increasing demands of a growing human population will in the
end overrun the capacity of the Earth to provide, and that this exploitation constitute
a continuous degradation of the environment, is of global reach and includes the
whole width of services that Nature provides.
L. Rydén (B)
Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala
University, Villavägen 16, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden
e-mail: lars.ryden@balticuniv.uu.se
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities and Sustainable Communities:
Meeting the Goals of the Agenda 2030, World Sustainability Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30306-8_19
319
of Sustainable Development—Justice,
Peace and the Integrity of Creation
Lars Rydén
Abstract The concept of sustainable development (SD) refers to a development
within the physical capacity of our planet to provide material resources, but already
from its beginning it is clear that researchers and others concerned with SD also
saw it as an existential issue and referred to its spiritual content and roots. In this
paper I will investigate in which way this has been manifested in the conferences
of the World Council of Churches and its agendas, especially Justice, Peace and
the Integrity of Creation, as well as by the orthodox and catholic churches. In the
environmental movement the spiritual character of SD has always been present and
clearly expressed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN,
and its ethics working group and the 1991 conservation strategy, Caring for the
Earth—A Strategy for Sustainable Living. Similarly the spiritual character of SD has
been in focus in several civil society initiatives, in particular the Earth Charter and
more recently in the so-called Spiritual ecology movement.
Keywords Sustainable development · Spiritual roots · World council of churches ·
Integrity of creation · Environmental ethics · Spiritual ecology
1 Sustainable Development Is a Global Concern
The first traces of the concept of sustainable development (SD) takes us back to the
early eighteenth century (Grober 1990) and the insight that the ongoing use of forest
resources was too drastic and would undermine the long term availability of those
resources. The modern discourse may, however, be more properly connected to the
understanding that the increasing demands of a growing human population will in the
end overrun the capacity of the Earth to provide, and that this exploitation constitute
a continuous degradation of the environment, is of global reach and includes the
whole width of services that Nature provides.
L. Rydén (B)
Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala
University, Villavägen 16, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden
e-mail: lars.ryden@balticuniv.uu.se
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities and Sustainable Communities:
Meeting the Goals of the Agenda 2030, World Sustainability Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30306-8_19
319