The report shows that faith communities are important, yet often neglected actors in socio-environmental disputes. It analyzes how these civil society actors bring a spiritual-symbolic dimension to their defense of human rights and territories. The report offers recommendations to international organizations, governments, civil society, and other stakeholders to recognize faith communities and their members as important environmental defenders and adopt a community approach to protecting them and supporting their visions for locally led development.

Key Findings:

  • Faith communities are important yet often neglected actors in socio-environmental disputes. For Christian communities and the Catholic church in particular, our research highlights that they understand their actions as defense of life and territories rather than participation in natural-resource governance.
  • Faith communities deploy strategies of defense that integrate a symbolic-spiritual, community, discursive, and socio-political dimension and that shape the search for alternative socioeconomic development models aimed at human and ecosystem flourishing.
  • Faith communities are highly heterogeneous in their involvement in socio-environmental disputes. Among the most influential factors for positive involvement are being part of the lives of local communities, understanding ecological commitment as an expression of faith, and providing formation that links spirituality with social realities.
  • Women play a leading role in defending life and territories, but their leadership is not given due recognition in ecclesial structures. Formally recognizing women’s leadership in faith communities is key for protecting the rights of rural, low-income, and Indigenous communities in socio-environmental disputes.
  • This report recommends that international organizations, governments, civil society, and other stakeholders explicitly recognize faith communities and their members as important environmental defenders and adopt a community approach to protecting them and supporting their visions for locally led development.

Executive Summary:

With more than 80 per cent of the world’s population estimated to be affiliated with a religion, international development organizations have increasingly acknowledged the importance of religious actors in development policy and practice, including in health, education, climate change, and environmental issues. But the dynamics between religious actors and development processes at the local level and their dynamics of interaction with other actors in contesting or shaping development discourse and policies remains little understood. This report unpacks these dynamics within four local territories that are being profoundly transformed by an infrastructure or extractive industry project driven by certain narratives of social and economic development. The report does not purport to be yet another study of socio-environmental conflicts. Rather, it is a study of religious actors themselves, on their role in socio-environmental conflicts and the strategies they deploy toward what they understand as a peaceful resolution. What are the factors that lead religious actors to develop strategies to defend the rights of rural, low-income, and Indigenous communities in socio-environmental disputes, and how do they do so? This is the question this report seeks to answer in four territorial contexts.

The reason we selected Latin America and the countries of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to answer our research question is based on the economic, political, and religious context of these countries. Critically, for the coming decades the region contains a large amount of the minerals and natural resources needed for renewable energy. Civil and political rights have also deteriorated, and Latin America is now the most dangerous region to be an environmental defender, with Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico ranked among the countries with the highest murder rates of defenders, according to the latest data from Global Witness. The region remains the one with the largest Catholic population globally, with a growing Protestant population. Latin America has been the site of a large Indigenous social movement demanding ways of expanding economic and social opportunities without ecological destruction, which the movement has called “buen vivir” (good living), and which is based on a non-separation among human and other forms of life and the life of spirits. These social movements have also advocated for rights of nature beyond human rights. It is against such a background that we have chosen to focus our research to seek a greater understanding of the role that faith communities play in defending life in territories affected by extractive and infrastructure projects.

Preview image by María Paula Barrera