Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Roy A. Rappaport. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.536 pp.

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity

Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Nature and Culture

The range and use of ecosystem services provided by urban sacred sites has hardly been considered in studies of urban ecology, sustainability and human wellbeing. This paper examines the perceived ecosystem services supplied by green spaces or gardens associated with places of religious worship and appreciated by worshippers in a mid-sized town in South Africa. A questionnaire with open, closed and Likert scale questions was administered at 30 places of worship (25 with gardens and five without). Respondents identified a wide diversity of ecosystem services provided by gardens, with social ones being more recognized than ecological, and economic services the least. Approximately two-thirds of respondents visited a sacred site garden weekly or more often. The majority of respondents (96%) felt that a garden was necessary because it added to their feelings of connection with God, or helped them relax and so be better able to concentrate, and 54% stated that a garden enhanced their overall spiritual experience. Regression analysis revealed that aesthetic appreciation of a garden was significantly related to woody plant species richness, number and basal area in the garden. On the other hand, spiritual experience was positively related to woody plant basal area, but not species richness nor tree number. Neither size of the garden, nor number of years the respondents had been vising a particular sacred site had any influence on the rated spiritual or aesthetic experiences. These results reveal the widely appreciated ecosystem services provided by urban sacred spaces and their centrality in enhancing spiritual satisfaction for some.

Aesthetic and Spiritual Ecosystem Services Provided by Urban Sacred Sites

Conservationists have been criticized for failing to protect nature in the face of mounting threats including overexploitation, species loss, habitat destruction, and climate change. Resource managers and scientists have yet to fully engage a major segment of the global population in their outreach efforts to protect the environment: religious communities. The world's religions have been recognized as a surprising driver of support for conservation of biological diversity, and numerous examples demonstrate religious and conservation groups working together to achieve conservation outcomes. However, many conservation organizations do not effectively engage religious groups. When conservation organizations do engage religious groups, efforts to do so are often ad hoc and such partnerships may wane over time. A more systematic approach is needed that directly engages religious communities, develops effective partnerships, supports and sustains dialogue aimed at finding common ground despite potentially diver...

Why Conservation Needs Religion

Sacred sites are important not only for their traditional, spiritual or religious significance, but may also potentially be valuable for biodiversity conservation in human transformed landscapes. Yet, there has been little consideration of sacred sites in urban areas in this respect. Consequently, to better understand the ecosystem service and conservation value of urban sacred sites, inventories of their floral communities are needed. We examined the richness, composition and structure of the trees and shrubs in 35 urban churchyards and cemeteries in the City of Saints (Grahamstown). The combined area of urban sacred sites (38.7 ha) represented 2.2% of the city area and 13.6% of the public green space area. Species richness of woody plants was high, albeit dominated by non-native species. Levels of similarity among sites were low, indicating the effects of individual management regimens. There was no relationship between age of the site and measured attributes of the vegetation, nor were there any significant differences in vegetation among different religious denominations. However, the basal area and number of woody plants was significantly related to site size. These results indicate the significant heterogeneity of urban sacred sites as green spaces within the urban matrix. The significance of this heterogeneity in providing ecosystem services to users of sacred sites and the broader urban communities requires further investigation.

Woody plant species richness, composition and structure in urban sacred sites, Grahamstown, South Africa

It has been close to half a century since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published— a book that marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement—yet the biodiversity crisis has increased to staggering proportions The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than natural rates (IUCN, 2011) According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005, forests have disappeared in 25 countries and deforestation clears about 12 million hectares annually, including six million hectares of primary forests in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa (FAO, 2006) Twenty percent of coral reefs have been destroyed and 30 percent damaged due to destructive fishing practices, pollution, disease, coral bleaching, invasive alien species and tourism (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Wilkinson, 2008) Driven by habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, human overpopulation and over harvesting (all human-centred activities), the global loss of biodiversity is advancing at an unprecedented rate with an extinction of 150 species occurring daily (Chen, 2003; Sigmar, 2007) The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that the natural systems that support the world’s economy are at risk of collapse due to increasing biodiversity loss: declining fish stocks, deforestation and soil erosion (Murray, 2010) However, response to the crisis has been slow For instance, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s target to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 was missed (Butchart et al, 2010)

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Alison Ormsby

Papers

Global Efforts to Bridge Religion and Conservation: Are They Really Working?