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Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene
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Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 15931

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Jelle J.P. Wouters

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Guest Editor
1. Professor of Anthropology, Department of Social Sciences, Royal Thimphu College, Thimphu, Bhutan
2. Director of Research and Development, Royal Thimphu College, Thimphu, Bhutan
Interests: environmental humanities; climate change; water; human–animal–plant entanglements in Bhutan and Highland Asia
Dr. Dan Smyer Yü

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Kuige Professor of Ethnology, School of Ethnology & Sociology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China
2. Global Faculty Member, The Global South Studies Center, The University of Cologne, Köln, Germany
Interests: environmental humanities; religion and ecology; indigenous knowledge; modern Tibetan Buddhism; politics of ethnic diversity in China
Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Director, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Interests: religion and ecology (a co-founding scholar); Asian religions; world religions; earth ethics; ecological civilization; climate change; inter-religious environmental dialogues

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

An integral part of the earth’s climate system, a multiregional weather-maker, and a more-than-human pluriverse, the Himalayas and the adjacent highlands of Tibet, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia are interconnected, diverse nations of humans, animals, and plants. Since the advent of modern extractive development in both colonial and postcolonial eras, Himalayan lifeworlds have undergone multiple anthropogenic transformations of land, air, and water as the consequence of global industrialization-induced climate change. Parallel to the UN’s intergovernmental initiation of sustainable development in the 1980s, native ecological knowledges and local environmentalist advocacies, including those that are religiously and spiritually based, have been gaining public visibility and policy consideration. The intersection of spiritual beliefs, ecology, and sustainability found in Highland Asia is a fertile source of interdisciplinary research and public discourse around the world.

This Special Issue, not limited to religious studies, invites contributions from all fields of the sciences and humanities to feature historical and current case studies of the ecological role of religions and spiritual practices in shaping human–nature relations and in forging faith-based environmentalisms in the greater Himalayan region, including the Tibetan Plateau and places that are under-researched in Himalayan studies, such as Laos, Myanmar, Northeast India, Southwest China, and Pakistan. In this Special Issue, “religions” and “ecospirituality” broadly include indigenous beliefs and indigenized world religions. Without assuming that all religious or spiritual traditions are eco-friendly, this Special Issue recognizes a panhuman cultural fact that religions and spiritual traditions, situated in different ecological contexts, play various roles in forging human environmental values and worldviews. It therefore welcomes manuscripts that address different ecological facets of religious-spiritual traditions, how they respond to modern extractive development and the subsequent human-induced climate change, and how their ethical values find actual and potential roles in shaping local and regional environmental sustainability and in interconnecting with modern scientific environmental knowledge to co-create more inclusive and synergetic modes of environmental governance and sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Jelle J.P. Wouters
Dr. Dan Smyer Yü
Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Himalayan–Tibetan highlands
  • religious ecology
  • spiritual environmentalisms
  • commoning
  • ethics
  • the Anthro-pocene

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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15 pages, 279 KiB  
Article
What’s in a Name?: Mutanchi Clan Narratives and Indigenous Ecospirituality
by Reep Pandi Lepcha
Religions 2025, 16(8), 945; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16080945 - 22 Jul 2025
Viewed by 472
Abstract
The Mutanchis, known by their derogatory exonymic term ‘Lepcha’, are autochthonous to Sikkim, India. The name ‘Mutanchi’ derives from the phrase ‘Mutanchi Rumkup Rongkup’, eliciting the response ‘Achulay’, meaning ‘Beloved children of It-bu-mu, who have come from the snowy peaks’. The nomenclature prompts [...] Read more.
The Mutanchis, known by their derogatory exonymic term ‘Lepcha’, are autochthonous to Sikkim, India. The name ‘Mutanchi’ derives from the phrase ‘Mutanchi Rumkup Rongkup’, eliciting the response ‘Achulay’, meaning ‘Beloved children of It-bu-mu, who have come from the snowy peaks’. The nomenclature prompts an ontological understanding rooted in the community’s eco-geographical context. Despite possessing a well-developed script categorised within the Tibeto-Burman language family, the Mutanchis remain a largely oral community. Their diminishing, scarcely documented repository of Mutanchi clan narratives underscores this orality. As a Mutanchi, I recognise these narratives as a medium for expressing Indigenous value systems upheld by my community and specific villages. Mutanchi clan narratives embody spiritual and cultural significance, yet their fantastic rationale reveals complex epistemological tensions. Ideally, each Mutanchi clan reveres a chyu (peak), lhep (cave), and doh (lake), which are propitiated annually and on specific occasions. The transmigration of an apil (soul) is tied to these three sacred spatial geographies, unique to each clan. Additionally, clan etiological explanations, situated within natural or supernatural habitats, manifest beliefs, values, and norms rooted in a deep ecology. This article presents an ecosophical study of selected Mutanchi clan narratives from Dzongu, North Sikkim—a region that partially lies within the UNESCO Khangchendzonga Man-Biosphere Reserve. Conducted in close consultation with clan members and in adherence to the ethical protocols, this study examines clans in Dzongu governed by Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in their narratives, highlighting biocentric perspectives that shape Mutanchi lifeways. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
16 pages, 242 KiB  
Article
Disentangling Multispecies Landscapes in Arunachal Pradesh: Religion, Ecology, Ethics
by Swargajyoti Gohain
Religions 2025, 16(7), 930; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070930 - 18 Jul 2025
Viewed by 2191
Abstract
This article considers the dilemma between advocating for a religion-based environmentalism in the Himalayas and recognising that the different cultural traditions in the region make a uniform religious environmentalism difficult to uphold. Conservationists often attempt to mobilise local communities for environmental protection by [...] Read more.
This article considers the dilemma between advocating for a religion-based environmentalism in the Himalayas and recognising that the different cultural traditions in the region make a uniform religious environmentalism difficult to uphold. Conservationists often attempt to mobilise local communities for environmental protection by building on their religious and cultural beliefs. Yet, such forms of mobilisation tend to homogenise plural traditions by forcing them within a single fold. What is the way out of this dilemma? I offer some reflections, drawing on my empirical work in the Buddhist Himalayas, and focusing on the case studies of the yak and the black-necked crane respectively, two species which hold a special significance in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Examining these multispecies relations in Arunachal Pradesh reveal not only Buddhist values at work, but plural and evolving entanglements. The question, then, is not to see if the value is religious but if the value is more-than-human in its orientation, taking into account the entangled lives of human and non-human habitations. My broad argument is that an ethics of the environment need neither to be removed from religious ethics, nor enclosed by it. Rather than force environmental thought and behaviour into silos of particular religious traditions or conservation science paradigms, how can one see these as the function of plural habitations? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
19 pages, 1588 KiB  
Article
Climing Up, Thinking With, Feeling Through: Ritual, Spirituality and Ecoscience in Northwestern Nepal
by Jag Bahadur Budha, Maya Daurio and Mark Turin
Religions 2025, 16(6), 660; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060660 - 22 May 2025
Viewed by 1899
Abstract
This paper examines local knowledge, perceptions, and responses to changing climes in the Trans-Himalayan region of Dolpa in Nepal. Rooted within the environmental humanities and shaped by emerging understandings of faith-based ecospirituality, our research partnership focuses on the experiences of the indigenous Tarali [...] Read more.
This paper examines local knowledge, perceptions, and responses to changing climes in the Trans-Himalayan region of Dolpa in Nepal. Rooted within the environmental humanities and shaped by emerging understandings of faith-based ecospirituality, our research partnership focuses on the experiences of the indigenous Tarali Magar people of Gumbatara and neighbouring Shaharatara in the Tichurong valley. Through place-based engagements and drawing on various disciplinary threads and intellectual traditions, we review the effects of changing cultural, climatic, and ritual patterns on the lives and livelihoods of the Tarali Magar community. We explore how (i) agricultural practices are changing and adapting in response to wider systemic transformations; (ii) in what ways physical changes in the weather, clime and climate are experienced and imagined by Taralis through the lens of the Tarali concepts of nham (weather) and sameu (time); and (iii) local knowledge and embodied understandings about the natural and cultural worlds are embedded within Tarali spiritual traditions and religious worldviews. In reckoning with shifts in ecological patterns that disrupt long-standing agricultural practices and the cultural and religious knowledge systems that guide them, we demonstrate that Taralis are indigenous environmental humanists and empirical scientists. Through our study, we uplift culturally grounded, location-specific religious practices in the Tichurong valley and show how members of the Tarali community are contributing to global imaginaries for sustainable futures in our more-than-human world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
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21 pages, 6452 KiB  
Article
Linking Faith and Conservation in Sacred and Community Forests of Far Western Nepal
by Alexander M. Greene, Rajendra Bam, Krishna S. Thagunna, Jagdish Bhatta, Renuka Poudel, Laxmi D. Bhatta and Rajindra K. Puri
Religions 2025, 16(4), 480; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040480 - 8 Apr 2025
Viewed by 2913
Abstract
Faith and conservation are deeply entangled in the Himalayas. Focusing on a single Hindu community in Darchula, Nepal, we investigate the forms of governance used to manage an extensive sacred forest on a nearby mountain and five smaller community forests at its base. [...] Read more.
Faith and conservation are deeply entangled in the Himalayas. Focusing on a single Hindu community in Darchula, Nepal, we investigate the forms of governance used to manage an extensive sacred forest on a nearby mountain and five smaller community forests at its base. To understand the effects of these different models of governance, we use a mixed method approach to examine two indicators of biocultural diversity: forest resource use and spiritual practices. These data reveal a concentrated human impact on the community forests through the harvesting of plant resources, while the sacred forest receives a far smaller impact from these activities. The community considers the sacred forest and mountain to be the home of a local god, who is worshiped in annual pilgrimages attended by people throughout the region. Spiritual practices in the community forests are more localized, small-scale, and associated with women’s traditions. From a biodiversity perspective, the sacred forest appears useful for conservation because of its large size and the spiritual governance that protects it from most human impacts. In terms of biocultural diversity, however, the two forest types play complementary roles in supporting biocultural heritage: the community forests provide the resources required for daily life, while the sacred forest nourishes identity, embodies communal history, and upholds the fertility of the land. The two forest types ultimately blend together in the ways that they are valued and used by people, showing that only a landscape-level perspective can provide a full understanding of the links between forest and community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
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19 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
The Ecopolitical Spirituality of Miya Poetry: Resistance Against Environmental Racism of the Majoritarian State in Assam, India
by Bhargabi Das
Religions 2025, 16(4), 437; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040437 - 28 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1464
Abstract
Emerging from the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in the riverine environments of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the Miya Poetry movement is a unique environmentalism of the marginalized in contemporary Assam, India. Writing as a native scholar of Assam, I look at how the [...] Read more.
Emerging from the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in the riverine environments of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the Miya Poetry movement is a unique environmentalism of the marginalized in contemporary Assam, India. Writing as a native scholar of Assam, I look at how the poetry movement displays the ethos of an ecopolitical spirituality that embodies the riverine ecology, environmental politics, and sacrality and how it challenges the majoritarian state’s narrative of the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers being denigrated as the “environmental waste producers”. My concept of “ecopolitical spirituality” is in tandem with Carol White’s ‘African American religious naturalism’, which elucidates the remembrance and evocation of traditional environmental relationships of and by the marginalized communities with the purpose of healing and rehumanizing themselves. I begin with a short history of the Miya Poetry movement among the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in Assam. It narrates how the leading Miya poets adopt the local “Miya” dialect to express the traditional and continued relationships of Bengali Muslim char-dwellers who find themselves entangled with and nurtured by the land, rivers, plants, and animals. I then examine how Bengali Muslims have been framed by the majoritarian state and Assamese society as “environmental waste producers”. With climate change-induced destructive floods, along with post-colonial state’s rampant building of embankments leading to violent floods and erosion, Bengali Muslim char-dwellers are forced to migrate to nearby government grazing reserves or national parks. There, the majoritarian state projects them to be damaging the environment and issues violent evictions. In state reports too, the Bengali Muslim char-dwellers have been equated with “rats”, “crows”, and “vultures”. I use the concept of “environmental racism” to show how this state-led denigration justifies the allegation of the Muslim char-dwellers as “environmental waste producers” and how the Miya Poetry movement counters the racist allegation with new metaphors by highlighting the traditional relationships of the marginalized community with the riverine environment. In the final section, I look in detail at the characteristics and reasons that make the poetry movement ecopolitically spiritual in nature. I thus lay out an argument that the ecopolitical spirituality of the Miya Poetry movement resists the statist dehumanization and devaluation of Miya Muslims by not mocking, violating, or degrading the majoritarian Assamese but by rehumanizing themselves and their relationship with the environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
20 pages, 6077 KiB  
Article
‘They Are Properties of the Deity, Not Sentient’: Unfolding the Tibetan Buddhist Concept of Plant-Hood
by Bo Yang and Phuntsok Wangden
Religions 2025, 16(3), 373; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030373 - 14 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1122
Abstract
This article explores the concept of ‘Tibetan Buddhist plant-hood’ within the doctrinal and ethnographic contexts of Tibetan Buddhism, proposing it as a framework to understand the karma-intricate relationships between plants, sentient beings, and spiritual entities. By drawing on canonical Tibetan Buddhist texts, [...] Read more.
This article explores the concept of ‘Tibetan Buddhist plant-hood’ within the doctrinal and ethnographic contexts of Tibetan Buddhism, proposing it as a framework to understand the karma-intricate relationships between plants, sentient beings, and spiritual entities. By drawing on canonical Tibetan Buddhist texts, this article examines sentience in Tibetan terms, then introduces the notion of procedural sentiency, an extended Buddhist conceptual tool that reveals the dynamic processes through which insentient forms acquire ethical and spiritual significance. Examining specific cases, such as sacred trees, Tibetan highland barley, and Yartsa Gunbu (caterpillar fungus), plants are conceived as embedded within more-than-human Tibetan societies that span the material, spiritual, and ecological worlds. This study also addresses the ethical tensions and relational reconfigurations arising from plant–human interactions, as informed by Buddhist practices and cosmological perspectives. This endeavour aspires to establish Himalayan conceptual frameworks that engage in meaningful dialogues with broader environmental discourses, fostering an integrative perspective on the interplay between local practices, cosmologies, and global theoretical paradigms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
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16 pages, 340 KiB  
Article
Buddhist Faces of Indigenous Knowledge in Highland Asia: Rethinking the Roots of Buddhist Environmentalism
by Dan Smyer Yü and Zhen Ma
Religions 2025, 16(3), 367; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030367 - 14 Mar 2025
Viewed by 796
Abstract
This article is written as part of the ongoing multidisciplinary inquiry into how ecologically focused Buddhism is and whether or not the faith-based “Buddhist ecology” and the natural scientifically conceived discipline of ecology—which studies the relation of organisms to their physical environments—communicate well [...] Read more.
This article is written as part of the ongoing multidisciplinary inquiry into how ecologically focused Buddhism is and whether or not the faith-based “Buddhist ecology” and the natural scientifically conceived discipline of ecology—which studies the relation of organisms to their physical environments—communicate well and are mutually complementary with each other. It addresses these questions by linking regionally specific Buddhist traditions with modern Buddhism and Buddhist studies in the West, which are, respectively, known for initiating Buddhist environmentalism in the public sphere and shaping Buddhist ecology as an academic field. Situated in the eastern Himalayan-Tibetan highlands, this article offers a twofold argument. First, many ecological practices in Buddhist societies of Asia originate in pre-Buddhist indigenous ecological knowledges, not in the Buddhist canon. Second, understood either from the Buddhist environmentalist perspective or as an academic field, Buddhist ecology originates in the modern West, not in Asia, as a combined outcome of Western Buddhists’ participation in the greater environmental movement and their creative interpretation of Buddhist canonical texts for the purpose of establishing a relational understanding of ecobiologically conceived lifeworlds. This argument is based on the case studies of long se, or spirit hills, in Dai villages in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and of lha-ri, or deity mountains, in the Tibetan Plateau. Both long se and lha-ri are often discerned as a spiritual-environmental basis of Buddhist ecology. While Dai and Tibetan societies are predominantly Buddhist, the cultural customs of long se and lha-ri are pre-Buddhist. Through the comparable cases of human-spirit-land relations among the Dai and the Tibetans, this article concludes that, conceived in the West, Buddhist ecology entails a body of syncretized approaches to the relational entanglements of all life communities. These approaches find their origins mostly in the ecologically repositioned Buddhist soteriology and ethics as well as in the modern scientific environmentalist worldview. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Himalayan Ecospiritual Knowledges and Ethics of Sustainability in the Anthropocene)
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