Beyond Belief - Linking faiths and protected areas for biodiversity conservation
WWF and Equilibrium and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) has published a new research report "Beyond Belief - Linking faiths and protected areas for biodiversity conservation" which looks at how faiths interact with conservation of protected areas around the world.
Links between faiths and conservation of land and water exist throughout the world and involve every faith system that the report has examined. Sacred areas are probably the oldest form of habitat protection on the planet and still form a large and mainly unrecognised network of sanctuaries around the world. A proportion of these sites (probably a large proportion) are also highly successful at conserving natural ecology and biodiversity.
In Nepal, Sherpas in the Sagarmatha National Park believe that goats, yaks, and sheep are under the special protection of Khumbu Yul Lha, the protectordeity of the Khumbu region – god’s sacred mountain, Khumbila. Machhapuchhare in Annapurna Conservation Area is sacred to Gurungs and consequently is closed to mountaineering.
Unfortunately many sacred natural areas and faith-based land management systems are currently under threat because of cultural breakdown, pressures on land and resources and poor governance that together permit deleterious use.
The report includes a survey of a hundred protected areas around the world which also contain important values to one or more faiths and also describe some sacred sites outside protected areas that have high conservation values.
