Finding Common Ground

苏格兰各地有数百个社区团体应对气候变化，并在地方层面上制定可持续发展倡议。这些团体往往很难与同一地区的其他团体建立合作伙伴关系，特别是在宗教差异方面。由AHRC/ESRC资助于2013年启动的祖先时间(AT)项目是迄今为止对宗教环保主义进行的最持久的实证研究。正是考虑到这些障碍，我们试图对苏格兰宗教团体如何以及为什么围绕环境问题进行更细微的描述。在与第三部门从业人员的对话过程中，我们意识到，对可能的“共同点”缺乏了解是世俗和宗教团体在共同关心的领域进行合作的障碍。这些团体经常有重叠的目的和利益相关者，但可能难以弥合关于环境保护的语言和叙述上的差异。我们还发现，英国主要的环境慈善机构(特别是WWF和RSPB)、苏格兰政府机构和企业都非常希望与社区层面的环境从业者合作，以实现可持续发展。这个后续项目旨在将AT项目产生的新知识动员到新的受众中。我们将与我们的项目伙伴苏格兰生态教会的代表合作，通过一系列由区域主办的7个独立的参与性研讨会来解决目前在理解方面的差距。每个讲习班将汇集不同地区的代表，以“开放空间”的形式进行参与性讨论(欧文，2008年；钱伯斯，2011年)。在每个研讨会上，包括苏格兰生态教会在内的每个从业者团体的代表将被邀请分享他们工作背后的故事。通过项目研究人员的简短陈述，我们将阐明群体动力的各个方面。首要目标将是找到共同点，弥合明显的分歧，找到共同语言和战略目标，世俗和宗教团体可以围绕这些目标在环境保护方面进行合作。与会者将被邀请共同努力，以确定资源、障碍和“共同点”。项目研究人员将记录这些讨论，以便生成一系列案例研究，为合作编写的苏格兰社区层面环境问题合作最佳实践总结提供基础，强调世俗和宗教团体找到“共同点”的可能途径。最后的研讨会将在爱丁堡大学主办，将吸引来自七个研讨会和研究团队的参与者向听众介绍案例研究和最佳实践，听众包括学术研究人员、公务员、地方当局、环境慈善机构领导人和来自商界的代表，他们向参与可持续倡议的社区提供技术和资金。研讨会将通过精选的全体演讲、“开放空间”、简短的口头报告和世界咖啡馆风格的讨论来强调参与和合作。该项目不仅将产生新的合作伙伴关系，以应对斯科提什社区的气候变化缓解努力，而且还将帮助第三部门团体对合作的障碍和环境行动模式产生新的理解，我们的团队将反馈给研究界。通过吸引学术实践者与消息灵通的实践者团体代表接触，我们希望在宗教研究、人文地理学、社会人类学和社会学领域之间产生一种新的研究联系，围绕宗教背景下的草根环境激进主义的扎根研究。

There are hundreds of community groups across Scotland tackling the climate change and developing sustainability initiatives on a local level. These groups often struggle to establish collaborative partnerships with other groups in the same region, particularly across religious differences. Launched with AHRC/ESRC funding in 2013, the Ancestral Time (AT) project is the most sustained empirical study of religious environmentalism to date. It was precisely with these barriers in mind that we sought to develop a more nuanced account of how and why religious groups mobilise around environmental issues in Scotland. Over the course of conversations with third sector practitioners we became aware that a lack of understanding around possible "common ground" served as a barrier to collaboration between secular and religious community groups on areas of common concern. These groups often have overlapping purposes and stakeholders, but can struggle to bridge differences in language and narrative concerning environmental care. We have also found that there is a significant desire to collaborate with community-level environmental practitioners by major British environmental charities (especially WWF and RSPB), Scottish government agencies and businesses targeting sustainability.This follow-on project seeks to mobilise the new knowledge generated in the AT project among new audiences. In collaboration with representatives from our project partner Eco-Congregation Scotland, we will seek to address the existing gap in understanding through a series of 7 separate regionally-hosted participatory workshops. Each workshop will draw together representatives in a different region from a range of local community groups for a participatory discussion in the form of "open space" (Owen, 2008; Chambers, 2011). At each workshop representatives from each practitioner group, including Eco-Congregation Scotland will be invited to share the story behind their work. Aspects of group dynamics will be illuminated through brief presentations by project researchers. The overarching goal will be to find common ground, bridging apparent differences and finding common language and strategic goals around which secular and religious groups can cooperate on environmental care. Participants will be invited to work together to identify resources, barriers, and 'shared ground'. The project researcher will keep a record of these discussions in order to generate a series of case studies which can provide the basis for a collaboratively authored summary of best-practices for community-level collaborations on environmental issues in Scotland, highlighting possible ways for secular and religious groups to find 'shared ground'.The final symposium, to be hosted at the University of Edinburgh, will draw on participants from the seven workshops and the research team to present case studies and best practices to an audience including scholarly researchers, civil servants, local authorities, leaders of environmental charities and representatives from the business sector who provide technology and finance to communities involved in sustainable initiatives. The symposium will emphasize participation and collaboration through select plenary addresses, "open space," short oral presentations, and world café style discussion. Not only will this project generate new partnerships to address climate change mitigation efforts in Scotitsh communities, but it will also help third sector groups to generate new understanding of roadblocks to collaboration and modes of environmental action which our team will feed back to the research community. By drawing academic practitioners into engagement with well-informed practitioner group representatives we expect to generate a new research nexus between the fields of religious studies, human geography, social anthropology, and sociology around grounded research of grassroots environmental activism in a religious context.