The sacred dimension of protected areas: proceedings of the Second workshop of the Delos Initiative - Ouranoupolis 2007

Abstract

As environmental problems continue to increase at an ever more rapid rate, exacerbated by the major threat of global climate change, the need for widespread remedial action is becoming ever more pressing. Scientific consensus on both the root causes of these problems and the measures required to tackle them is growing, while mass media and public interest has reached fever pitch. Of course, while this has put pressure on decisionmakers to take positive action, the realisation of the gravity and extent of the environmental problems has encouraged all those concerned about the state of our world to search for partners around it: one such significant partnership to e­merge in recent years is between those concerned with the conservation of nature –and of its biodiversity– and the custodians of sacred sites, representing both indigenous beliefs and mainstream faiths.