The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion convened an interdisciplinary dialogue on faith, climate justice, structural violence, and sustainable development on May 22nd 2026. Conducted in collaboration with Lead Integrity as part of the Youth Roster on Faith and Development Initiative, the event brought together young scholars from Nigeria, Ethiopia and the United States. The discussion provided a platform for examining how religion, spirituality, and moral imagination influence responses to pressing global challenges. At a moment marked by ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, growing climate insecurity, and economic disruptions that reverberate beyond national borders, the conversation highlighted the urgent need to better understand how faith communities can contribute to building resilience, social cohesion, and advancing sustainable futures.
The dialogue forms part of the ongoing Youth Roster on Faith and Development Initiative, organized in collaboration with Lead Integrity, which seeks to connect young leaders, researchers, and practitioners working at the intersections of faith, social cohesion, climate justice, and sustainable development. Through conversations like this, the initiative aims to foster cross-regional learning, encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, and amplify the voices of emerging leaders working to address the defining challenges of our time.
Moderated by Shiza Kamil, the conversation featured Father Emmanuel Ojeifo, Elsa Barron, and Geleta Berisso, whose work encompasses political theology, peacebuilding, environmental justice, governance, and community engagement. The participants examined how religious institutions and moral frameworks contribute to more just and humane futures, reflecting on the influence of faith traditions in shaping community understandings of suffering, inequality, environmental collapse, and social transformation.
Father Emmanuel Ojeifo began by situating his reflections within the broader context of Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty, conflict, environmental degradation, and governance are deeply interconnected. Drawing on his research into land violence and human flourishing in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa, he emphasized that the crises facing African societies are interdependent and cannot be understood in isolation.
“This is a region of the world that is abundantly blessed with human and material resources,” he explained, “but it’s also the region of the world where so many countries are on the lowest rung of the ladder of human development.”
Father Emmanuel conceptualizes “human flourishing” as extending beyond economics or governance. He describes flourishing as deeply relational, encompassing the environment, politics, economics, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships. His research centers on the idea that land and the environment are foundational to human dignity and collective wellbeing, rather than merely resources for extraction.
“What I’m really exploring in this research,” he noted, “is how land constitutes an enabling condition, a necessary enabling condition for human flourishing.”
A central theme in his reflections was the enduring impact of colonialism on African societies and their relationships with land, spirituality, and identity. Father Emmanuel argued that colonial systems disrupted Indigenous understandings of community and environmental stewardship, replacing reciprocal relationships with extractive models focused on land, labor, and resources.
“The goal has always been the same,” he said of colonial systems, “which is the extraction of land, lives, and labor.”
He further reflected on the displacement of Indigenous spiritual systems and the severing of cultural relationships with the environment caused by colonialism. Referencing Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Father Emmanuel highlighted that many African communities historically viewed land as central to identity, spirituality, and social order, beyond its role as a source of sustenance.
Quoted from Achebe’s work, he asked “Does the white man understand our relationship with the land?” He described the question as symbolic of the broader rupture colonialism introduced into African societies.
The discussion then shifted to climate justice, guided by Elsa Barron, whose work addresses environmental peacebuilding, climate diplomacy, and the experiences of Pacific Island nations facing climate change. Elsa emphasized that climate change is fundamentally a question of justice and moral responsibility, not solely an environmental or scientific issue.
“I’m really interested in the ways in which climate change is a global injustice,” she explained, pointing to how countries and communities least responsible for carbon emissions are often the ones experiencing the harshest consequences.
Drawing on her engagement with Pacific Island communities and the United Nations climate negotiations, Elsa described the intersection of faith traditions, Indigenous knowledge systems, and moral leadership within climate advocacy. She noted the prophetic clarity often demonstrated by Pacific leaders confronting existential environmental threats.
“In Fiji, certain communities have already been relocated,” she shared. “Families talk about the loss of ancestral burial grounds to sea level rise.”
Elsa also discussed the role of faith in fostering empathy, stewardship, and collective responsibility, especially where climate skepticism and political polarization hinder public engagement with environmental issues. Referencing the Christian tradition, she described stewardship as a moral obligation to care for creation and one another, rather than as domination over the earth.
“The world is not here for humans to exploit and make our riches off of,” she reflected, “but rather something beautiful, created, that is something to love and to care for and to cultivate.”
Elsa also acknowledged the limitations of policy discussions that focus exclusively on scientific or technical solutions. Too often, these fail to address the emotional and spiritual dimensions of climate grief and loss. Citing a declaration by the Pacific Conference of Churches, she highlighted the increasing emphasis by faith communities on resilience, lament, and mourning in response to irreversible environmental destruction.
“We knelt together in prayer,” she quoted from the declaration, “and lamented the exploitative and extractive systems of neocolonialism and enduring colonialism that continue to exacerbate the plight of many of our Pacific brothers and sisters experiencing climate change.”
Geleta Berisso contributed another critical perspective through his research on political theology, structural violence, and peacebuilding in Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa. His work examines how religion shapes community interpretations of suffering, inequality, and systemic injustice.
“Religion is the primary lens through which people process structural violence,” Geleta explained.
Drawing on peace research and political theology, he argued that many forms of violence remain invisible because they are embedded in political, economic, and social structures. He further noted that religious narratives often determine whether these injustices are perceived as political issues or interpreted through spiritual frameworks.
“The dominant theological imaginations available to people,” he argued, “are redirecting moral and political energy away from the structures producing suffering, and toward individual spiritual practices.”
Using examples from Ethiopia, Geleta described how unemployment, drought, and poverty are frequently interpreted as personal spiritual failures or divine punishment, rather than as outcomes of structural inequalities or state failures. He suggested that this perspective can depoliticize social suffering and limit collective action for systemic change.
“When poverty or climate change strikes,” he explained, “people fast, they pray, they do whatever they work on, but they don’t really see what really caused it.”
Geleta also emphasized the transformative potential of faith communities. Drawing inspiration from liberation theology movements in Latin America, he argued that religious institutions can cultivate critical consciousness and help communities recognize the structural roots of injustice.
“The churches or religious communities should focus on forming subjects who see their problems as structurally produced,” he said, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting spiritual life with material and political realities.
Throughout the discussion, participants consistently recognized that faith is a powerful force shaping community understandings of dignity, suffering, belonging, responsibility, and hope. The conversation demonstrated that religion and spirituality continue to influence both local realities and global dialogues on development and justice, whether through environmental stewardship, critiques of extractive systems, or reinterpretations of structural violence.
Reflecting on the conversation as moderator, Shiza Kamil noted the importance of integrating faith perspectives into broader development discourse - an area that is often overlooked despite its significance across communities around the world.
“This lens of integrating faith into development work,” she reflected toward the close of the discussion, “is something that we also oftentimes overlook.”