News
Scientific article on evolving spiritual values of forests wins award
The article 'Exploring evolving spiritual values of forests in Europe and Asia: a transition hypothesis toward re-spiritualizing forests' won the International Sustainable Development Research Society’s (ISDRS) Best Article Award 2022. This article was led by FNP PhD candidate, Jeanne Roux, and co-authored, amongst others, by two other FNP colleagues, Agata Konczal and Georg Winkel.
The article attempts to demonstrate the connections between changing perceptions of forests, changing land use, and changing spirituality as nature-use affects spirituality, but also the other way around. The exploratory study investigates spiritual values of forests from European and Asian perspectives. It first endeavours to define forest spiritual values (or forest spirituality), to reduce the abstractness often associated with the concept. It then elaborates on the idea that forest spirituality evolves as societies and landscapes change through a transition hypothesis for forest spirituality.
With this annual award, the ISDRS intends “to further stimulate solid research, but also their applicability to support introduction of solutions to our immense challenges.” The award criteria include that “the article makes a well-defined contribution to academic debates and shows awareness of the complex nature of sustainable development”, and that “the article offers or at least provides hints for possible solutions to sustainability problems”. 34 Articles were nominated by ISDRS members, of which 5 were shortlisted by the ISDRS Award Jury. The article by Roux et al. was announced as the winner at the ISDRS annual conference (More information on the award).
During the award ceremony, Jeanne mentioned that she believes that “a better understanding of societies’ ancient and present relationships with forests, the use and perceptions of forests, and the related spiritual significance could assist decision- and policymaking and address trade-offs in the different application of forests ecosystem services. By acknowledging the spiritual importance people hold of forests and how this affects their attitudes and behaviour towards nature, we could contribute to finding possible solutions to the sustainability problems the world faces.”