The Ecotheopolitics of a Greener Faith: The Catholic Church’s Quest for Environmental Justice in the Amazon
Speaker: Natalia Valdivieso-Kastner (University of Manchester, UK)
My research investigates the imbrications of religion, politics, and ecology in socially marginalised and ecologically vulnerable landscapes such as the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon. Between 2019 and 2021 I traced the involvement of a group of Catholic missionaries in the socio-environmental conflicts associated with the extractive industry (oil, mining, and timber extraction) in indigenous territories. The incineration of oil remnants and residual gases through gas flares is a common practice carried out by oil companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon and constitutes a massive source of air, watersheds, and soil contamination. Currently, 447 active gas burners operate 24/7 across my interlocutors’ pastoral areas and since 2017, the members of this ecclesial jurisdiction have been lobbying for the suppression of these environmental hazards. In this talk, I will use the campaign against gas flares carried out by the missionaries to examine the operation of ecotheopolitical regimes in rearticulating the relationships between humans and non-humans and producing new signifiers that confer nature with a non-secular value - opposed to objectification and commodification - that act as powerful mobilisers for my interlocutors’ pursuit of environmental justice.
Event date: 15 February 2024