Hawzah News Agency- The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) have launched a future-oriented, interdisciplinary, and structured research initiative to explore the moral dimensions of climate action and the possible role of faith-based values in encouraging positive environmental and climate behaviors–particularly in the context of Islam and Muslim societies, Pardee School of Global Studies reported.

As part of this initiative, OCIS and the Pardee Center are organizing two roundtables–one in Oxford, UK, and one in Boston, USA. Each roundtable will bring together scholars, policy experts, and activists from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. The first Roundtable is being organized in Oxford at OCIS on May 27-28, 2024, and the second is expected to be held in Boston at the Pardee Center in Fall 2024. The goal of the initiative is to produce a policy paper that identifies a research agenda on faith and climate change and outlines some next steps towards its realization (expected early 2025).

The initiative is co-led by Prof. Adil Najam, a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow (2024-26) and the Mahathir Mohamad Fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and by Prof. Shahid Jameel, the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and head of OCIS’s Program on Science, Technology, and Environment in Muslim Societies.