Hi all!

It’s been a while since I’ve come back to this blog, but after completing ENV1101 more than a year ago, I have been working on various assignments and projects! Notably, my friends and I have been working on an Independent Study Module (ISM) for the last semester.

This counts as my second ISM, already exceeding the minimum number I need to graduate with a USP certificate, so why did I do it? Well, it was as if the stars aligned. A friend had individually written a 3k word paper touching on this topic the semester before, which I happened to help him out with. Another friend of ours wanted to do an ISM on Buddhism, but didn’t want to pursue his particular idea given the difficulty.

Within the span of a night, the three of us had convinced each other to take on the challenge of researching on religious environmentalism in Singapore as an ISM. We quickly submitted our proposal, got an advisor, and wrote up our literature review over the winter holiday.

After an agonising few weeks of learning the basics about our religions of focus (namely – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism), we set off on conducting interviews with various religious leaders and teachers in Singapore. Each interview was thoroughly enjoyable, and we gained so many insights from everyone we spoke to. Just to name some of the topics we discussed, we asked about the theoretical link between religion and environmental beliefs, and its practical application in Singapore.

Unsurprisingly, our findings revealed that the relationship between religion and individuals is very fluid. Not only can religious teachings influence an individual’s worldview on societal and environmental issues, but individuals also determine the extent of influence and direction of the religion. We attempted to synthesise these ideas in our full report below:

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Despite the limited capacity we had to fully comprehend the situation of religious environmentalism in Singapore, my group and I are still proud of our work, which is why I decided to revive my blog just to share our findings somewhere! We’re unlikely to further our research anytime soon but it was still nice to learn about the topic within the time we had.

Thanks for reading!

– Anna