Ordinary people are powerfully motivated to do things that can be justified in terms of their religious beliefs. Therefore, distilling environmental ethics from the world's living religions is extremely important for global conservation. Christianity is a world religion, but so are Islam and Buddhism. Other major religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Confucianism, while more regionally restricted, nevertheless claim millions of devotees. The well-documented effort of Jewish and Christian conservationists to formulate the Judeo-Christian Stewardship Environmental Ethic in biblical terms suggests an important new line of inquiry: How can effective conservation ethics be formulated in terms of other sacred texts? In Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Wisdom, a comprehensive survey is offered, but to provide even a synopsis of that study would be impossible in this entry. However, a few abstracts of traditional non-Western conservation ethics may be suggestive.

Muslims believe that...