Introduction to Volume 9: Climate and Responsibility

We are delighted to introduce this special issue of the International Journal on Responsibility (IJR) that focuses on the various ways responsibility affects environmental justice.As the last issue of our tenure as Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, Volume 9, Issue 1, urges us to think about how societal and individual (in)action influences ecological crises and what informs this behavior, with a specific focus on religious and Indigenous beliefs and values. Upstream ResponsibilitySpecifically, the concept of upstream responsibility, which served as the impetus for the call for papers for this volume, is introduced in the latter part of the Foreword written by Calvin Redekop and C. Norman Kraus and published posthumously here.Upstream responsibility argues that humanity has the responsibility to address social problems before these ills flow downstream to the detriment of society and the environment.Edited solely for grammatical flow, this paper, focusing on the intersection between Anabaptism and justice, was originally presented at a public forum on May 13, 2017, sponsored by the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), at Dayton Mennonite Church where it was vigorously discussed.A translated and shortened version was also published in the Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter (#75) in 2019.Nahar highlights how religion and religious organizations supported the summit out of which the catalytic 17 Principles of Environmental Justice came, and the deep Indigenous and Black roots of the movement.Illustrating the connection between religions and social movements, the author focuses on Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity, to demonstrate how these religions and practices reflect principles of environmental justice and can assist in addressing upstream responsibility.Religious moral suasion frames the responsibility of religious adherents in assisting environmental justice, and Nahar highlights seven types of material support for the movement that religious organizations are uniquely positioned to provide.Brett and Lyons center on upstream responsibility by focusing on the need to restore Onondaga Lake to the Onondaga Nation.Namely, the authors use the history of the Lake to juxtapose how the European Christian Doctrine of Discovery, which served as the justification to steal this sacred Lake from the Onondaga people, and Indigenous values affect the environment.They argue that the desecration of the Lake under the auspices of the Doctrine of Discovery can only be rectified and prevent further harm by allowing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to care for this Lake and give back to the environment thereby fostering right relationship to the natural world and environmental justice.