Meio ambiente e liberdade religiosa: aproximações e conflitos

Abstract

Among the extensive catalog of institutionalized fundamental rights in the Federal Constitution, there is the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment and the right to freedom of religion, belief and conscience, both are results of many social and political struggles. But, due to the broad scope of protection of these rights, they can, in certain situations, interfere, both positively and negatively, in the protection of each other, causing tensions or complementation?s. Therefore, the present study has as main objective to provide a dialogue between the fundamental right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment and the fundamental right to freedom of religion, belief and conscience. Asking, as a research problem, what are the points of divergences, resulting in possible conflicts between fundamental rights; and complementary questions, in other words, how the right to religious freedom, through the exercise of religion, can contribute to the formation of an ecological conscience, helping in the realization of the fundamental right to the environment; as well as the ecologically balanced environment can promote religious freedom. For this, a qualitative, descriptive and explanatory research was conducted based on physical and electronic bibliography, mainly specialized doctrine, periodicals, scientific papers, legislation and court decisions. Dialectical and hermeneutic methods were also used, as well the monographic procedure. It is concluded that the contributions and convergences between fundamental rights, objects of the study, are found in the religious and spiritual creeds, dogmas, doctrines and customs that contain responses to face the socio-environmental crisis, which are taught to the adepts of these religions and can be expanded to the whole society. Examples of religions and spiritualities that include such contributions are African religions, Christian religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. In addition, the tensions and the conflicts between these rights occur in the excesses of externalizing these religiosities and spiritualities, when environmental damage and conflicts are caused. Thus, examples of such conflicts are religious rituals of animal sacrifice, noise pollution from religious ceremonies and environmental pollution resulting from offerings by Afro-brazilian religions, as well as Christian cemetery activities [resumo fornecido pelo autor].