have of nature. Tanner and Mitchell (2002, p. 209) note that ‘most religions view the natural environment as a harmonious unity, conceived by an external and transcendent mind’. From this perspective, Gardner (2002, p. 35), emphasises the traditional and important role of rituals, traditions, and religious institutions ‘in governing sustainable use of the natural environment’, as they act as ‘a sophisticated social and spiritual technology’ that helps mould the moral and ethical bearings of people, including ‘people [living] in harmony with the natural world’. Building on the intricate connections between nature and religion, several conceptual approaches regarding these connections have been developed, including bioethics, sacred environmentalism, and deep-ecology (Chandran and Hughes, 1997; Nelson, 1998; Saraswati, 1998; Sullivan, 1998; Apffel-Marglin and Parajuli, 2000; Chapple and Tucker, 2000; Dwivedi, 2000).
At a more physical level, the heightened intersection between religious values and the environment can be witnessed in places that are deemed important for the practice of religion. These are in many cases centres of religious faith that are considered sacred or deeply rooted in the human need for understanding their place in the cosmos (Jackson, 1995; Shackley, 2001; Tanner and Mitchell, 2002). The notion of the ‘sacred’ in relation to place can be conceptualized in two ways (see Olsen, 2019a). The first conceptualization, often referred to as the Eliadean (Eliade, 1959) or ‘ontological’ view of sacred space, posits that hierophanies or divine irruptions take place in a particular location, which makes this location the axis mundi for religious groups. At many sacred sites, religious leaders incorporate various elements of nature into a system of religious values, symbols, and religious rituals (Marshall, 1994; Chandran and Hughes, 1997; Narayanan, 1997; Prorok, 1997; Shinde, 2008). Places such as Mt Meru, Mt Kailash, and Mt Manasarovar, which are believed to be the abode of Hindu God Shiva, belong to this category of sacred places. In the other conceptualization, referred to as the ‘situationalist’ perspective, sacred sites are not an ‘ontological given’ (della Dora, 2015) but rather are defined as sacred through political, sociocultural, economic, and psychological processes. Sacred sites, therefore, are not sacred until someone or some group deems the site as sacred through a deliberate process of sanctification (Gottlieb, 2004; Bremer, 2006). As Tanner and Mitchell (2002, p. 122) note, ‘A sacred space is not normally extraordinary in its characteristics, it is made so by religious choice’.
Regardless of which view of how sacred space is created, the imbuing of mythological legends, miracle stories, and testimonies of the reality of divine forces within the physical elements in a sacred place contributes to the creation and maintenance of sacred geography. Often, these sacred places include a network of sacred sites linked to natural features, such as rivers, trees, and lakes marked by human-built shrines dedicated to certain deities and containing sanctified artefacts and objects. These sacred places, demarcated by religious groups by a sacred boundary to separate the sacred from the secular (Kong, 2001), become places where pilgrimage and other religious rituals are performed. This boundary in some cases also serves as a route of circumambulatory pilgrimage practices (Vidyarthi et al., 1979; Haberman, 1994; Singh, 1997). Thus, attributes such as ‘sacred’, ‘divine’, ‘religious’, and ‘spiritual’ become central to the environment of sacred places. These same sacred places also provide opportunities to cross from the material world to the divine world (Eck, 1981) and crossing is symbolized in pilgrimage travel to such places. Experiencing the ‘spirit of place’ at these sacred sites attracts both believers and non-believers, and in the process they become epicentres of pilgrimage travel. Pilgrimage, then, becomes the religious framework through which the sanctity of the place is made accessible.
Yet, important as the relationships between religion and the environment are, there is a paucity of literature discussing these relationships within the context of everyday and mundane issues related to tourism development.
Sacred Spaces and Places: Where Religion, Tourism, and the Environment Intersect
Pilgrimage and religious tourism destinations are places where the intersections between religion, tourism, and the environment are significant, heightened, and more readily observed. While there are thousands of places that faith traditions and individuals consider sacred, not all of these places become popular pilgrimage sites (Stoddard and Morinis, 1997; Tanner and Mitchell, 2002). This is because, as noted above, a sacred site is sacred because of the visitation and ritual practices of religious adherents and visitors, wherein rituals are invested with religious beliefs, meanings, and imagery, and institutionalised in the activity of pilgrimage (Bharati, 1963; Turner and Turner, 1978; Morinis, 1984; Nolan and Nolan, 1989). These rituals and the visitation of these sites reinforce the sacred nature of the sites to pilgrims (Bremer, 2004). This positive feedback loop leads to ‘visitors never doubt[ing] that they are experiencing a religious place, regardless of whether or not they share the religious proclivity of the place’ (Bremer, 2000, p. 423).
The Physical Reality of Environmental Impacts
Sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism have abstract, metaphysical, and ‘otherworldly’ aspects to their existence. At the same time, they are physical places that are inhabited and act as a destination for religiously motivated visitors. These visitors, as Shackley (2001, p. 54) wrote, ‘will have some impact, whether they wish or not’. Several scholars have discussed the many kinds of direct and indirect environmental impacts that occur in pilgrim-towns and within natural sacred landscapes due in part to religious tourism (Singh, 2002; Dasgupta et al., 2006; Shinde, 2007a; Terzidou et al., 2008; Verschuuren et al., 2010; Alipour et al., 2017). For example, based on observations in European cathedrals and churches, Shackley (2001) classified the direct impacts caused by visitors as deliberate (e.g. theft and vandalism), thoughtless (e.g. litter, pollution, noise), and accidental (e.g. abrasion of artwork or fabric in passing). These types of impacts are commonplace for religious buildings and natural landscapes that receive religious tourists (Nolan and Nolan, 1992; Swatos Jr. and Tomasi, 2002).
However, such impacts can be viewed very differently when considering religious tourism as an active religious practice, as is the case in many non-western societies. The scale of visitor impact is most evident in large gatherings around religious festivals, such as the Kumbha Mela,1 a major pan-Indian pilgrimage event and the world’s largest gathering of Hindu devotees that at times has 120 million participants. As a part of the Kumbha Mela, pilgrims participate in ritual bathing in the River Ganga. With millions of people participating in this ritual bathing, several environmental impacts occur. For example, a report prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board in India summarizes the environmental impacts of such mass bathing:
Mass bathing is accompanied by mass defecation. Apart from that, the offerings of a plethora of materials – from ghee to flowers – are made to the river. This contributes high levels of organic matter to the river. As several infections are transmitted through water […] there are good chances that the bathers are infected by viruses and pathogens that cause diseases like typhoid, cholera, bacterial dysentery and jaundice (cited in Ahmed et al., 2000: para 20).
While this example of the Kumbha Mela may seem like a larger-than-life instance of the environmental impacts of religious ritual participation, the larger the group of participants in religious rituals, the worse the environmental impacts will be. Indeed, direct impacts are most visible at sacred destinations during festivals and events considered auspicious in religious faiths (Shinde, 2007a; Ruback et al., 2008). These occasions, which closely follow religious calendars, may take place on a single day or occur over the space of several days, weeks, or even months (Singh, 1997). The continual influx of large numbers of pilgrims, let alone religious tourists, puts a severe strain on basic services such as water supply, sanitation, and waste management at these destinations (Kaur, 2019). The physical environment is further stressed with soil and water pollution and the clearing of land for the creation of temporary accommodation facilities and amenities for pilgrims (Nagabhushanam, 1997; Basheer, 2003).
In many cases, religious rituals, as significant
