Sustainable development and spirituality

May 21, 2024 Recently, I gave a presentation at the Sustainable Economy – Sustainable Society conference organized by the University of Debrecen and the Hungarian National Bank. My topic was "Sustainable Development and Spirituality." In short, I talked about how, in large academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus, the number of results for the search term "sustainable development and spirituality" has doubled in the past two years, reaching around 411-421 results. This rapid trend even surprised me, as the pairing of these two topics might seem strange to many at first. The studies mentioned belong to various fields (e.g., sustainability science, environmental science, economics, marketing, environmental health, etc.), but in some way, each emphasizes the importance of spirituality within the sustainability context. Very often, they approach it from the perspective that spirituality is a significant motivation behind all "sustainable behaviors," making it an essential element of sustainable development. Researchers are exploring ways to approach this topic scientifically. There are even interesting studies that analyze the impact of contemporary spirituality and its culture on the environment, considering both its positive and negative effects. Finally, I was also surprised to come across a suggestion to make spirituality the 18th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 18) of the UN. Overall, this is a rapidly developing and exciting field of research, which also raises numerous questions from a legal perspective, and I plan to write a paper on the topic.