Consultancy - Research Interfaith Environmental Practices Actors, Practices

Interfaith Environmental Practices in Indonesia:
Actors, Practices, and Collaboration

Consultancy

Location:

Home Based

The International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) is seeking a Consultant to generate policy-relevant and programme-oriented evidence on interfaith environmental collaboration in Indonesia, with particular attention to religious minorities and indigenous communities.

KAICIID aims to create a more peaceful world by promoting dialogue and supporting religious leaders and communities in tackling our most pressing problems. We do this through education and training, convening religious leaders and policymakers, and carrying out research to encourage and enhance interreligious and intercultural dialogue. We work with our partners to build their capacities, connections, and confidence.

Our work focuses on four pressing and linked issues that challenge humanity: violent conflict; migration; the climate emergency, and social cohesion. We bring together religious leaders with policymakers to find constructive ways to address these issues through dialogue. Our work respects and values the differences between faiths and cultures but promotes the idea that we share a common humanity and a collective need to address these problems.

Through all our work run three threads: youth engagement, gender, and policy development.

The primary objective of the Programme Division (PROD) is to create the conditions, platforms and environment through which religious leaders and other actors, in particular policy makers and dialogue practitioners, can engage in constructive dialogue, thus strengthening mutual understanding and respect with the ultimate aim to encourage them to initiate action to bring about change in the policies of religious institutions and governments, at various levels, build mechanisms to facilitate on-going dialogue and action as well as strengthen networks of committed and experienced religious leaders, and other actors in the use of (IRD/ICD) for peace and reconciliation in conflict situations in particular.

Indonesia is highly vulnerable to environmental degradation and climate-related crises, which has prompted increasing engagement by religious actors, faith-based organizations, and indigenous communities in environmental protection. Over the past two decades, religious environmentalism has expanded significantly, driven not only by Muslim-majority institutions but also by religious minorities and indigenous belief systems whose cosmologies have long governed human
-nature relations.

More recently, religious environmental action in Indonesia has gained additional momentum through policy developments led by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, particularly the integration of ecotheology into national policy frameworks since 2025. This policy direction has encouraged both majority and minority religious communities to engage in environmental protection across sectors, including education, waste management, forest protection, and marine conservation.

At the same time, indigenous communities across Indonesia continue to play a critical role in environmental stewardship through customary practices such as sasi, forest protection regimes, and marine conservation systems. These practices often intersect with religious pluralism and informal interfaith collaboration, although such dynamics remain under-documented.

Despite the growing number of interfaith environmental initiatives - such as Eco-Bhinneka Muhammadiyah, the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative, and interfaith land-fire mitigation efforts - there is still limited comparative analysis of how interfaith collaboration functions in practice, particularly among religious minorities and indigenous communities, and how such collaboration can be strengthened and scaled through policy and programming.

In this context, KAICIID seeks to commission a research consultant to undertake an applied qualitative study that maps key actors, analyzes collaboration mechanisms, identifies best practices, and produces policy-relevant recommendations to inform programme implementation and policy engagement in Indonesia.