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Contribution short abstract

SPIRAL’s project shows that where sacred forests are respected, authority is rooted in reciprocal relations with the more-than-human world. It advances a relational understanding of biocultural spiritual landscapes and their role in conserving biodiversity and forest reserves.

Contribution long abstract

SPIRAL’s cross-cultural study of spiritual landscapes shows that in 72 small-scale societies worldwide were sacred forests are present, governance and customary law are rooted in reciprocal relations with the spiritual realm, extending authority beyond human institutions and emphasizing multisensorial interconnectedness in everyday heritage practices. This paper examines active spirits’ agency in both relational governance and environmental struggles, arguing that non-humans perform as political actors that mandate, adjudicate, and shape socio-ecological governance within spiritual landscapes were sacred forests are respected.

Combining knowledge co-generated through the SPIRAL research project with global cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas, this paper shows that the SPIRAL sample of biocultural territories exhibits a modestly higher share of high-intensity conflicts compared to the ejatlas global sample. More importantly, it identifies a strong empirical signal of an elevated biodiversity premium at the intersection of Intact Forest Landscapes and Indigenous and communities spiritual landscapes. These patterns suggest distinctive relational bonds among humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans, embedded within onto-epistemological frameworks conceptualized as cosmoecologies.

A second line of inquiry examines evidence linking the intensity of resistance to extractive projects, the variety of mobilisations with the formation of international socio-ecological alliances. The paper concludes by outlining possible qualitative action-research approaches for assessing the strength and quality of bonds within transnational, intergenerational alliances.

By foregrounding spirits’ agency alongside local and international coalition-building, this analysis illuminates how human and more-than-human alliances shape ecological struggles, cultivate healthier socio-ecological relations, and navigate the complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion inherent in environmental resistance.