From Qur’anic Stewardship to Climate Responsibility: Rethinking Human Accountability in Islamic Environmental Ethics

Abstract

Human-caused warming has turned environmental degradation into an immediate question of responsibility rather than a distant question of resource management. Yet appeals to religious stewardship are contested because they can inspire conservation while leaving institutional emissions, social inequality, and the duties of powerful actors unspecified. Islamic environmental ethics has developed rich readings of khalīfah, amānah, mīzān, and the prohibition of fasād, but scholarship often moves too quickly from scriptural affirmation to presumed environmental outcomes. Studies of Muslim environmental practices and climate attitudes instead reveal uneven translation, political constraints, and differences between ethical conviction and measurable action. This article asks how Qur’anic stewardship can be reconstructed as an accountable approach to climate responsibility without treating scripture as a technical climate manual. It employs a qualitative, structured documentary analysis of selected Qur’anic passages, an international Islamic climate declaration, Indonesia’s climate fatwa and environmental-law context, and peer-reviewed research published principally between 2022 and 2025. Texts are interpreted through a transparent three-stage matrix linking normative concepts, causal mechanisms, and testable institutional obligations. The analysis identifies three findings: stewardship is best understood as constrained trusteeship rather than ownership; moral exhortation becomes credible when translated into differentiated duties, transparent decisions, and evaluation; and justice must mediate the movement from individual restraint to collective mitigation and adaptation. On this basis, the article proposes a five-part Climate Accountability Translation Framework integrating scriptural warrant, context-specific responsibility, institutional commitments, public evidence, and corrective review. The framework is a conceptual result, not a claim of demonstrated emissions reductions. The article concludes that Islamic environmental ethics can contribute more decisively to climate governance when religious legitimacy is joined to scientific evidence, protection of vulnerable groups, and verifiable public practice. Comparative field research should test whether such arrangements change organizational decisions and climate outcomes.