Producing Krishna’s Abode in Times of Climate Change: ISKCON-Ecological Imagination in Krishna Valley (Hungary)

This article investigates the relevance of selected and adapted representations of Krishna from the broader ISKCON tradition for sustainable and self-sufficient practices within Krishna Valley. Krishna Valley is an ISKCON community established in 1993 in the remote areas of Hungary, and it covers 300 hectares. As a self-sufficient and sustainable community, it is part of the Global Environmental Network, and as an ISKCON community, it belongs to the global movement of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The synchronic interconnections of Krishna Valley as an ecovillage and as a religious place intertwine in the same place. In this article, Krishna Valley serves as an explanatory case study to investigate the relevance of ISKCON religious representations for ecological imagination: the process of perceiving relationships through the use of metaphors, images, narratives, symbols, and sematic frames that are central to and constitutive of human ecological thinking. This study uses two units of analysis (cow service and water management) to explore how in Krishna Valley ecological imagination takes shape in the interaction between local sustainable and self-sufficient practices and specific religious representations that are part of the ISKCON tradition. By looking at how the community interprets and treats cows and water pollution from a religious and environmental perspective, this case study answers the question of how ecovillages might benefit from religion-based ecological imagination for their sustainable livelihoods.