Chazelle Elizabeth Rhoden

This ethnographic study titled “ Afro-religious Animations: Spirit, Space, and Climate-driven Conservation in Brazil,” examined how Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religious praxes shape and are shaped by climate mitigation, adaptation, and conservation processes. This research was conducted within the São Bartolomeu/ Bacia do Cobre Conservation Unit in Salvador, Brazil, a protected area established to manage land use within the city’s Atlantic Forest remnants. The Brazilian state seeks to transform Salvador into a “global climate city” through discourses that draw on these forest ecosystems as well as on Candomblé as a cultural product. The researcher investigated: 1) Candomblé rituals that practitioners carry out in the Conservation Unit. Here, “relationality” became an analytical entryway for understanding the ecological implications of these praxes, which are directed by the pantheon of African and Indigenous spiritual beings that are central to the religion. 2) Practitioners’ experiences of state-led, climate-related conservation. 3) The historical and emerging socio-political and placemaking processes that drive climate projects in Salvador. This research opens up anthropological questions on the relationship between climate, environmental conservation, and Afro- diasporic spirituality, and reveals the significance of Afro-religious modes of life within environmental governance and climate futures.