“…The (Western) New Age movement and orientalism also coincide historically with the more recent origins of Buddhist environmentalism, for which, according to the theory of karma (every action is ontologically linked to its consequences), the solution to the ecological crisis will arise out of the sense of responsibility in relation to the world of which human beings are a part. This environmentalism is particularly well established in North America, starting quietly in the early twentieth century and fully emerging in the 1950s and 60s to become a theoretical field in its own right in the 1980s and 90s (Johnston ). Since then, Buddhism has been involved in ecological initiatives in both Asia and the West, through a twin movement that is, on the one hand, secular, located in a civil society that directly challenges governance and the management of the relationship between human beings and the environment, and, on the other, religious, leading monastic orders to abandon their usual (normative) withdrawal from the world to take part in action to conserve and preserve nature.…”