Pathways to Cultural and Environmental Sustainability at the Borobudur World Heritage Site: Collaborative Governance through Community-Based Spiritual Tourism

Abstract

This article offers a cultural analysis of environmental governance at Borobudur-an Indonesian World Heritage site-by advancing Community-Based Spiritual Tourism (CBST) and a Collaborative Inter-Actor (CIA) model as culturally embedded pathways of social change. Drawing on an ethnographically informed mixed-methods design, the study integrates 15 in-depth interviews, participatory observation during 2023-2024 Vesak rituals, environmental surveys, and policy document analysis. It foregrounds Global-South perspectives and community voices in addressing heritage-based ecological challenges. Findings reveal five critical pressures-visitor overcapacity, solid waste, air pollution, loss of sacred vegetation, and structural erosion-while identifying eco-spiritual practices such as sacred-water rituals, tree conservation, and the framing of Borobudur as a sacred landscape that cultivate environmental stewardship. Building on cultural sociology and post/decolonial debates, CBST is theorised as an extension of CBT that centres ritual and symbolism in shaping pro-environmental behaviour, whereas CIA governance rebalances power among state, corporate, and community actors. The article contributes discourse by articulating spiritual ecology as cultural infrastructure for sustainability, reframing collaborative governance through ethnographic cultural analysis, and demonstrating how local spiritual epistemologies challenge Eurocentric managerialism.