Background and Objective: Contemporary environmental crises, including climate change, natural resource degradation, air and water pollution, and unsustainable consumption patterns, have demonstrated that purely technical and managerial approaches are insufficient for addressing environmental problems. Global experience suggests that lasting changes in environmental behavior require simultaneous attention to cultural, ethical, and value-based dimensions. Religion, as an important source of worldview, ethics, and lifestyle, can therefore play a significant role in shaping environmental culture, particularly in Islamic societies. Islamic teachings emphasize principles such as human stewardship of the Earth, responsibility for natural resources, justice, moderation, and the avoidance of waste and environmental degradation. These principles offer considerable potential for developing ethical and educational frameworks for environmental education and management. Despite this potential, the literature suggests that comprehensive and indigenous educational models that systematically integrate environmental education with religious teachings and translate these principles into practice within a green urban context remain limited. Accordingly, this study aimed to develop a conceptual model for examining the relationship between environmental education, religious ethics, pro-environmental behavior, and sustainable urban management in the context of an Islamic–Iranian green city.
Materials and Methods: This study employed a qualitative review–analytical approach. The process of reviewing and analyzing the literature was conducted in a structured manner, based on predefined criteria for the search, selection, and analysis of relevant sources. The research corpus included scientific articles, theses, and research reports related to environmental education, environmental ethics, environmental jurisprudence, and religious approaches to environmental issues published between 2000 and 2025. Sources were identified through reputable domestic and international academic databases. Inclusion criteria included direct relevance to environmental education, the presence of religious or cultural perspectives, publication in reputable scientific sources, and full-text availability. Duplicate studies, non-peer-reviewed sources, and purely theoretical studies without a clearly defined educational framework were excluded. Relevant concepts and themes were extracted from the selected sources and subsequently coded, compared, and categorized through inductive thematic analysis. To enhance the credibility of the findings, source triangulation, independent coding and interpretation by three researchers, and comparison of the extracted themes with existing theoretical frameworks were employed. Finally, based on the results of the analysis, a conceptual model of environmental education grounded in religious environmentalism was developed.
Results and Discussion: The analysis of the selected sources indicated that integrating Islamic religious teachings with contemporary models of environmental education has considerable conceptual potential for linking education, environmental ethics, and pro-environmental behavior. The thematic analysis identified five main dimensions: epistemological and religious foundations; behavioral education and green lifestyles; urban design and management informed by Islamic teachings; social and cultural institutions and structures; and policy and monitoring mechanisms. These dimensions are conceptualized as interconnected and complementary elements of the proposed model and provide a conceptual basis for examining environmental education within the context of the Islamic–Iranian green city. The proposed model views religious environmentalism not merely as a theoretical perspective, but as a normative and proposed framework for linking environmental education with lifestyle, urban management, and policymaking. The model may serve as a context-sensitive conceptual framework for designing and developing environmental education programs and for examining its potential contribution to environmental protection and sustainable urban development in Islamic societies. The proposed contribution of the study is its attempt to connect religious ethics with broader approaches to sustainability education and urban governance.