Amanah as Entrusted Moral Responsibility: A Conceptual Dialogue with Ecological Citizenship for Social Studies Education

Abstract

Environmental responsibility concerns not only human behavior toward nature but the normative basis of obligations, those who bear ecological consequences, justice, and the articulation of responsibility in civic life. This article analyzes amanah within Islamic environmental ethics, conceptualizes it as entrusted moral responsibility, places it in dialogue with ecological citizenship, and identifies implications for Social Studies Education. The study employs a conceptual design using theory synthesis and an integrative literature approach across four literature domains: amanah, Islamic environmental ethics, ecological citizenship, and Social Studies Education. The synthesis identifies three analytical dimensions of amanah summarized as an entrustment-based grounding of responsibility. Ecological citizenship provides a justice-based normative grounding through ecological duties, ecological space, ecological consequences, the reach of responsibility, and civic-political relations. Their dialogue does not produce conceptual integration or equivalence; rather, it broadens the analytical questions through which environmental responsibility can be understood, how responsibility is accounted for, who bears ecological consequences, how justice is implicated, and how responsibility is articulated through civic relations. The dialogue offers a pedagogical orientation connecting socio-ecological inquiry, entrusted responsibility and accountability, ecological consequences and justice, deliberation, possible informed civic action, and reflection. The proposed orientation is conceptual rather than an empirically validated instructional model.