In the 21st century, Shinto has increasingly been portrayed as a nature-centred spirituality with environmentalist credentials. Shinto shrines have increasingly emphasised the preservation of the forests surrounding many of them, and several shrines have collaborated with local environmentalist campaigns. In 2014, an international interreligious conference on environmental sustainability was held at the Ise shrine, attended by United Nations representatives and around 700 Shinto priests. Critical commentators have characterised the presentation of Shinto as an environmentalist movement as a rhetorical ploy rather than a concerted effort by Shinto institutions to become environmentally sustainable. The scholar Aike P. Rots suggested that the repositioning of Shinto as a "nature religion" may have grown in popularity as a means of disassociating the religion from controversial issues "related to war memory and imperial patronage."