Advancing Environmental Ethics through the African Worldview (original) (raw)
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Advancing an Environmental Ethics Through the African World-View
2011
In this paper I intend to locate a fresh basis on which alternative theories of environment from the African worldview could be explored; one which will improve the literature on environment as well as diversify the basis for producing positions that could mediate in the tensions that define environmental problems and principles. I shall do this by (i) articulating the moral principles of the world and how it suggests an idea of environmental ethics;(ii)locating the philosophy that interprets traditional religious practices and the environmental principles that could be derived there-in. I shall demonstrate how (iii)these strands of ideas provide positions that strongly suggest alternative but valuable basis for environmental ethics anchored on African worldview and its theoretical and practical potentials for promoting the growth of environment.
African Environmental Ethics and Sustainable Development
Open Journal of Philosophy, 2019
In this paper, I argue that African environmental ethics can contribute to sustainable development as well as mitigate the devastating effects of global warming and climate change in Africa. Although Africa bears the least onus of responsibility for global warming and climate change, she suffers the greatest burden of the adverse effects of global climate change and environmental crisis. While industrialized countries, nations which are largely responsible for the greatest amount of greenhouse emissions are laggard and reticent in implementing international agreements aimed at palliating the untoward effects of climate change, there is an urgent need to seek indigenous solutions to environmental crisis in Africa without compromising the much needed development in the continent. African environmental ethics extends the moral community beyond anthropocentric concerns by including non-human animals, plants, the unborn, and the supernatural into the moral universe. I use Kom environmental ethics to show how indigenous African societies employed different values and customs to make their environment physically and spiritually sustainable. There were taboos, values, and norms which prescribed correct behavior towards nature. But as a result of the colonial encounter, Africans were forced to abandon some of these indigenous environmental values and sustainable practices for an anthropocentric approach. With this outlook where humans have moral responsibility only towards humans, development meant the complete disregard for traditional African holistic values and customs. This disregard, in conjunction with weak or absence of institutional framework regarding environmental protection and corruption in the management of natural resources, has led to unsustainable exploitation of the natural environment in Africa.
The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2019
For decades now, experts have studied and documented the severe environmental and land degradation across Africa. However, the nature of the problem has now been ratcheted up by mounting and undisputed scientific evidence demonstrating a clear causal link between tropical deforestation and global climate change. The external observers of the deteriorating African landscape continue to watch in alarm, sometimes heralding a concerted global response. The African environmental “crisis” that once was framed solely in the context of the direct effects of desertification, deforestation and land degradation on African ecosystems, economies and societies, is now in fact unhinged from the location of rapidly advancing desertification and deforestation to a much broader, world-wide crisis. There is now a rapid need for an effective environment ethic hinged on socio-cultural substance which recognize indigenous people, further shape their association with natural habitat. The thrust of this pa...
The Loss and Damage of Environmental Ethics in the Threshold of African Culture
International Journal of Knowledge Society Research, 2015
It has been argued that human actions through pollution and other activities have imperil survival, harm health and dislocate the well-being of man on earth. This argument's corollary is that, given the curious datum that human beings are implicated in loss and damage of the environment, actions performed by individuals have aggregate negative consequences on the environment. Yet, what African culture is and how it matters in environmental ethics is regrettably unexplored and disproportionately contested. This study examines the contributions of culture toward the preservation and protection of the environment for future generation. The study adopts qualitative methodology and content analysis, as well as “relational theory” to respond to the thesis that African culture has a moral responsibility and an in-built mechanism to protect human interactions with nature and environment. The findings show that culture has the capacity to avert loss and damage of the African environment ...
Humanitatis-Eco (Eco Humanism): An African Environmental Theory
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
Environmental ethics is generally concerned with the moral relationship between human beings and the natural environment. This chapter delineates a uniquely African philosophical worldview where it relates to this normative relationship between the individual and the overall ecosystem. A few questions at stake would be: What constitutes African environmental ethics? Relatedly, in what ways does this view differ from the dominant Western discourse, and what unique contribution can the African worldview make? The chapter is divided into two sections. The first section examines the current debate on African environmental ethics and the contributions made thus far to contemporary environmental ethics. The second section draws upon a specific African worldview of life to articulate an inclusive theory that reconciles the human person and natural environment in a way that underscores the interconnectedness of humanity in terms of religiosity, temporality, and spatiality. This peculiarly African way of thinking about the environment can offer critical resources to enrich the dominant discussions on environmental ethics where it concerns environmental sustainability, rehabilitation, biodiversity, and environmental management.
An African Relational Environmentalism and Moral Considerability
Environmental Ethics
I counter a pervasive presumption that African thought is inherently anthropocentric and has little to contribute to environmental ethics, arguing that the basis for a promising African environmentalism is to be found in the belief in a fundamental inter-relatedness between natural objects. I claim that what establishes moral considerability on this African view is that entities are part of the inter-connected web of life. This accords moral standing to all living things, groups of living things, as well as inanimate natural entities. I assert that this view is not only plausible, but also theoretically appealing.
Logical and Theoretical Foundations of African Environmental Ethics
[English] The paper observed that the various ethics that constitute the system of African environmental ethics are not based on or linked to any known African ontology and formal logic. It argued that the contextualisation of African environmental ethics on African ontology and African logic is essential since Western ontology and logic do not serve to adequately explain and provide proper meanings to the various concepts and propositions employed in the African environmental ethics. Therefore, the paper aimed to, and indeed, link and establishes African environmental ethics on a definite and sound African ontology and formal logic based on Ibuanyidanda complementary ontology and Ezumezu integrativist logic. [Annang] Nwed ndun̄ ọ ami akondo ada akud ate k' idem mme ido ukpeme nkan-n̄ kuk ke Africa ada nsan nsan ye ọntọlọgy ye lọgik Africa. Nnwed ami abenne awọ́d ate ke ọntọlọgy ye lọgik mfia agwo iwamma ke adinam awan̄ a mme nsio nsio akpọ-ikọ, adaha ikọ, mme usem, ye mme edu ake 'adọhọke ke mme ido ukpeme nkan-n̄ kuk ke Africa. Ntak ade anam ukpep mkpọ ami anwana ndiben ido ukpeme nkan-n̄ kuk Africa n̄ ka n̄ ke kọọn̄ ke ọntọlọgy ye lọgik afọnnọ nte itiat ikaba, ade anam anye asan̄ a 'ke kem ye Ibuanyidanda Ontology ye Ezumezu Logic.
European Journal of Sustainable Development
Human actions and conduct have both positive and negative effects on humankind and its environment. This is why ethicists have propounded different theories that are supposed to guide peoples’ conduct in order to distinguish the right from the wrong. Environmental ethics as an aspect of environmental philosophy attempts a justification of the rightness and wrongness of human activities as they affect other non-human members of the society or environment. Despite the efforts of both ethicists and environmentalist, humans have continued to conduct themselves in a manner, most unhealthy to the environmental resources. This is the problematic that informed this research on “Ethics, Environment and Philosophy: Towards Sustainable Development in Africa”. The main objective is to apply selected ethical theories to the philosophical study of environment in order to ascertain their implications for sustainable development in Africa. To achieve this goal, philosophical methods of critical an...
2021
Kukhona isidingo esiphuthumayo sokuthola izixazululo eziqhubekela phambili ngesikhathi sezinkinga zendalo umhlaba wonkana, kanye ne-Afrika imbala ezibhekene nazo okwamanje. Okwamanje amafilosofi endalo abonakala engakwazi ukuxazulula izinkinga zendalo zomhlaba wethu ngokwanele. Lokhu kungoba kunomthelela omkhulu wemibono yamazwe aseNtshonalanga (enomthelela omkhulu wombono we-dualistic and anthropocentric ngomhlaba) kanti ngakolunye uhlangothi, kanti futhi ngenxa yokuthi aphansi kwenqubo yama-ethics ngakolunye uhlangothi. Kantike ngenxa yalokhu, kugxilwa kakhulu ebudlelwaneni phakathi kwabantu kanye nemvelo (okusho indalo yangokwemvelo). Ngisho noma imizamo yenziwe zifundiswa ukuqhubela phambili umbono wefilosofi yendalo, le mizamo ikhathazwe kakhulu ukuncika kwezama-ethics. Lolu cwaningo luqhubela phambili umbono ngesilosofi yesi-Afrika ngokwendalo, ezokwenza ukuthi kube nokubili, ukubamba iqhaza kanye nokuxhumana kwemikhakha ehlukene ekuthungatheni kwayo uhlaka lokuxazulula izinkinga olubambekayo ngokwendalo. Ucwaningo lufuna ukuthuthukisa iFilosofi yesi-Afrika ngokwendalo ngokuzimisela ukuthungatha umthombo nombono wolwazi ngokwendalo. Lokhu kuthungatha kuncike kwisimo sezomthombo wolwazi otholakala kwizinqubo zesintu zabantu base-Afrika ngokunabile, kanti ikakhulukazi ngabantu bamaYoruba kanye nama-Igbo kwingxenye eseNtshonalanga neNigeria, eNtshonalanga Afrika ikakhulukazi. Lolu cwaningo, ngakho-ke luyisakhelo sefilosofi yendalo, engesi-Afrika ikakhulukazi, kodwa ebheka kumazwe omhlaba ngokwenza, kanye nokuqinisekisa mayelana Nemvelo.