AN ECOCENTRIC PHILOSOPHICAL APPRAISAL OF UNEP'S ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF OGONILAND

Abstract

There has been a dominance of the anthropocentric orientation in science and technology, in economics and government thinking, in academia and among the world's religious traditions, with only an ambivalent support for ecocentrism through the history of thought (Taylor et al., 2016). Despite occasional admittance of the urgency of axiological paradigm shift by the UN it continues to confine itself to the anthropocentric framework in its assessment of environmental despoliation. This article demonstrates the inadequacy of UNEP's anthropocentric worldview by appraising its Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland (2011) in light ecocentric environmental philosophy. UNEP's assessment of what went wrong and what needs be done remains at the level of environmental law and fails to see the ethical failure antecedent to the ineffectiveness of environmental law in the form of existing oil company environmental guidelines. The objective is to underscore the failure of UNEP's assessment to espouse any remarkably different approach to human relation to the environment that promises protection for the ecosystem. For progress in confronting the challenge of environmental protection this article concludes with a recommendation that ecological ethics be emphasized in environmental education to broaden the axiological framework of environmental ethics accessible in academia and to government and private policy makers.