AFRICAN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: A NON –ANTHROPOCENTRIC AFRICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM. THE JOURNEY SO FAR

Abstract

Africa today is faced with several environmental issues ranging from gully erosions, desertification, flooding, overpopulation, water pollution and Co2 emissions from cars and engines et cetera. Two factors responsible for these are: the aging earth and the activities of humans. Environmental ethics therefore seeks for the extension of moral community to include the ecosystem as a whole. African environmental ethics therefore is an enquiry into the thought system and ontology of the Africans on the environment. This paper looks at the theories and conceptions put forward by scholars in their bid to evolving a promising non anthropocentric African environmentalism. Oruka and Jumia’s Parent earth ethics, Ogungbemi’s ethics of nature relatedness, Tangwa’s eco-biocommunitarianism, Mogobe Ramose’s Ubuntu ecology, Behren’s African relational environmentalism et cetera. In the journey so far, using the philosophical method of analyses, one observes that these theories are either not African at all, judging from African ontological system or not African enough in the sense of not reflecting one important aspect of African ontology.I propose however, that obligatory anthropoholism is a more promising African environmental attitude. My view gives a sense in which humans have a pride of place in African ontology(obligation). It also stresses the developmental implications for the African continent.