Environmental challenges and the place of African relational environmental ethics of Unhu/Ubuntu

Abstract

Questions on understanding the connections between human beings and the natural environment have generally been addressed extensively. However, more effort still needs to be made to augment such research by considering how to further understand human-environment connections from ethical perspectives. In this work, I consider how the human-environment relationship might be approached differently by appealing to some underexplored relational values of existence that are salient in the African philosophy of unhu/ubuntu. I argue why these values of unhu/ubuntu ought to be relevant to environmental challenges currently facing the world. After considering some of the implications of the current environmental crisis for the environment and human beings, I will explore what environmental ethical intuitions might be drawn from the African relational ethical view based on unhu/ubuntu. In the end, I argue that an appeal to African ethics of unhu/ubuntu ought to be taken seriously in terms of its implications for the ontological connectedness, communality, relationality, harmonious and intergenerational co-existence between different beings. Ultimately, I show how ubuntu can function as the basis for an environmental philosophy for Africa and elsewhere as I consider some of the environmental challenges facing the world.