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Main Article Content
Pursuing fullness of life through harmony with nature: Towards an African response to environmental destruction and climate change in Southern Africa
Buhle Mpofu
Abstract
Like the rest of the developed world, African nations are now subject to consumerist tendencies
of the global economic architecture and activities, which excessively exploit natural resources for
profits and are at the centre of what this article describes as ‘disharmony between nature and
humanity’. The exploitative nature of consumerist tendencies requires healing and restoration as
it leads towards unpredictable and destructive weather patterns in which the relationships
between human activity and the environment have created patterns and feedback mechanisms
that govern the presence, distribution and abundance of species assemblages. Disharmony is
employed to describe the exploitative nature of consumerist tendencies that lead to unpredictable
weather patterns. The consequences include climate change and natural disasters such as floods,
drought and environmental pollution, which have been severely experienced in Southern Africa
recently. This article provides a qualitative literature review on recent religious and ecumenical
responses to climate change crisis and draws on the notions of ‘cultural landscapes’ and
‘ecotheology’ to highlight an exploitative relationship, which is characterised by disharmony in
the relationship between humanity and nature. This illustration demonstrates how the concept
of unity between ‘self and the entire Kosmos’ in African worldview presents a potentially
constructive African theology of ecology. Amongst other recommendations, the article proposed
that in order for humanity to restore harmony and attain fullness of life – oikodome – with nature
the notions of healing, reconciliation, liberation and restoration should be extended to human
relations or interactions with nature and all of God’s creation.
Contribution: This article represents a contextual and systematic reflection on climate
challenges facing the African context within a paradigm in which the intersection of philosophy,
religious studies, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences generates an interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary contested discourse.
