This article explores the rehabilitation of the ethical dimension of human interactions with nature, using cross-cultural perspectives in Africa. Cross-cultural comparison of indigenous concepts of the relationship between people and nature with contemporary environmental and scientific issues facilitate the rehabilitation, renewal and validation of indigenous environmental ethics. Although increasing attention is being given to the environmental concerns of non-western traditions, most of the related research has centered on Asia, Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines with little attention being paid to (...) Africa. However, this study has confirmed that, like other multi-cultural traditions, African indigenous traditions contain symbolic and ethical messages that are passed from generation to generation in order to ensure respect and compassion for other living creatures. The article shows, however, that not all indigenous knowledge is environmentally friendly. Indigenous and modern environmental ethics alike have something to teach as well as something to learn. (shrink)

This paper examines a broad range of ethical perspectives and principles relevant to the analysis of issues raised by the science of climate change and explores their implications. A second and companion paper extends this analysis to the contribution of ethics, economics and politics in understanding policy towards climate change. These tasks must start with the science which tells us that this is a problem of risk management on an immense scale. Risks on this scale take us far outside the (...) familiar policy questions and standard, largely marginal, techniques commonly used by economists; this is a subject that requires the full breadth and depth of what economics has to offer and a much more thoughtful view of ethics than economists usually bring to bear. Different philosophical approaches bring different perspectives on understanding and policy, yet they generally point to the case for strong action to manage climate change. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article étudie la réhabilitation de la dimension éthique dans les interactions de l’homme avec la nature, en utilisant des perspectives multiculturelles en Afrique. Une attention particulière sera accordée aux méthodes à utiliser pour garder viable l’éthique environnementale traditionnelle en Afrique. De nombreux scientifiques ont cherché à l’aveuglette un cadre éthique nouveau pour guider les relations entre les hommes et le reste de la nature. Même si une attention croissante a été accordée aux traditions non-occidentales, les recherches se sont (...) concentrées pour la plupart sur l’Asie et les indigènes d’Amérique et d’Australie, en négligeant presque totalement l’Afrique. Les traditions africaines contiennent des messages symboliques et éthiques qui sont passés d’une génération à l’autre afin d’assurer le respect et la compassion pour les autres créatures vivantes avec lesquelles nous partageons le monde. Les paysans africains, fermiers et éleveurs, ont développé une importante connaissance interactive de l’environnement naturel. L’éthique environnementale indigène peut offrir des vues profondes pour rediriger le comportement des sociétés technologiques sur une voie plus renouvelable. L’article suggère ainsi qu’il importe de ne pas ménager les efforts pour promouvoir et diriger la continuation du dialogue, entre nations, religions et cultures, ainsi que la coopération dans le domaine de l’éthique environnementale, surtout entre l’éthique moderne et celle traditionnelle, afin de favoriser des relations mutuelles de développement entre l’homme et la terre. (shrink)

Challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants.

The literature on Hinduism and the environment is vast, and growing quickly. It has benefitted greatly from the work of scholars in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, Asian studies, history, anthropology, political science, and so on. At the same time, much of this work fails to define key terms and make fundamental assumptions explicit. Consequently, it is at least initially difficult to engage with it philosophically. In the first section of this paper, I clarify a central, (...) implicit assumption that many of the authors working in this area share—namely, the assumption that a plausible environmental ethic must attribute direct moral standing to individual, living, non-human entities in nature, such as animals and plants. In the second section, I offer a preliminary defense of this assumption. In the third section, I respond to objections, and conclude that the argument is at least initially convincing. (shrink)

For many environmental philosophers, the dualisms intrinsic to Modernity that separate body from mind and nature from culture must be deconstructed in order to develop an inclusive ecology that might respond to the Anthropocene Age. In seeking alternatives to human exceptionalism and humans as exclusive owners of souls to the exclusion of other animals, many scholars have turned to Asian philosophies founded in presuppositions that are far more eco-centric. Focusing on Buddhism, this article will outline some eco-centric aspects of Buddhist (...) dogma, focusing on the idea of co-dependent origination and the Buddhist idea that all things are empty of inherent existence and are constituted through relationality. Then we will show how such Buddhist ideas have been used to develop an ecology that instead of abstracting itself from place, as modern theories are wont to do, seeks to develop an intrinsic relationship to place, and even to locate subjectivity there. This is the Japanese theory of Fudo, developed by twentieth century philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, a theory that is able to move beyond the dualisms of Western ideology to provide a promising response to the Anthropocene Age. If the being of being human is co-determined and co-dependent upon its milieu and upon the community of others living in such a milieu, we should be focusing on finding ways to re-claim and re-value such milieu as constitutive of human development and flourishing. In this way, we can replace Western universals and intrinsic essence with ontological specificity and the shared inter-dependent experience of community. (shrink)

Globalization is hailed by its advocates as a means of spreading cosmopolitan values, ideals of sustainability and better standards of living all around the world. Its critics, however, see globalization as a new form of colonialism imposed by rich countries and transnational corporations on the rest of the world, a process in which the rhetoric of sustainability and equality does not match the realities of exploitation and impoverishment of people and nature. This paper endorses neither view. Globalization is not new, (...) but it continually produces new challenges for conceptions of 'home' and 'belonging'. While some enthusiasts regard the 'liberal' and 'environmental' values of the West as the best remedy for what is wrong with the world, others argue that a resource for resisting the destructive effects of globalization may be found in the sense of identity and importance of place found in the traditional scientific and medical traditions of both India and China. Instead of trying to merge these two views in some grand synthesis, this paper argues that traditional conservative and modern liberal values should continually interact with each other to produce novel ideas in debates about home, place and belonging. (shrink)

The search for 'ecological insights' in venerable Asian traditions of thought prompts questions about how such traditions understood humans in relation to nature. Answers which focus on philosophical and religious ideas may overlook culturally important understandings of people and places articulated within scientific and medical thinking. The paper tentatively explores the prospects for gleaning a form of ethics of place from the study of traditional Hindu and Chinese medical sources. Although there are serious problems with the idea that any unadulterated (...) assimilation from other traditions can take place, these sources can be thought of as incorporating a place-centred ethic. By looking closely at Francis Zimmerman's study of Hindu medicine, it is argued that a poetics of place can be ascribed to Ayurvedic discourses on health and disease. It may be possible to associate a similar poetics with classical Chinese medical worldviews, these being reconcilable with-though not the same as-contemporary ecological understandings of humans in relation to the world. Although no pristine reconstruction of Asian traditions of medical thought can be made, the conclusion of the present paper is that it would be wrong to dismiss these traditions as 'antienvironmental', based purely on the study of philosophical and religious texts. (shrink)

I examine the consistency between contemporary environmentalist ideals and Buddhist philosophy, focusing, first, on the problem of value in nature. I argue that the teachings found in the Pāli canon cannot easily be reconciled with a belief in the intrinsic value of life, whether human or otherwise. This is because all existence is regarded as inherently unsatisfactory, and all beings are seen as impermanent and insubstantial, while the ultimate spiritual goal is often viewed, in early Buddhism, as involving a deep (...) renunciation of the world. Therefore, the discussion focuses mostly on the Mahāyāna vehicle, which, I suggest has better resources for environmentalism because enlightenment and the ordinary world are not conceived as antithetical. Still, many contemporary green ideas do not sit well with classical Mahāyāna doctrines. Mahāyāna philosophers coincide in equating ultimate reality with ‘emptiness,’ and propose knowledge of this reality as a final soteriological purpose. Emptiness is generally said to be ineffable, and to involve the negation of all views. An important question is how to reconcile environmentalism with the relinquishing of views. I consider several prevalent themes in environmentalism, including the philosophy of ‘Oneness,’ and other systems that are often compared with Buddhism, like process thought. Many of these turn out to have more in common with an extreme view that Buddhism seeks to avoid, namely, eternalism. I attempt to outline an environmental position that, like the doctrine of emptiness, traverses a Middle Path between eternalism and nihilism. I conclude by proposing that emptiness could be regarded as the source of value in nature, if it is seen in its more positive aspect, as ‘pliancy.’ This would imply that what Buddhist environmentalists should seek to protect is not any being in its current form, nor any static natural system, but the possibility of adaptation and further evolution. (shrink)

Many contemporary authors argue that since certain Hindu texts and traditions claim that all living beings are fundamentally the same as Brahman (God), these texts and traditions provide the basis for an environmental ethic. I outline three common versions of this argument, and argue that each fails to meet at least one criterion for an environmental ethic. This doesn’t mean, however, that certain Hindu texts and traditions do not provide the basis for an environmental ethic. In the last section of (...) the paper I briefly outline and defend an alternative, according to which all plants and animals have intrinsic value and direct moral standing in virtue of having a good. (shrink)