AFRICAN ECO-PHILOSOPHY: NATURE AND FOUNDATIONS

The environment has been degraded in various forms, and each story of degradation is conditioned by the environment and mentalities of the people present to that particular part of the world, and the consequences of this degradation have become more visible in our time with the abundance of acidic rains, carbon dioxide emissions, depletion of national resources, floods, draughts, outbreak of diseases, pollution of seas, death of animals, shrinking of water bodies, etc. Scholars are agreed that the conventional approach which is largely Western has not been able to handle the problems associated with the present ecological crisis. There is, therefore, the need to develop alternative approaches in such a manner that it works for all peoples and in all places. While developing solutions to ecological problems there is the need to put into consideration the categories of particular peoples, and to use languages and cultural symbols that people understand. This is at the base of the emergence of African eco-philosophy. It attends to questions such as: how does the African understand his or her environment? How has he or she been able to manage this environment even before the advent of the West? What are the spiritual dimensions of his or her eco-system that gives meaning to the environment beyond the Western consumerist and utilitarian concept of the environment? While there are a few papers written on African eco-philosophy, there is hardly literature that discusses its foundations in a profound manner in relation to the African worldview. This paper, therefore, discusses African eco-philosophy within the broader concerns of philosophy with the purpose of bringing out its distinctive characteristics and foundations, taking from the African worldview. The phenomenological and analytical methods of inquiry were employed for the collection and analysis of data.

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