New Waves: African Environmental Ethics and Ocean Ecosystems

Abstract

The persistent image of the vast, open ocean has led to the underlying idea of the ocean as placeless, devoid of social interactions. The image of ocean as passive and placeless has a direct effect on environmental law and stewardship within maritime space. Further, this conception has led to the persistent belief that the sheer scale of the ocean makes it impervious to human harm. The ocean is expected to take our waste and pollution without repercussions. African Environmental Ethics is a largely ‘landlocked field’ and the chapter will examine Africa’s position in the global ecology. Although marine ecosystems themselves are fluid, cross boundaries and pay no attention to governed borders (Merrie in Global ocean futures: governance of marine fisheries in the Anthropocene. Stockholm, 2016), marine protection requires an understanding of human activities in a placeful environment. Maritime stewardship must be imagined across global and local levels from an organic interconnected and post-local standpoint. Considerations will be made as how African Environmental Ethics can understand and advance environmental marine practices and be used as a site of resistance to new structures of ‘hydro-colonisation’. The chapter will examine practices of marine conservation from the standpoint of African Relational Environmentalism (Behrens in Ontologized ethics: new essays in African meta-ethics. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp. 55–72, 2014; Ojomo in J. Pan Afr. Stud. 4(3):101–113, 2011; Tangwa in A companion to African philosophy. Blackwell Publisher, Oxford, pp. 387–395, 2004) and Janz’s concept of ‘travelling ethics’ (New visions of nature. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 181–195, 2009) as well as exploring ethics from interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from cultural theory and natural sciences. A renegotiation of the ocean space and new ways of imagining global-local ecosystems would seek to overcome the ocean as placeless and understand the interdependence of ‘natural, human and ancestral worlds’ (Wardi in Water and African American memory: an ecocritical perspective. University Press of Florida, Florida, 2011). The purpose of the chapter is to make suggestions for moving African Environmental Ethics into engaging with new discourses, whilst also applying the field to a ‘blue’ ethics of the ocean which has so far been overlooked.