Ubuntu Environmental Ethics: Conceptions and Misconceptions

Abstract

Scholars of African Environmental Ethics have defended Ubuntu Environmental Ethics as an indigenous, attractive and relevant conception that is suitable for African culture and very little criticism has been offered to refine, revisit and problematise the concept. I argue that a generalised version of Ubuntu Environmental Ethics is problematic on several grounds. Firstly, the attempt to describe Ubuntu Environmental Ethics as shared in diverse African cultures commits the fallacy of hasty generalisation by trying to misrepresent diverse versions of environmental ethics into a single understanding. Secondly, considering various linguistic groups that share a common understanding of environmental thinking, it is hegemonic in tendency, to pick up a single linguistic version and come up with Ubuntu Environmental Ethics without showing other variants such as unhu, bunhu, untu, vumunhu and related versions. Thirdly, a generalized view of Ubuntu Environmental Ethics that is abstracted from specific cultural contexts such as Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, Shona, Ndau, Xitsonga, Venda, Tonga among others, results in ambiguity and vagueness rather than clarity and precision. Fourthly, a general view of Ubuntu Environmental Ethics gives a closed conception that fails to open up for debate and diversity in thinking about the environment in Southern African cultures. Fifthly, a geographical demarcation of Ubuntu Environmental Ethics that describes it as ‘Sub-Saharan’ is not only inadequatebut also arbitrary. The inadequacy of the demarcation is seen in the absence of the idea of Ubuntu Environmental Ethics in West Africa (Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana); East Africa (Uganda, Kenya Tanzania) and Central Africa (Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo) yet all these regions are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The arbitrary nature of the demarcation is seen in failure to give a rational justification of the label resulting in a mismatch between the term and the region it attempts to refer. After examining these problems I shall give a proposal of how to re-conceptualise Environmental Ethics in Southern African cultures without falling into the said problems.