Masters Degrees (Ethics Studies)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/8449

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Environmental pollution and climate change: an ethical interrogation of the payment of carbon tax as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emission in South Africa.
(2020) Masondo, Zama Nonkululeko.; Okyere-Manu, Beatrice Dedaa.
Climate change and environmental pollution are the main environmental issues affecting the world’s ecosystem including that of South Africa. They cause poverty, land degradation, waste and littering, health hazards and urbanisation. One of the main causes of climate change and environmental pollution is carbon emissions into the atmosphere. As a way to curb these emissions carbon tax policies have been introduced in several countries and South Africa is one such country. A carbon tax aims to reveal the actual costs of carbon emissions for the betterment of the country and, crucially, the environment. In South Africa, the idea of a carbon tax has been under discussion since 2010 and in 2019, the Carbon Tax Act was signed into law by the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. This was due to the fact that carbon is recognised as one of the major contributing factors to the issue of environmental pollution and climate change. Carbon emissions do not only affect the environment but also the economy and society. If effectively applied a carbon tax will raise revenues whilst at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Both prior and subsequent to the introduction of the carbon tax policy, there has been debate and discussion on its effect on the environment, the economy and the society. Based on the debate and discussion thus far, I noticed that most of the scholars who have written on carbon tax have focused more on the economic implications of the tax on South Africa as opposed to the tax’s ethical implications. Thus, this dissertation contributes to the debate and discussion by evaluating the South African carbon tax policy through the lens of the ethical theories of sustainable development and environmental stewardship.
Global warming discourse and the economic dilemma of sustainability : the potential contribution of African ethics.
(2013) Mware, Mike.; Murove, Munyaradzi Felix.
This paper focuses on the possible input of African Ethics into the global warming and climate change discourse in light of the economic dilemma of sustainability. The paper argues that African Ethics through its concept of Ubuntu can make a worthy contribution to the issues surrounding sustainable development, ecological debt and international climate change talks. In a world where the lives of the affluent nations impact drastically on our climate and necessitate calamitous climate disasters and cause the poor to suffer, why is it that the international community has not reached any noteworthy climate change solutions? The same poor countries are also burdened by payment of huge debts and poor climate change adaptation and development. Can African ethics make some contribution to these challenging issues brought by global warming and climate change? The dissertation seeks to tackle these questions by employing a qualitative methodology informed by Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and using the research design of Boff’s ecological holism and Murove’s relational paradigm. However, in order for African ethics to make such a viable contribution the paper seeks to reveal the philosophical and economic substrata sustaining the incessant degradation of the ecology. This opens us the entry point for African ethics through Ubuntu to engage with other voices in the search for solutions to the global warming and climate change crises.

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Ethics Studies) by Subject "Environmental ethics."