Global warming discourse and the economic dilemma of sustainability : the potential contribution of African ethics.

Abstract

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.