Collective responsibility and environmental caretaking: toward an ecological care ethic with evidence from Bhutan

Abstract

Attention to environmental caretaking practices of Indigenous, traditional, and rural societies is an important strategy for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, as well as for greater ecological sustainability and resilience. Rural practices of caring for the eco-social commons in Himalayan Bhutan demonstrate an implicit care ethic. Mahayana Buddhism and indigenous animism blend to create distinctive attitudes and practices of environmental caretaking displayed in rural relationships with forests, mountains, and water bodies that influence community-based natural resource management. Elements of an eco-social care ethic became even more vivid in the nation's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Bhutan's response was among the world's most successful, forestalling any deaths at all for the first nine months of the pandemic and limiting deaths to nine total as the pandemic entered its third year in March 2022. Bhutanese Buddhist values and practices parallel the care ethics articulated by Western moral theorists, providing a contemporary example of caring for the common good and alternative pathways toward flourishing futures.