Stewardship: An Ethics for Environmental Respectability in Africa

Abstract

Drawing on various environmental philosophers and other scholars, this paper modestly proposes an ethitocal theory known as stewardship that strongly challenges mankind to treat nature (environment) with substantial reverence and care. Nature and human beings are symbiotically related. Human beings depend on nature for their existence. Stewardship, as an ethical theory and practice, pivots on the philosophical idea that nature is sacred [i.e., bearer of intrinsic value and locus of transcendence]. Stewardship challenges human beings to committedly preserve nature and to only tamper with it for the procurement of basic human needs. Destroying nature is somehow destroying oneself. Such awareness may change the way human beings relate to nature, especially in radical capitalistic societies where nature is simply seen as a means to satisfy human interests. This paper recommends contributory measures for implementing the ethics of stewardship. These include the ethical principles of co-existentiality, personalised responsibility, proportionality and solidarity. The ethics of stewardship carries greater prospects of challenging people’s irresponsible appropriation, commercialisation and instrumentalisation of nature (anthropocentrism); hence, contributing to environmental respectability. Keywords: Nature (environment), Anthropocentrism, Sacredness, Stewardship.