NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Dominant literature in the renascent field of environmental ethics has often promoted Eurocentric perspectives with seeming silence from the African part of the globe. This paper seeks to lend the African voice to the ongoing search for a grand model for environmental care. The significance of evolving perspectives for environmental sustainability cannot be overemphasised. This is as a result of the damning consequences that environmental challenges are posing to the environment and its components. The African continent is not spared of the severe consequences that have come with an unhealthy relationship with the environment. This discourse seeks to undertake an exposition of the different African perspectives on the best form of relationship between humans and the environment. Pursuant to the fact that anthropocentric approaches have been held responsible for the many environmental crises evident today, and Africa is often projected as being anthropocentric in its worldview, perspectives from African environmental philosophers challenge this claim by their excogitations that provide non-anthropocentric alternatives. Using the expository approach and method of critical analysis, this work examines these African environmental models, namely, nature-relatedness, eco-bio-communitarianism, ecology through ubuntu and the ukama theory in the light their nonanthropocentric potentials. Findings show thatin spite of the nonanthropocentric claims of these perspectives, they all have in them some misgivings that make them inadequate for environmental care when considered individually. It recommends that there is need for an eclectic model that will build on the strengths of the various perspectives for adequate environmental care since they all emphasise the communalistic view that perfectly exemplifies traditional African worldview.

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