Philosophy, Religion and the Environment in Africa: The Challenge of Human Value Education and Sustainability

Religious environmentalism is fast becoming a growing academic discipline with concerns on how to manage the human environment and save man’s resources for the future generations. Religious environmentalism has also become a catchphrase for a philosophy of desired value extraction and application of the core valuable principles of religion and philosophy to achieve the sustainable management of the human environment known to as the earth with its extractive resources. The environmental crisis facing the African continent is increasingly seen as a crisis of values and, religion, a primary source of human values (NASR, 2011), also seen as critical in the search for sustainable solutions to the crisis. The problems of man in the African environment are many. The efforts to use the frameworks of religion to design strategic frameworks for their solution have become problematic as a result of the theoretical and philosophical inability to evolve sustainable frameworks for the sustainable management of the environment in Africa to achieve the ends of poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods for its inhabitants. This problem is assumed by the article as challenge of further elucidation of the concepts of human value and sustainability as found both in religion and philosophy. Attempts to evolve a new set of programs for the sustainable environmental management in Africa will be made under the philosophy and tenor of religious environmentalism pulling disciplines as varied as religious ethics, religious sociology, philosophy of religion and environmental philosophy.