Context
“De wereld van krachten wordt vastgehouden als een spinnenweb waarvan geen enkele draad kan trillen zonder het hele netwerk aan het wankelen te brengen.” [1]
Western perspective on the climate crisis
Global concerns about the current environmental crisis have culminated in various (bio- and eco-centric and eco-feminist) environmental ethical theories. One of the fundamental underlying features connecting these environmental ethical theories is their grounding in Western perspectives and cultural experiences. Given that environmental concerns are global concerns critical explorations of environmental ethics need to go beyond the Western horizon.
Knowledge systems of diverse indigenous peoples
Pope Francis made a call to:
recognize the fundamental role Indigenous Peoples hold in the protection of the environment, and to highlight their wisdom in finding global solutions to the immense challenges that climate change poses to humanity every day (address to participants in the indigenous people’s forum, Friday, 10 February, 2023).
Op 14-15 maart 2024 organiseerde de Pauselijke Academie van Wetenschappen een conferentie om bruggen te slaan tussen kennissystemen van diverse inheemse volkeren en wetenschappelijke gemeenschappen. De bijdrage van de kennis van inheemse volkeren aan de biodiversiteitsagenda is ook expliciet erkend op de COP 15 in Montreal in december 2022 (cf. VN-Verdrag inzake Biologische Diversiteit CBD/COP/15/L25, Doel 21 [2]).
Indigenous peoples and climate change
It is time to recognize the voice of the indigenous peoples and their dual relationship with climate change: they suffer from climate injustice (while contributing the least to the climate problem) and they offer alternative nature-based solutions (balancing a one-sided technological response).
Fund Bruyns Scholar Taye Birhanu Taressa
Given the concern of the University Centre Saint-Ignatius Antwerp (UCSIA) for social justice issues, – climate change being one of the most prominent today-, and its mission to facilitate intercultural and scientific dialogue,
it organizes this conference around the research topic of philosopher Taye Birhanu Taressa from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia).
He was invited in the framework of the Fund Louis Bruyns SJ, -named after a Jesuit missionary in Africa and rector of the former Jesuit university in Antwerp-, to work on his doctorate about Oromo indigenous environmental ethics at the Centre for European Philosophy.
[1] Source: Placide Tempels Bantu Philosophy, Translation Colin King, Présence Africaine 1959, p. 60
[2] …ensure that the best available data, information and knowledge, are accessible to decision makers, practitioners and the public to guide effective and equitable governance, integrated and participatory management of biodiversity, and to strengthen communication, awareness-raising, education, monitoring, research and knowledge management and, also in this context, traditional knowledge, innovations, practices and technologies of indigenous peoples and local communities …
The topic
African environmental ethics
Against the backdrop of environmental problems such as pollution, climate change, extinction of flora and fauna and global warming, this conference examines how African conceptions of environmental ethics might help to address some of these problems facing the whole world.
This African way of thinking about the environment can offer critical resources to enrich research and public debate on environmental sustainability, rehabilitation and management.
Environment & intergenerational values
Focusing on environmental well-being and intergenerational values, this indigenous knowledge may inspire national and international climate and environmental policy and development cooperation.
Europe’s solidarity with the African continent is pivotal in bringing about climate change resilient and sustainable development through financing green economy projects, supporting capacity building and facilitating technology transfer.
Core questions
The conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, and policy makers for a multidisciplinary and intercultural exchange of ideas around the following core questions:
- What constitutes African environmental ethics?
- In what ways does this view differ from the dominant Western discourse, and what unique contribution can the African worldview make?
- How can this be acknowledged in African-European cooperation in the climate struggle?
- What challenges does this hold, what prospects does this offer?
Programme
2.00 pm
Welcome by Erik De Bom (UCSIA)
2.05 pm
Welcome - Arthur Cools, Dean Faculty Literature & Philosophy, University of Antwerp
2.10 pm
The Role of Oromo Indigenous Environmental Ethics in Sustainable Development - Taye Birhanu Taressa
Taye Birhanu Taressa is working on his PhD in philosophy at Addis Ababa University. He is currently a research fellow at the Centre for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp.
Oromo indigenous environmental ethics is part and parcel of the larger African environmental ethics. Although indigenous environmental ethics practices and perspectives are practiced and passed down from generation to generation in the Oromo tradition, as elsewhere in Africa, these perspectives, and practices are difficult to find in the existing relevant literature.
The main objective of this study is to establish and defend the claim that there must be a room for indigenous African environmental worldviews and practices such as that of Oromo society in the process of devising policies and strategies for sustainable development. So, to tackle global challenges such as the climate crisis, we need to go beyond the Western-oriented contemporary environmental theories and practices.
Recent studies have shown that indigenous knowledge of different societies contributes to sustainable development. Oromo society has diverse but compatible and complementary traditional views and practices that share a deep care and love for the natural environment and can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.
This research addresses following core questions:
- What characterizes Oromo indigenous environmental ethics?
- How does Oromo indigenous environmental ethics contribute to sustainable development?
- Are regional and national environmental policy makers committed to incorporate elements of indigenous Oromo environmental ethics?
- How can this indigenous knowledge be made more applicable?
Taye Birhanu Taressa studied at Bethel Evangelical Secondary School (BESS), one of the few most prestigious non-governmental schools in Ethiopia, located in his hometown Dembi Dollo. He graduated from Mekelle University in 2010, Bachelor of Education (B. Ed) in Civic and Ethical Education. From 2011 to 2014, he taught citizenship courses at Billo and Kellem Comprehensive Secondary and Preparatory Schools in the regional state Oromia. From 2015 to 2017, he was assistant lecturer at the department of Civics and Ethical Studies at Mettu University.
From 2011 to 2014, he taught citizenship courses at Billo and Kellem Comprehensive Secondary and Preparatory Schools in the regional state Oromia. From 2015 to 2017, he was assistant lecturer at the department of Civics and Ethical Studies at Mettu University.
From 2018 to 2019, he studied philosophy at Addis Ababa University and received his master’s degree in philosophy with great distinction.
He then returned to Mettu University, where he worked as a lecturer and researcher for two more years. In Addis Ababa he taught ‘Global Perspectives’ at the International Maarif Schools for two years.
His research interests include African philosophy, environmental philosophy, indigenous knowledge, moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, etc. Currently, Taye is a PhD candidate in the department of Philosophy at Addis Ababa University.
The title of his dissertation is “The Role of Oromo Indigenous Environmental Ethics in Sustainable Development”. He was awarded the Father Louis Bruyns scholarship, for a visiting research student at the Center for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp.
2.30 pm
Early Recognition of Bantu Philosophy by Flemish Missionary in Congo, Placide Tempels - Angela Roothaan
Angela Roothaan is associate professor of African and intercultural philosophy, VU University Amsterdam.
In Bantu Philosophy (1945/6) the Flemish Franciscan missionary Placide Tempels investigates the relation between an African ontology as he found it in Bantu cultures, and the psychology, legal systems and ethics that orient life in those cultures.
Human–Nature relations are central in this investigation, indicating the morally structured ontology of life. Over time Bantu Philosophy has been critiqued for being conservative, backward-looking, locking Africans in a timeless past. A critique Tempels himself opposed.
Now that globally humanity has to address the climate crisis a reevaluation is in order. Was Tempels’ focus on ancient wisdom not geared to ward off the negative effects of modernization and industrialization? Now that certain modern understandings of human – nature relations have reached their expiry date, we may question the reaction by Étienne Ngandu, contemporary reader of Tempels’ work: “Your book on Bantu philosophy expresses many truths, but it arrives rather late, that is, after many good things have been destroyed […]”. Was the book ‘too little, too late’, or should we return to it now because we are in many ways already too late.
Angela Roothaan is Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Having a background in continental philosophy, she published on a wide range of subjects such as Philosophy of Nature, Spirit Ontologies, Value Ethics and (early) Modern Philosophy, before turning to African and Intercultural Philosophy.
In 2019 she initiated the Dutch Research Network African Intercultural Philosophy and, with Pius Mosima, the Bantu Philosophy project, that functions as an international scholarly network for exchange of research findings and sources regarding the 1945/6 work Bantu Philosophy by Placide Tempels.
She connected her research into Philosophy of Nature and Spirit Ontologies in her book Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature. Negotiating the Environment (Routledge 2019).
Most recently she published Bantoe-filosofie, the 1946 Dutch original version of Bantu Philosophy, in freshly updated Dutch and with an introduction and explanatory footnotes (Noordboek 2023).
She now works on an annotated critical edition of the same work for a global readership (in collaboration with Pius Mosima).
She also co-edited (with Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli and Louise Müller) two volumes in the field of African Philosophy: Beauty in African Thought. Critical Perspectives on the Western Idea of Development and Well-Being in African Philosophy. Insights for a Global Ethics of Development (both Rowman & Littlefield 2023).
2.50 pm
Is there an ‘African’ environmental ethics? - Thierry Ngosso
Thierry Ngosso is a lecturer at the University of Maroua, the Catholic University of Central Africa and the University of St Gallen.
One can wonder if framing this question this way even makes sense in the first place. We tend to consider ethics, i.e., normative or ethical theory, one might argue, in universal terms, not ethnological ones. There is ethics, and the whole point of debating ethics is to discuss principles of moralism that transcend ethnology of every kind. Nevertheless, what has been presented as ethics in ‘universal’ terms, and what is taught as such in universities and departments of philosophy across the African continent, is more often a Western perspective of what ethics should be, in other words, an ethnological perspective of ethics rooted in Western traditions or developed by Western or other academics who consider Western traditions as their cultural background or academic starting point. In this respect, there is an African ethics, and hence an African environmental ethics only insofar as it is understood as a perspective of normative ethics and its application to environmental matters rooted in African traditions or developed in philosophical writings by African and non-African scholars or thinkers embedded or having a deep knowledge of Africans ethos and traditions.
Looking at African (environmental) ethics in this way does not mean there is a monolithic approach to normative and environmental ethics across the African continent. There are some disputes and disagreements, as may happen in all other ethnological areas. However, the emphasis on communal values in African environmental ethics creates a sense of connection and belonging. Some general trends and markers also give reason to that notion of ‘perspective.’ Here, I would like to flesh out such an African perspective by focusing on the Ubuntu philosophy and how it informs an African approach to normative ethics based on the Relational principle, discuss how such perspective approaches environmental and climate change matters from a communal and intrinsic value perspective, highlight areas of divergence with a Western perspective embedded on individualism and instrumentalism, and point to a few places like a post-economic development global agenda where such an African proposition can make a distinctive contribution to our current global climate crisis.
Thierry Ngosso is a researcher in political philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain, focusing on global justice issues, especially on three intertwined challenges: climate change, human rights and migration. He approaches these topics from a double perspective: the ethics of state and enterprise and comparative African-European political philosophy.
He holds a doctorate from the Catholique University of Louvain (2015). He also teaches at the philosophy department of the Catholic University of Central Africa and is responsible for the Laboratory for Ethics and Public Politics which he has founded in 2019 at the University of Maroua. He is also postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Business Ethics of the University of Saint-Gallen, granted with a scholarship of the ‘Fond National Suisse pour la Recherche scientifique’ (2019-2023) and responsible for the Research Centre for African Studies.
3.10 pm
Corrective or Distributive Climate Justice? Which One Should African Negotiators Emphasize? - Axel Gosseries
Axel Gosseries is FNRS professor of political philosophy at UCLouvain and visiting professor at the University of Wollo in Ethiopia.
Approaching global climate justice from a corrective or a distributive angle makes a significant difference. Many, especially when focusing on historical emissions, want to give a central role to the corrective approach, insisting on the need for compensation for past climate harms. I will indicate why this approach faces serious challenges, in particular in the specific context of climate justice. And I will stress why an approach giving a more central role to global distributive obligations is more robust.
Axel Gosseries is a FNRS Research Professor at the University of Louvain, where he currently heads the research institute of Philosophy (ISP) and the Politics, Philosophy and Economics BA Program. He holds degrees in Law, including in Environmental Law (LL.M., 1996, School of Oriental and African Studies) and Philosophy (PhD., 2000, Louvain, Dopp Prize 2001). He works in the field of political philosophy and economic and social ethics, with a special focus on issues of intergenerational justice, climate justice and political philosophy of the firm. He recently published What is intergenerational justice? (2023, Cambridge, Polity Press) and La justice climatique (2024, Paris, PUF, Que sais-je ?, with Pierre André).
3.30 pm
Q & A
4.00 pm
Coffee break
4.15 pm
Panel discussion on best practices in academia, business and development
Moderator: Tom De Herdt, professor political and social sciences and economics, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp
Panelists:
- Pius Mosima, philosophy, researcher Free University Amsterdam and Leiden University, The Netherlands
- Kurt Moors, General Coordinator BRS Microfinance Coop
- Patrick Van Durme, programme coordinator Ethiopia, World Solidarity and OSRA-Ethiopia staff member (Oroma Self-Reliance Association)
Tom De Herdt studied political and social sciences and economics. As professor at the Institute of Development Policy of the University of Antwerp, he investigates the domains of poverty alleviation, capabilities, local governance and practical norms and has widely published on poverty, regress and development in Congo-Kinshasa. He has done work on Nicaragua, Rwanda and Cameroon. He is currently focusing his research and policy advisory work on local aspects of public action in DRC as part of the Great Lakes of Africa Centre. He has also coordinated a consultancy project on the sector of primary education in DRC on behalf of UNICEF. Before coming to Antwerp, he worked at the Universidad Centroamericana (Managua, Nicaragua). He was chair of IOB between 2012-18.
Kurt Moors is an agricultural engineer with a postgraduate in tropical engineering. He started as a project coordinator for rural development programmes for an NGO of the Belgian Farmers Union and then moved to South Africa to manage the Goedgedacht Agricultural Resource Centre (GARC) involved in supporting emerging farmers with technical support from the Belgian Farmers Union. Since 1999 he is the general coordinator of the Belgian Raffeisen Foundation BRS Microfinance Coop, an NGO linked to the Cera Group and KBC Bank & Insurances, active in the field of micro finance. BRS is active in Asia, Latin-America and Africa (e.g. in Ethiopia). Kurt also lectures a master’s course on assessment of micro finance at the Free University of Brussels.
Pius Mosima teaches philosophy at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon and is a Fellow at the African Studies Center Leiden, the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research interests include African/intercultural philosophy; globalization and culture, moral and political philosophy. He is the author of Philosophic Sagacity and Intercultural Philosophy: Beyond Henry Odera Oruka (2016) and editor of A transcontinental career: Essays in honour of Wim van Binsbergen (2018).
Together with Angela Roothaan he is involved in the research project of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy and its implications for the understanding of African philosophy.
Patrick Van Durme is a doctorandus in applied economics (University of Antwerp) and holds a postgraduate diploma in social and cultural anthropology from KU Leuven and UNamur. He worked for the International Labour Organisation and the NGO World Solidarity where he was project coordinator for Ethiopia. He is member of the Board of Directors of the VZW Help OSRA ETHIOPIA, a citizen initiative of volunteers assisting rural communities to bring about sustainable development through capacity building and socio-economic project development for management of natural resources and poverty alleviation in the face of climate change and natural calamities. The major thematic areas OSRA focuses on is rural water supply, health and sanitation.
5.15 pm
Response (online) by Workineh Kelbessa
Workineh Kelbessa is a professor of philosophy at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
He earned a BA in Philosophy from Addis Ababa University, an MA in Development Studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wales, Cardiff, now Cardiff University. Professor Kelbessa’s research interests are wide-ranging and highly interdisciplinary: African philosophy, indigenous knowledge, environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, development ethics, climate ethics, water ethics, globalization, and the philosophy of love and sex. He has published extensively in a wide range of fields. His work tackles significant problems the world faces, especially pressingly in Africa’s nations.
5.30 pm
Q & A
6.00 pm
