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.
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