LOS ACTORES DEL DESARROLLO

Another attempt to articulate a non-anthropocentric ethic was to extend moral status beyond animals to all living organisms. This is called bio-centric ethics. One of the very first scholars who attempted to do this was Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer (1923) sought to extend Kantian ethics to all living organisms. This is also referred to as an ethic of reverence-for-life. Dwelling on the post-Kantian metaphysics of Arthur Schopenhauer, Schweitzer (1923) argued that all living things have a ‘will to live’ and that this ‘will to live’ should not be extinguished.

Schweitzer is known for his famous phrase: “I am life that desires to live as part and parcel of life which desires to live” (Schweitzer, 1956, as quoted in Msafiri, 2007:73). According to Schweitzer, close examination of animals and how they strive to protect their young ones and themselves, gives one that deep feeling or insight that animals, just like human persons, also have a will to live. For Schweitzer, this led to the conclusion that all life, not just human life,

8 It is usually assumed that human technological capacity has shifted the power from being powerless before dangerous wild animals, such as elephants and lions, to having the capacity to protect ourselves from these animals and even manipulate them as we like. But this is only true for some highly developed countries. Most other countries, especially in the developing world, have very little capacity to deal with problem wild animals, as the case study of the Chagga testifies (Lotter, 2008).

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should be respected. In other words, Schweitzer argues that all life should be respected and revered because everything that has life strives to survive. It has been observed, however, that, while living organisms strive to survive, it is another question whether they ‘will’ to live, because ‘to will’ something presupposes some form of consciousness, which is absent in most living things (Cochrane, 2008).

Another scholar who advocated a bio-centric ethics is Paul Taylor. Arguing from a Kantian deontological perspective, Taylor developed an egalitarian bio-centric ethics or a life-centred environmental ethics in the attempt to synthesise Singer and Schweitzer’s positions. Taylor (1986) avers that all livings things are “teleological centres of life’, that is, they have a good of their own that they strive to fulfil. All living things have an interest in their own survival and wellbeing whether they are aware of it or not. They all strive to flourish. Thus, according to Taylor, if all living things have a good of their own, they possess inherent worth (i.e. worth regardless of whether humans value them in any way or not), and thus deserve equal moral consideration. Taylor’s theory, it has been observed, thus commits us to species impartiality.

Taylor renders the Kantian rational autonomy and the natural autonomy of all living things analogous by pointing out that, just as we respect the rational autonomy of persons, we should also respect the natural autonomy of all living entities (Elliot, 2003:186).

As Taylor anticipates possible conflict in the application of his strong egalitarian moral theory in real life situations, he develops rules and principles to be adjudicated in situations of conflict of interests between humans and nonhuman entities. These principles call upon us to consider basic and non-basic needs of human and non-human entities where the basic interests of whichever entity should be given priority, all things being equal; except in matters of human self-defence.

However, Taylor’s principles are said to be contradictory and they fail in certain situations in real life. For example, it has been observed that “in situations in real life where some non-basic human interests outweigh some basic non-human interests, Taylor’s principles break down”

(French, 1995:57). For example, there are certain things that have become a part and parcel of human culture without which people cannot live their normal lives, yet in Taylor’s view, they could be considered non-basic. These include electricity, roads, furniture, vehicles, etc. All these amenities cause substantial damage to living things in the process of acquiring them. Further, what may be considered a basic human interest to a western community may be considered to be

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a non-basic interest or a luxury to an African community. To address this problem, as I argue later in this chapter, a bottom up, case by case approach that is sensitive to the particularities of a place may be more appropriate.

In addition many view Taylor’s and other bio-centric theories as deficient because they seem to place excessive burdens and self-sacrifice on human beings, so much so that humans could not live their lives if these theories were actually put into practice. Taylor’s position has indeed been characterised as “misanthropic”. Nevertheless, in the attempt to avoid this problem, Taylor introduced a principle of self-defence “to allow that human interests can over-ride the interests of other living things where significant human goods are at stake” (Taylor, 1986:70).⁹ However, some people question whether privileging human beings over other non-humans in certain situations is not tantamount to going back to the anthropocentrism that biocentrism seeks to avoid.

Furthermore, the problem I see with these principles is that these principles become less useful, for example, in areas where there is so much poverty and people depend entirely on the natural environment for their survival and livelihood needs, as in most parts of Africa. This is because, with so much poverty in the context of Africa, the survival needs of many people might in many instances outweigh the interests of other living things, regardless of how significant those interests may be. In other words, these principles do not make much sense among the majority of the people in Africa who do not have the luxury of options. Taylor's biocentric ethics presupposes a society that has proceeded beyond the stage of preoccupation with basic survival needs, and one that has the luxury of options, which is not the case in most African countries.

Taylor’s theory and his principles therefore are not of much use in the African context where poverty, which is a daily reality, pushes people to do whatever they can do to survive.

Taylor’s approach has been criticised, in general, for privileging individuals over ecological wholes. It has been argued that this arises from “the piecemeal extensions of the dominant [conventional] individualistic approaches to ethics” (Engel, 2008). These conventional ethical theories were not meant to be stretched beyond the realm of humans in the first place. To address

9 Other priority principles to resolve conflicting interests between humans and nonhumans fairly, according to Taylor, include the principle of proportionality, the principle of minimum wrong, the principle of distributive justice and the principle of restitutive justice. For a more detailed account of these principles, see, Taylor, 1986: 68-78.

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this problem and other weaknesses of biocentrism or life centred ethics, an ethic that considers species, ecosystems and life support systems or holistic ethics was formulated. This approach is also termed eco-centric ethics or environmental holism. The extent to which eco-centric ethics thus succeeds or not as an effective environmental ethics will be discussed below.