Non-Western environmental ethics

Ordinary people are powerfully motivated to do things that can be justified in terms of their religious beliefs. Therefore, distilling environmental ethics from the world's living religions is extremely important for global conservation . Christianity is a world religion, but so are Islam and Buddhism. Other major religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Confucianism, while more regionally restricted, nevertheless claim millions of devotees. The well-documented effort of Jewish and Christian conservationists to formulate the Judeo-Christian Stewardship Environmental Ethic in biblical terms suggests an important new line of inquiry: How can effective conservation ethics be formulated in terms of other sacred texts? In Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Wisdom, a comprehensive survey is offered, but to provide even a synopsis of that study would be impossible in this entry. However, a few abstracts of traditional non-Western conservation ethics may be suggestive.

Muslims believe that Islam was founded in the seventh century a.d., by Allah (God) communicating to humanity through the Arabian prophet, Mohammed, who regarded himself to be in the same prophetic tradition as Moses and Jesus. Therefore, since the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are earlier divine revelations underlying distinctly Muslim belief, the basic Islamic worldview has much in common with the basic Judeo-Christian worldview. In particular, Islam teaches that human beings have a privileged place in nature , and, going further in this regard than Judaism and Christianity, that indeed, all other natural beings were created to serve humanity. Hence, there has been a strong tendency among Muslims to take a purely instrumental approach to the human-nature relationship. As to the conservation of biodiversity , the Arabian oryx was hunted nearly to extinction by oil-rich sheikhs armed with military assault rifles in the cradle of Islam. But callous indifference to the rest of creation in the Islamic world is no longer sanctioned religiously.

Islam does not distinguish between religious and secular law. Hence, new conservation regulations in Islamic states must be grounded in the Koran, Mohammed's book of divine revelations. In the early 1980s, a group of Saudi scholars scoured the Koran for environmentally relevant passages and drafted The Islamic Principles for the Conservation of the Natural Environment. While reaffirming "a relationship of utilization, development, and subjugation for man's benefit and the fulfillment of his interests," this landmark document also clearly articulates an Islamic version of stewardship: "he [man] is only a manager of the earth and not a proprietor, a beneficiary not a disposer or ordainer: (Kadr, et al., 1983). The Saudi scholars also emphasize a just distribution of "natural resources," not only among members of the present generation, but among members of future generations . And as Norton (1991) has argued, conservation goals are well served when future human beings are accorded a moral status equal to that of those currently living. The Saudi scholars have found passages in the Koran that are vaguely ecological. For example, God "produced therein all kinds of things in due balance" (Kadr, et al., 1983).

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau , thinkers at the fountainhead of North American conservation philosophy, were influenced by the subtle philosophical doctrines of Hinduism, a major religion in India. Hindu thought also inspired Arne Naess's (1989) contemporary "Deep Ecology" conservation philosophy. Hindus believe that at the core of all phenomena there is only one Reality or Being. God, in other words, is not a supreme Being among other lesser and subordinate beings, as in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Rather, all beings are a manifestation of the one essential Being, called Brahman. And all plurality, all difference, is illusory or at best only apparent.

Such a view would not seem to be a promising point of departure for the conservation of biological diversity, since the actual existence of diversity, biological or otherwise, seems to be denied. Yet in the Hindu concept of Brahman, Naess (1989) finds an analogue to the way ecological relationships unite organisms into a systemic whole. However that may be, Hinduism, unambiguously invites human beings to identify with other forms of life, for all life-forms share the same essence. Believing that one's own inner self, atman, is identical, as an expression of Brahman, with the selves of all other creatures leads to compassion for them. The suffering of one life-form is the suffering of all others; to harm other beings is to harm oneself. As a matter of fact, this way of thinking has inspired and helped motivate one of the most persistent and successful conservation movements in the world, the Chipko movement, which has managed to rescue many of India's Himalayan forests from commercial exploitation (Guha 1989b; Shiva 1989).

Jainism is a religion with a relatively few adherents, but a religion of great influence in India. Jains believe that every living thing is inhabited by an immaterial soul, no less pure and immortal than the human soul. Bad deeds in past lives, however, have crusted these souls over with karma -matter. Ahimsa (noninjury of all living things) and asceticism (eschewing all forms of physical pleasure) are parallel paths that will eventually free the soul from future rebirth in the material realm. Hence, Jains take great care to avoid harming other forms of life and to resist the fleeting pleasure of material consumption. Extreme practitioners refuse to eat any but leftover food prepared for others, and carefully strain their water to avoid ingesting any waterborne organismsnot for the sake of their own health, but to avoid inadvertently killing other living beings. Less extreme practitioners are strict vegetarians and own few material possessions. The Jains are bidding for global leadership in environmental ethics. Their low-on-the-food-chain and low-level-of-consumption lifestyle is held up as a model of ecological right livelihood (Chappel 1986). And the author of the Jain Declaration on Nature claims that the central Jain moral precept of ahimsa "is nothing but environmentalism" (Singhvi, n.d.).

Though now virtually extinct in its native India, Buddhism has flourished for many hundreds of years elsewhere in Asia. Its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, first followed the path of meditation to experience the oneness of Atman-Brahman, and then the path of extreme asceticism in order to free his soul from his body—all to little effect. Then he realized that his frustration, including his spiritual frustration, was the result of desire. Not by obtaining what one desires—which only leads one to desire something more—but by stilling desire itself can one achieve enlightenment and liberation. Further, desire distorts one's perceptions, exaggerating the importance of some things and diminishing the importance of others. When one overcomes desire, one can appreciate each thing for what it is.

When the Buddha realized all this, he was filled with a sense of joy, and he radiated loving-kindness toward the world around him. He shared his enlightenment with others, and formulated a code of moral conduct for his followers. Many Buddhists believe that all living beings are in the same predicament: we are driven by desire to a life of continuous frustration. And all can be liberated if all can attain enlightenment. Thus Buddhists can regard other living beings as companions on the path to Buddhahood and nirvana.

Buddhists, no less than Jains and Christians, are assuming a leadership role in the global conservation movement. Perhaps most notably, the Dalai Lama of Tibet is the foremost conservationist among world religious leaders. In 1985, the Buddhist Perception of Nature Project was launched to extract and collate the many environmentally relevant passages from Buddhist scriptures and secondary literature. Thus, the relevance of Buddhism to contemporary conservation concerns could be demonstrated and the level of conservation consciousness and conscience in Buddhist monasteries, schools, colleges, and other institutions could be raised (Davies 1987). Bodhi (1987) provides a succinct summary of Buddhist environmental ethics: "With its philosophic insight into the interconnectedness and thoroughgoing interdependence of all conditioned things, with its thesis that happiness is to be found through the restraint of desire, with its goal of enlightenment through renunciation and contemplation and its ethic on non-injury and boundless loving-kindness for all beings, Buddhism provides all the essential elements for a relationship to the natural world characterized by respect, care, and compassion."

One-fourth of the world's population is Chinese. Fortunately, traditional Chinese thought provides excellent conceptual resources for a conservation ethic. The Chinese word tao means way or road. The Taoists believe that there is a Tao, a Way, of Nature. That is, natural processes occur not only in an orderly but also in a harmonious fashion. Human beings can discern the Tao, the natural well-orchestrated flow of things. And human activities can either be well adapted to the tao, or they can oppose it. In the former case, human goals are accomplished with ease and grace and without disturbing the natural environment ; but in the latter, they are accomplished, if at all, with difficulty and at the price of considerable disruption of neighboring social and natural systems. Capital-intensive Western technology, such as nuclear power plants and industrial agricultural, is very "unTaoist" in esprit and motif.

Modern conservationists find in Taoism an ancient analogue of today's countermovement toward appropriate technology and sustainable development . The great Mississippi Valley flood of 1993 is a case in point. The river system was not managed in accordance with the Tao. Thus, levees and flood walls only exacerbated the big flood when it finally came. Better to have located cities and towns outside the flood plain and allowed the mighty Mississippi River occasionally to overflow. The rich alluvial soils in the river's floodplains could be farmed in dryer year, but no permanent structures should be located there. That way, the floodwaters could periodically spread over the land, enriching the soil and replenishing wetlands for wildlife , and the human dwellings on higher ground could remain safe and secure. Perhaps the officers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should study Taoism. We can hope that their counterparts in China will abandon newfangled Maoism for old-fashioned Taoism before going ahead with their plans to contain, rather than cooperate with, the Yangtze River.

The other ancient Chinese religious worldview is Confucianism. To most people, Asian and Western alike, Confucianism connotes conservativism, adherence to rigid customs and social forms, filial piety, and resignation to feudal inequality. Hence, it seems to hold little promise as an intellectual soil in which to cultivate a conservation ethic. Ames (1992), however, contradicts the received view: "There is a common ground shared by the teachings of classical Confucianism and Taoism...Both express a 'this-worldly' concern for the concrete details of immediate experience rather than...grand abstractions and ideals. Both acknowledge the uniqueness, importance, and primacy of particular persons and their contributions to the world, while at the same time expressing the ecological interrelatedness and interdependence of this person with his context."

From a Confucian point of view, a person is not a separate immortal soul temporarily residing in a physical body; a person is, rather, the unique center of a network of relationships. Since his or her identity is constituted by these relationships, the destruction of one's social and environmental context is equivalent to self-destruction. Biocide, in other words, is tantamount to suicide.

In the West, since individuals are not ordinarily conceived to be robustly related to and dependent upon their context--not only for their existence but for their very identity--then it is possible to imagine that they can remain themselves and be "better off" at the expense of both their social and natural environments. But from a Confucian point of view, it is expanded from its classic social to its current environmental connotation, Confucianism offers a very firm foundation upon which to build a contemporary Chinese conservation ethic.

[J. Baird Callicott ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Ames, R.T. "Taoist Ethics." In Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by L. Becker. New York: Garland Press, 1992.

Bodhi, B. "Foreword." In Buddhist Perspectives on the Ecocrisis. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society.

Callicott, J.B. Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Wisdom. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.

Davies, S. Tree of Life: Buddhism and Protection of Nature. Hong Kong: Buddhist Perception of Nature Project, 1987.

Kadr, A., et al. Islamic Principles for the Conservation of the Natural Environment. Gland, Switzerland: International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1983.

Naess, A. Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Norton, B. G. Toward Unity among Environmentalists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Shiva, V. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. London: Zed Books, 1989.

OTHER

Chappel, C. "Contemporary Jaina and Hindu Responses to the Ecological Crisis." Paper presented at the 1990 meeting of the College Theological Society, Loyola University, New Orleans, 1990.