AFRICA AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

 Chika Esiobu provides some biblical insights on environmental issues

One pertinent issue across Africa today is how much the continent should invest in environmental sustainability, being that the region contributes very little to the burning challenges of global warming and environmental degradation. In this case, the Bible will be looked at to see what might be God’s ideal for how the continent should deal with global environmental issues.

Africa’s contribution to global environmental degradation is minuscule when compared to the rest of the world. The electricity the United States uses for air-conditioning of buildings alone is equal to the entire electricity consumption of the continent of Africa. The cruel paradox is that, although Africa contributes the least to global climate change, it suffers the most in terms of health, economic, geographical and social consequences. African nations are confronted with a slew of environmental issues that endanger the region’s population. Water pollution, air pollution, and droughts are the continent’s most serious environmental issues, all of which have very strong negative effects on the health of Africans.

There are several scriptures that show the magnitude and place of environmental management in the task allotted to humankind. First, God’s plan for creatures such as birds and animals is for them to increase. What this means is that any action or activity that brings about a reduction in biodiversity is contrary to God’s will.

The Bible says so in Genesis 21:22–23.

²¹So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”

Indeed, species, rather than increasing, are becoming extinct at up to 1,000 times the normal rate due to persistent pressure from habitat degradation and climate change connected with increasing human industrialization and modernity related activities. The variety of life God created to support natural systems and human civilization worldwide is dwindling.

Further down in this creation story, it was time for man to be created. First, the Bible says that God created man in His own image and likeness; if God is a creator, then man was created to create, to increase and expand the species, not to decimate it. When God breathed into man, he gave him his terms of reference, or scope of work, which were already planned ahead. It was simple: “be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself and every animal that moves on the face of the Earth.”

Basically, humanity was given the job of ensuring that the species would live and grow.

In a typical case where God gave clear instructions to the Israelites on how to build a city, he makes it clear that vegetation or natural habitat should surround the city. This instruction is to be found in Numbers 35:4-5.

“The pasture surrounding the Levites’ towns is to extend 1,500 feet in each direction from the city wall.” The outside borders of the pasture are to measure three thousand feet on each of the four sides—east, south, west, and north—with the town at the center. Each city will be supplied with pasture. “

Essentially, humans need to stay close to nature, to give and to get from nature. Each city will be given pasture.

In another instance, when the Israelites were going to war, God instructed them to not cut down the trees nor set fire to the vegetation part of the cities they were going to conquer.

Deuteronomy 20:19-“When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; if you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege; for the tree of the field is man’s food.”

God told man that the tree of the field is man’s food. The King James Translation of the Bible says, “For the tree of the field is man’s life.” Five centuries ago that scientists discovered that plants give off the oxygen that humans need to survive, as well as mop up the carbon dioxide they exhale from the environment. Additionally, only plants have the capacity to make food on earth with sunlight, in a process known as photosynthesis. Humans and animals cannot survive on Earth without plant life.

Many are in agreement that individualism, greed, and late stage ultra-capitalism, which Africa has not historically, been a notable part of, have devastated the environment. Yet, the countries laden with the guilt of environmental degradation are calling on African countries to make expensive, even unaffordable, concessions and investments in environmental sustainability. This has led many Africans to reject the call, terming it as a ploy to keep African countries stagnant and unable to toe the same line of economic prosperity that brought the more advanced nations to where they are today.

Yet, there are better, more affordable, environmentally sustainable ways of advancement than the regrettable path that has led to global climate change. Africans must then be pacesetters in finding this path.

Africa’s role at this time will be to correct that which the rest of the globe has desecrated in God’s world. This is a call for a higher level of innovation to come from Africa. The western-led innovation that has been adapted by the East and in many parts of the globe is a race towards extinction for humanity, which includes Africa.

African Christians must now work on the kind of innovation that will meet up with God’s mandate to man to replenish the earth and not to deplete it. This means looking beyond fatal short-term gains to focusing on the very type of innovation that will show the shallowness and ungodliness of the innovation pathway that has brought us the current global environmental crisis.

  Dr. Esiobu, @drchikaesiobu