Integrating Ubuntu Language in the Paris Agreement

Individualistic, anthropocentric, and capitalist thinking has arguably led to the human impacts causing climate change. Investigating alternative environmental and ethical thoughts can shape solutions for climate change mitigation. The perspective of a dominant discourse shapes and influences the values and norms of a society. These, in turn, impact how societies approach problems and their solutions. Throughout the past decades, in which human impacts on the environment have increased, traditional Western thinking has dominated states’ climate politics worldwide. Currently, the goals and aims for climate change have been dictated by the Paris Agreement signed by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. This chapter assesses the extent to which the ethical theory of Ubuntu can inform environmental ethics and whether it features in the 2015 Paris Agreement and the political discourse around it. Besides, it will show how including Ubuntu ethics in the Agreement’s language would increase its effectiveness in mitigating climate change, as highlighted in the Sustainable Development Goals. We begin by reflecting on the relevance and potential of the ability of the moral theory of Ubuntu in fighting climate change. Then, we will critically assess the Paris Agreement, informed by the wider political discourse produced during its negotiations. We expect to find that Ubuntu is underrepresented in the Agreement. In that case, we will demonstrate how the inclusion of the ethical theory of Ubuntu in the Agreement’s language would increase its potential and align with the SDG of mitigating the environmental crisis in goals 13, 14, and 15.