Overpopulation and the Lifeboat Metaphor: A Critique from an African Worldview

ABSTRACT

This article is a contribution to overpopulation discourse in environmental ethics. It is based on the hypothesis that, even though the idea and reasoning behind Garret Hardin’s lifeboat metaphor are crucial within the current environmental crisis, from an African perspective, the metaphor raises a number of questions. The article argues that the lifeboat metaphor poses an ethical challenge to most communities particularly in Africa because it runs contrary to their political and cultural worldview. I advance two central claims in the framework of insights from an African worldview. First, the ethics behind the lifeboat metaphor is deeply dependent upon political power differentials, particularly between affluent and poor nations. Second, the metaphor fails to take into consideration the cultural understanding of population in Africa.

Acknowledgements

I presented an earlier version of this paper at the conference, ‘Population and Ethics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Birth and Death’, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, September 2016. I thank two unnamed referees of this journal for their critical but constructive comments, which helped to improve the paper.

Notes

1 The author is aware that African culture is not homogenous, but diverse in many respects. Yet there are similarities in the way most African communities see the world around them.