




































African Journal of Environmental Economics and Management Vol. 1 (1), pp. 001-012, August, 2013. 
Available online at www.internationalscholarsjournals.org © International Scholars Journals 

 

 
 

Review  
 

Ecocentric and anthropocentric policies and crises in 
climate/environment, finance and economy:  

Implications of the emerging green policy of the Obama 

administration for Africa’s sustainable development 
 

Richard Ingwe
1
*, Joseph C. Ebegbulem

2
 and C. C. C. Ikeji

3
 

 
1
Centre for Research and Action on Developing Locales, Regions and the Environment (CRADLE), Calabar, 

Nigeria. 
2
Department of Political Science, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria.  

3
Institute of Public Policy and Administration (IPPA), University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria. 

 
Accepted 6 April, 2013 

 
Advanced economies responded to recent global financial meltdown and economic recession by 
implementing “green” economic stimulus packages concentrating on environmentally-friendly and 
sustainable technologies. We examined this emerging paradigm against Sub-Saharan Africa’s under-
development (prolonged poverty, economic stagnation/decline, weak structures, processes, institutions 
and attitudes required for accelerating economic growth; practice of electoralism: power derivation 
through elections without democratic ingredients), exclusion of stakeholders including civil society 
from policy, thereby depriving society innovations and resources contributed by civil society elsewhere 
to socio-economic development. We used desk research and descriptive methods to analyze secondary 
data based on increasing civil society involvement in development processes under emerging 
paradigm of partnership, governance, climate change, global financial crisis. We showed that past 
actions: unbridled pursuit of anthropocentric policy that ignored ecocentric measures led to crises 
(environmental-climate degradation, and recently global financial meltdown and economic recession), 
thereby worsening existing challenges. We recommend that African nations adopt the emerging green 
policy thereby increasing their chances of benefiting from the assistance of Governments. The 
promotion of green development policy in Africa is of urgent need and imperative. 

 
Key words: “Green” development policy, Africa, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, climate change, economic 

growth. 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
The US Presidential Campaign that started in 2006 and 
ended with a landslide victory by Barack H. Obama 
featured a strong commitment of the victorious President 
Obama on “change”. A few days after inauguration, it was 
reported that President Obama has taken various steps 
towards realizing the change he promised. The previous 
US Government denial of climate change science was 
promptly reversed by President Obama. In his speeches 
for presidential campaign and acceptance of nomination 
as US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Presi- 
 
 

 
*Corresponding author. E-mail: ingwe.richard@gmail.com, 

Cradle.Africa@gmail.com. Tel: (+234) 8051740656. 

 
 
 
 
dent Obama has repeatedly stated his belief that green 
development (including renewable and efficient energy 
technologies and other environmentally friendly systems) 
promise and deserve to be employed as a US 
Government strategy to surmount (and recover from) the 
recent global financial meltdown and economic recession 
(Obama, 2009). Specifically, green development strategy 
is being considered as a means of sustaining current jobs 
and creating new jobs with several advanced nations of 
the North entrapped in the global financial crisis, Sub-
Saharan Africa is likely to face a greater burden of the 
rather increasing wave of global challenges. Unlike most 
parts of the world including North America, Western 
Europe, Japan or the North, and South East Asia, Sub-
Saharan Africa has not gained from centuries of the glo- 



Ingwe  et al.              002 
 
 
 
balization process. Industrial revolution, liberalization of 
trade, capital markets, among other mechanisms have 
tended to work in ways that Sub- Saharan Africa remains 
under socio-economic stagnation or decline (Khor, 2001). 
This might be the case with the current degradation of the 
environment. Prior to the recent global financial melt-
down, sub- Saharan Africa had become nearly synony-
mous with poverty, conflict and wars, among other 
indicators of underdevelopment or the perpetuation of the 
replication of poverty and economic stagnation and/or 
decline. Development aid/assistance promised by 
advanced (economically and industrially) countries were, 
by and large, not fulfilled. At the global level, the pursuit 
of unbridled economic growth development strategy and 
downplaying of ecological (non-human) nature protection 
despite mounting scientific evidence that global warming 
had progressed to a highpoint that climate change was 
becoming abrupt, dangerously compelled the former UN 
scribe; Kofi Annan to state that the world lacked 
leadership in the environmental (climate) sector. The 
disproportionately large percentage of poor people in 
Sub-Saharan Africa compared to other parts of the world 
is well documented (UNDP, UNEP, World Bank and WRI, 
2005) is elaborated under the description of the study 
area below.  

Disasters, hazards and risks have been most frequent 
in the region. These range from huge losses of lives and 
property due to abysmally low levels of services (safe 
water and sanitation, healthcare, education and so forth 
(UNDP, UNEP, World Bank and WRI, 2005). Terrorists 
struck Nairobi, (Kenya) and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan 
Africa before the September 11, 2001 attack on the World 
Trade Centre and the Pentagon in USA. There have been 
increasing reports that the recent global financial 
meltdown has taken a toll on the economies of the region: 
most recently the financial and money markets of Nigeria 
have been very badly hit by unprecedented recession 
(Newsweek, 2009).  

The predictions of impacts of climate change and global 
warming have put Sub-Saharan Africa on top of the list of 
the most vulnerable regions. The huge migration of 
people predicted to be forthcoming (Brown, 2008; Stern, 
2006) would add to past, present or ongoing migrations 
due to frequent wars and strife. Despite a series of 
mounting scientific evidence that global climate change 
was inflicting irreversible transformation on the earth’s 
environmental and climate subsystems, govern-ments 
especially in the industrialized and economically 
advanced nations almost obstinately continued to pursue 
economic growth-centered development strategy while 
ignoring the deleterious consequences of that attitude on 
the global ecosystem especially the life bearing 
biosphere. The market (capitalist) system’s promotion of 
laisses faire or unfettered freedom to pursue profit and 
wealth led to an increase in temperature of the global  
environmental system of 0.6  0.2°C in the twentieth 

century. This has been attributed to the continued and 

 
 
 

 
increasing emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) which is 
in turn triggered by increasing release of carbon dioxide 

(CO 2) gas arising from the burning of fossil fuel and land-

use change (WRI, 2006; IPCC, 2007, 2001; Byrne et al., 
2008: 27). Research derived predictions of climate 
change impacts have stated various deleterious disasters 
for different parts of the world. Sub-Saharan African 
countries have been predicted to be the one of the parts 
of the world that will be most vulnerable to climate 
change impacts or disastrous events (Stern, 2006; Myers, 
2006) . It is widely accepted that climate change is the 
greatest challenge facing mankind currently (Ki-Moon, 
2007). 
 
 
BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM 
 
The significance of think-tanks and civil society to policy 
making: policy making by governments of advanced 
nations (especially the USA and UK) since the 1960s and 
later emulated in the UK have been facilitated by think-
tanks – describing policy research institutions of two 
types as follows: 
 
i) Non-Government, non-partisan organizations that 
facilitate strategic coordination of government policies or 
enhance the relative prioritization of policies, creates new 
policy alternatives and/or clarifies policy options as well 
as their implications. For example, the Policy Studies In-
stitute and the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) while 
the Labour Government undertook profuse and profound 
constitutional reform of 1997 under a think-tank: 
established in 1995: the Constitution Unit;   
ii) Partisan organizations (frequently affiliated to and 
funded by political parties) providing policy advice to 
selected clients. In the US where this kind (like the first) 
originated, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institute 
have served the Democrats while the Heritage 
Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute have 
served the Republicans. Some of the think-tanks that 
served the UK are: the Centre for Policy Studies (for the 
Conservatives) and the Institute for Public Policy Re-
search (for the Labour Party) (Bradbury, 2003 in McLean 
and McMillan, 2003). The inability of countries of the 
South (that is developing nations including Sub-Saharan 
Africa) to benefit from globalization has been attributed to 
the ignorance of these nations of the contributions that 
think-tanks make to the enhancement of economic 
growth policies (Khor, 2001).   

Therefore, it has been suggested that South-South poli-
cy coordination among developing countries is required 
as a way of reversing the way the gains of globalization 
have been engineered and reaped by countries of the 
North. To achieve this goal, South-South cooperation has 
been proposed to be informed or supported policy-wise 
by centres engaged in research and coordination of 
economic growth and development including such organi-  



003       Afr. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
zations that are independent and privately run. Their 
functions have been proposed to include: supporting 
countries of the South to prepare for international 
negotiations, and organize and undertake strategic 
thinking and long term planning of economic growth and 
development (Khor, 2001). 
 
 
What Is Sub-Saharan Africa doing to respond to the 

“change” being implemented by president Barrack 

Obama and peers? 
 
The fact that globalization process, which set off about 
two to three centuries ago and is ongoing, has integrated 
the economies of most sovereign nations and regions 
was recently confirmed by the rapid diffusion of the 
financial meltdown from the USA to Europe, Asia and 
Africa. While President Obama is rapidly responding to 
the economic crisis or recession by employing green 
development strategy including sustainable energy, the 
corresponding change in development and other policies 
by Sub-Saharan Africa collectively and individually is yet 
to be well known and or publicized. 
 
 
STUDY AREA: AFRICA AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 
 
Geographical, social and economic setting 
 
The entire African continent comprising about 55 coun-
tries is usually located at the centre of conventional world 
maps. The total population estimates and projections by 
reliable international organizations for Sub-Saharan 
Africa ( comprising 50 nations in 2005) was 732,512,000 
people (that is 11.4% of the world’s population) and 
expected to be 1,181,279,000 people by 2030 (that is 
14.5% of the world population) . Sub-Saharan Africa is 
widely regarded as the region of the world presenting the 
poorest social, economic and environmental conditions. 
The region’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2002 was 
US$393,001 million (that is only 1.1% of the world’s total 
(US$35,065,010 million) in 2002. The region’s GDP per 
capita PPP was $1,779 compared to the world average of 
$7,880 in 2002. The poverty level in the region was 
comparatively serious when the GDP per capita of other 
regions is considered as follows: $35,138 for North 
America; $21,348 for Oceania; $18,097 for Europe; 
$5,934 for Middle East and North Africa; $4,684 for Asia 
(excluding Middle East); $7,347 for Central America and 
Caribbean; and $7,339 for South America. The proportion 
of the population living on less than $1/day and $2/day 
(based on surveys in 1987 – 2001) were 46.5 and 78.0% 
respectively compared to 2.4 and 29.9% in the Middle 
East and North Africa (UNDP, UNEP, World Bank & WRI, 
2005). Food insecurity was high and prevalent in the 
region: labour (that is workers) per hectare of land in the 
region (1.02) compared to other regions (0.87 for the 

 

  
 
 
world); received the largest quantity of cereals as food aid 
(3,145,000 metric tonnes) compared to other regions in 
2002.  

Unemployment rates are likely to be the highest in the 
world in the region due to a combination of reasons inclu-
ding the low absorptive capacities of national economies, 
poor governance, prevalent injustice, poor employment 
information and management (including reporting) 
systems. Although most Sub-Saharan African nations did 
not report unemployment rates for 2000 – 2002, the only 
three that did presented some of the highest rates world-
wide; the unemployment rates of 29.5 in the region’s 
largest economy (South Africa) and 33.8 for (Namibia) 
were only equaled by Macedonia, FYR (31.9) and Algeria 
(one of the most prosperous North African nations) with 
29.8. Nowhere or no country elsewhere presented such 
alarming levels of unemployment in the world. (UNDP, 
UNEP, World Bank and WRI, 2005) 

 
THE World Bank’s classification in the early 2000s 
 
The region presents a disproportionately large percen-
tage of the member -states of the rather unfortunate 
categories of nations classified as “low income” “least 
developed countries” (LDCs), “highly indebted poor 
countries” (HIPC) but only a few to the “Middle Income” 
category and none is in the “High Income” class (UNDP, 
UNEP, World Bank and WRI, 2005: 174 – 227). 
Economic (growth) performance in Africa has risen 
between 1995 and 2004: economic growth (indicated by 
purchasing power increment) was 5.8% compared to 4% 
in 2003 (GEO Data Portal from World Bank 2006). 
However, to meet the Millennium Development Goals 
(MDGs), Sub- Saharan African economies are expected 
to grow at the rate of seven percent so that poverty can 
be reduced by half by 2015 (ADB, 2004). Climate 
change, water availability and other environmental and 
socioeconomic challenges (currently and expected) have 
been observed to affect several parts of the region [West, 
Central, North, East (most severe/prevalent) & Southern 
Africa]. These are described in detail in the literature (e.g. 
Mafuta et al. in UNEP, 2007). 

 
CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES 

FACING AFRICA 
 
About five million square kilometers of land in Africa was 
adversely affected by degradative forces in 1990 thereby 
causing loss of livelihoods and worsening existing 
poverty. Serious and prevalent poverty in Africa compels 
people to disregard sustainable management of land and 
resources on it when they are pursuing immediate 
survival and satisfaction of basic needs for food, shelter 
and clothing. This situation caused greater and more 
devastating land degradation. Poverty and application of 
rudimentary agricultural techniques perpetuates poverty 



Ingwe  et al.              004 
 
 
 
and land degradation under a vicious cycle of poverty. 
Since 1981, food production per capita on the continent 
declined by as much as 12% (UNDP, UNEP, World Bank 
and WRI, 2005).  

Although Sub-Saharan Africa’s contribution to global 
GHG emissions were the lowest in the world (0.7 billion 

metric tonnes of CO2 for 1990 – 2004), (UN, 2007), cli-

mate change (extreme weather events: drought, flooding) 
have been reported to exert pressure on and exacerbate 
land degradation on the region. It is adversely affecting 
the region’s hydrography (changing river catchment), 
fuelling deforestation and desertification and reducing the 
quality of services offered by the ecosystem. Responses 
to these challenges have included the policy of promoting 
integrated crop and land management programmes 
designed to also improve agricultural productivity. Two 
major factors have been advanced to explain the dismal 
performance of policy in this regard: deficiency in the 
policy framework, and an unjust system agricultural 
subsidy practiced in advanced nations (Mafuta et al., 
2007: 195 – 197 in UNEP 2007).  

The article argues at the outset that the failure of Sub-
Saharan Africa to rapidly and decisively respond to the 
opportunities being perceived by the Obama administra-
tion in regard to green development/technologies 
represents an agreement by leaders (political) of the 
region to perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment, 
unemployment, among other maladies in the region. 
 
 
THE PROBLEM 
 
Despite the deployment of partnership and participatory 
development strategies in advanced countries of the 
North especially the USA and UK, developing countries 
including Sub- Saharan Africa are yet to realize the 
significance of policy-relevant civil society organizations 
or think-tanks in the making of evidence-based policy for 
achieving sustainable development. Policy and decision 
making in Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be restricted to 
the ideas, whims and caprices of the political or power 
elite. Therefore, civil society in Sub-Saharan Africa has, 
by and large, been excluded from the policy process. This 
has led to a situation whereby the benefits accruing from 
the creativity, versatility, flexibility of civil society’s 
approach to tackling most of the global challenges (cli-
mate change, poverty, violence, terrorism) to be forfeited 
by poor African countries. The consequence of this social 
exclusion, elitism is the perpetuation of poverty and 
underdevelopment, inequality, among other ills of the 
society, economy and environment.  

Although John Byrne and colleagues have solicited for 
“Civil Action to shrink the (increasing global) Carbon 
Footprint” as a means of “Undoing Atmospheric Harm” 
resulting in dangerous and abrupt climate change, these 
have been directed at the US Government and other 
western countries (Byrne et al., 2008). Calls for policy 
shifts from anthropocentrism towards ecocentrism in Africa 

 
 
 

 
have been rather scanty and improperly directed. 
 
 
QUESTIONS 
 
What recent political changes in the USA towards green 
development strategies provide prompts for (re)alignment 
of development directions in Sub-Saharan Africa that 
promise to benefit the region?  

What success stories in green development in deve-
loping nations of the South promise to make this strategy 
profitable for Sub-Saharan Africa?  

To what extent does a Pan African Civil Society-led 
green development strategy promise to accelerate 
sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa? The 
purpose of this article is to raise this development issue, 
the gap in the policy response among nations and 
regional economic and political blocs to the visibility of the 
global and regional development community. 

 
OBJECTIVES 
 
1. To show how various philosophical perspective 
(ecocentrism and anthropocentrism) have resulted in 
deleterious outcomes for both human kind and nature in 
form of climate change and global financial crisis and 
economic recession.   
2. To highlight the need for increased support for and 
consideration of the contributions of think-tanks to Africa’s 
sustainable development at regional (that is continental), 
and national policy levels.   
3. To show how recent changes in approaches to socio-
economic and environmental management in the USA 
and elsewhere towards green development agenda not 
only provide an example for Sub-Saharan Africa but also 
offer opportunities (better than hitherto) for the African 
region.  
4. To show a Pan-(Sub-Saharan) African strategy led by 

civil society promises to complement public sector policy 

that is capable of leveraging the rate of development.  

 
ORGANIZATION OF THIS ARTICLE 
 
This article is organized in sections: Having used the first 
section to introduce the title and relevant preliminaries, 
the second section will present a theoretical-conceptual 
framework for guiding the discussion. Two major con-
cepts: ecocentrism and anthropocentrism are presented 
as key philosophical perspectives that describe the policy 
disposition or foundations of governments at national, 
sub-national and sometimes regional or international 
levels. The consequences of the foregoing policy pers-
pectives on humankind and nature are presented in form 
of climate change and the global financial crisis.  

The third section shows how various approaches to 
national development policy (that is tendencies towards 
either ecocentrism or anthropocentrism, or both) have been 



005       Afr. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
exhibited in the different recent political regimes in the 
USA especially during the administrations of Williams 
(Bill) J. Clinton, George W. Bush and the incumbent 
Barack H. Obama.  

In the fourth section, we argue that the rather dismal 
performance of policy globally and nationally has been 
amply indicated by climate change (which represents the 
failure of the goals of the ecocentrists) and the global 
financial crisis (indicating that the best offered by anthro-
pocentric community failed to prove enough and cost-
effective) – for sustainable development. Following this 
outcome, we conclude that the green policy being char-
ted by the Obama administration promises to resolve the 
multiple crises by addressing ecological, economic and 
social concerns/problems. However, we recommend the 
need for the global community to follow the serious 
promises of President Obama that the US Government 
will not only acknowledge climate change but lead in 
tackling the debacle. On this point, we recommend the 
resort to the first and clear warnings and recommenda-
tions of climate scientists from think-tanks at international 
and national levels regarding the targets for GHG 
emission reductions instead of the rather politically and 
anthropocentric agreements that have so far been 
reached especially involving EU concessions to Canada, 
Australia, Japan and Russia in the July, 2001 interna-
tional meeting in Bonn (Germany). We conclude that 
think-tanks be supported to guide ecocentric policy at 
global, national and sub-national levels as a way of 
avoiding the widespread catastrophic consequences pre-
dicted to occur, should humankind perpetuate past and 
current lifestyles, especially the over-use of hydrocarbon-
based fuels (fossil and nuclear energy sources). 
 
 
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE 

REVIEW: ECOCENTRISM VS. ANTHROPOCENTRISM 
 
Some strands of political philosophy have developed 
suitable concepts for analyzing various policy choices of 
governments and/or administrations. For example, politi-
cal philosophers among others have developed and used 
the concept of ecocentrism to refer to a nature-centred 
system of values for embedding public policy. 
Ecocentrists justify their values for emphasizing nature 
protection, preservation and conservation on an 
ontological belief and consequently ethical claim. They 
debunk two claims promoted by anthropocentrists that: 
 
i) Human beings are superior to non-humans and there-
fore constitute the sole bearers of intrinsic value in the 
ecological system within which Man is only a part.   
ii) Humans and human nature are in possession of a 
greater intrinsic value compared to their non-human 
counterparts and their own nature. Therefore, ecocen-
trists advocate for the enthronement and/or practice of 
biospherical egalitarianism, a philosophy that promotes 
equality of the intrinsic value for both components or natures  

 

  
 
 
of the ecosystem: human and non-human. Ecocen-trists 
have constituted a radical rejection of the human-centred 
development policy and practices called anthro-
pocentrism, which is relatively older and more deeply 
entrenched in public policy systems, and attitudes of 
industrialized western culture including the scientific 
community. 
 
This paradigm of (anthropocentrism) hinges its value 
system in determining the need for protecting non-human 
nature on the extent to which the demands of human 
utility have been satisfied. In this regard, human welfare 
is the basis on which the greatest premium is placed as 
the primary challenge or interest of policy while non-
human nature (and its conservation) is considered to be 
secondary. Anthropocentrists and critics of ecocentrism 
claim that the placement of high premium on non-human 
nature protection is unnecessary, represents the promo-
tion of an anti-humanist morality through which human 
well-being is ignored, downplayed in favour of the empty 
claim and poorly defined claim that non-human nature 
protection leads to the achievement of the “greater good” 
(Humphrey, 2003 in McLean and McMillan, 2003).  

The prolonged practice of human welfare-centred 
public policy generally in the USA and the western culture 
could be inferred to be a commitment to unbridled 
anthropocentrism. While the deliberate denial of climate 
science especially the several warnings about an 
increasingly warming globe (or global warming) repre-
sents an extreme form of political interest promotion, an 
issue beyond the scope of this paper. However, it 

deserves mention that it has taken centuries (the 19
th

 

century) since Arhenius published one of the pioneering 
reports about the warming of the earth (Arhenius, 1896). 
This prolonged reluctance to consider the ecological 
consequences of anthropocentric and strictly economic 
growth-centred development policy generally and the 
associated attitude promoting public energy systems to 
over-rely on fossil fuel (petroleum oil, natural gas, coal 
among others) has led to the dangerous and abrupt 
climate change problem.  

There is an emergent and increasing advocacy for a 
rapid transition in public policy on energy to shift “from 
Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy” (Droege, 2008: 1 – 
14) and energy efficiency systems (Alliance to Save 
Energy, ASE. 2007, 2008). This advocacy has been well 
documented and needs not detail us here. We turn to a 
brief elaboration of ecology and its relevance and appli-
cation in government and public policy because of the 
enormity of the climate change challenge to the global 
and African environment, society and economy, and 
polity. 

 
ECOLOGY, GREEN PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS/ 

GOVERNMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 

IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 
 
The work of Lincoln Allison shows that the term “Ecology” 



Ingwe  et al.              006 
 
 
 
was originally used in its German form: “Oekologie” to 
refer to “the science of relations between (living) 
organisms and their environment” (Haeckel, 1866). This 
definition is believed to have remained useful since its 
formulation. The following three dimensions of the 
concept (Ecology) have been distinguished: 
 
i) An academic and professional field concerned with 
studying and explaining the system of interactions among 
living organisms.   
ii) The study of the system of actual causal inter-
relationships among species of fauna and flora.  
iii) The way the existence and significance of a distinct 
ecological system is perceived, considered and incorpo-
rated into programmes of politics and morality of the 
society. In this sense, the emphasis on morality and 
politics deviates from the earlier conceptions of the 
subject thereby making this subfield or definition to fail to 
satisfy the views of some professional Ecologists (that is, 
those who define and practice the discipline differently). 
Moral and political ecologists question and reject the 
viability of the way most programmes are planned and 
implemented in ways that disregard the need to sustain 
the harmony between humankind and nature thereby 
allowing and causing non-human nature to suffer 
enormous degradation and destruction. Therefore, 
political ecology emerged as a subfield concerned with: 
promoting efforts to achieve the above objectives; 
enhancing the coherence of the pursuit of morality and 
politics in development planning and management and 
ensuring that the relationship between scientific ecology 
and political-moral ecology is sustained and maintained.   

The emergence of increased environmental conscious-
ness in the western world in the late 1960s and early 
1970s led to the distinction between the political aspect of 
ecology and the scientific leanings of the subject. The 
implications of the idea of ecology also gained the 
interest of moral philosophers including Arne Naess, a 
Norwegian who formulated the concept of “Deep Eco-
logy” as a subfield that is devoid of “anthropocentrism”, 
which was perceived to be “Shallow Ecology” but 
concerned with promoting the principles of “biospherical 
egalitarianism”, “diversity and symbiosis” and 
“decentralization”. The shallowness of ecology practiced 
and advocated by anthropocentric environmentalism des-
cribed the way its practitioners myopically concentrated 
on the conservation of fossil fuels and beautification 
schemes which were undertaken with the sole purposes 
of promoting human welfare or consumption of natural re-
sources. Moreover, proponents of “Deep Ecology” argued 
that the shift to their camp was necessary because 
achievement of its goals/objectives translated into the 
achievement of the objectives of shallow ecology.   

The creation of “green philosophy” resulted from this 

debate combined with increasing consciousness and 

consideration of ecological issues since the 1970s. 

Allison claims that ecological political theory, a compo-  

 
 
 

 
nent of the wider “green philosophy” presents a funda-
mental problem: neither a model of ecological stability nor 
a proposal or idea of a universally accepted role that 
humans should play within the ecological system has 
been provided. Instead, ecological political theorists have 
resorted to the creation of the Darwinian model of an un-
stable and evolving system based on the scientific ideas 
espoused by Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882). Darwinists 
argue that humankind, (although other constituents of the 
ecosystem play their roles) is principally instrumental to 
the modification of life conditions of other species, there-
by determining the living chances of all species either for 
the worse and more for the better. For example, John 
Halliday suggested that Darwinism concentrates on 
populations of no fixed or predetermined boundaries, 
contrasted to biologists’ concern with species types which 
individually possess fixed essence and form. Survival of 
populations under Darwinists’ conception depends on 
“natural selection” of favourable and heritable variants of 
populations (organisms) which better adapt to their 
environment or niche. Unremitting pressure of the 
selection process causes organisms that fail to adapt to 
the environment to get rejected through either death or 
sterility (Halliday in McLean and McLillan, 2003).  

Lincoln Allison suggested that collective and individual 
choices (the pursuit of improved living standards by Man) 
are ecologically neutral: that is, can neither be said to be 
wrong or right per se! However, there has been 
increasing but incoherent advocacy for the consideration 
of rigorous analysis of the ecological consequences of 
human decisions and also the ecological or environmen-
tal aspects of policy (Allison in McLean and McLillan, 
2003: 161 – 162). The looseness in the advocacy for 
ecological considerations in policy has tended to be 
associated with the disposition of policy makers 
especially the US Governments prior to the Obama 
administration. Therefore, we turn towards elaborating 
the concept of climate change and its recent 
acknowledgement by US President Barack Obama. 
 
 
CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL LACK OF 

LEADERSHIP IN THE CLIMATE-ENVIRONMENTAL 

SECTOR 
 
Increasing emission of green house gases (GHG) comp-

rising carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH 4) among 

others over the years has led to the “ceiling” of the atom-
sphere thereby causing solar radiation entering the earth 
surface to get entrapped between the earth surface and 
the atmosphere (that is, below the “ceiling”) instead of 
getting reflected back upwards beyond the atmosphere. 
This phenomenon which is abnormal due to its contra-
diction of the condition of the global atmosphere prior to 
the formation of the atmospheric “Ceiling” due to GHG 
concentration because of the steady and rapid increase 
in temperature of the global atmosphere since its 



007       Afr. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
emergence is called “green house effect”, global warming 
and/or climate change.  

The phenomenon has been prolonged, caused 
changes in the mixture of gases constituting the earth’s 
atmosphere over the years and centuries and led to fluc-
tuations in the average global temperatures all through its 
emergence. It has been characterized by the following: 
 
1. Created by the action/consumption habit of humankind 
especially over-use and over-reliance on fossil fuels and 
land-use change.   
2. An unprecedented rate of occurrence.  
 
The consequences of climate change have been reported 
to range from uncertainty of models predicting increased 
deforestation, desertification, pole-ward shift of vegeta-
tion and animal populations, rising sea levels, decreased 
precipitation (Humphrey, 2003 in McLean and McLillan 
2003: 225). More recently, use of improved equipment 
and approaches in scientific studies undertaken by the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) led 
to projections that the continued build up of GHG emis-

sions from human activity, especially in the 20
th

 century  
(during which temperatures rose between 0.6  0.2

o
C), 

would lead to an increase in 200 average global 

temperatures between two and 4.5
o
C by the year 2100 

compared to 1900 levels (IPCC, 2007, 2001). This 
disastrous situation can only be avoided through prompt 
actions designed to promptly reduce the accumulation of 
atmospheric GHG. Various researchers have shown that 
high end warming (or accumulation of GHG) of the range 
presented by the IPCC and colleagues would lead to 
widespread catastrophic consequences (Schneider and 
Lane, 2006, Stern 2006, Myers 2006). To avoid the 
widespread catastrophic consequences projected, some 
preventive and protective conservation measures have 
been proposed. One of the most popular of these 
proposals has pegged the threshold for carbon concen-
trations at no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) 
(Oppenheimer and Petsonk, 2005; Hansen, 2004; Parry 
et al., 2001). Actions for curbing the carbon footprint 
owing to the recent agreement of the global scientific 
community that anthropocentric attitude (especially over 
use of fossil fuels) have triggered the change in climate, 
advocacy for prompt and considerable policy responses 
designed to avoid the predicted future catastrophic 
consequences have increased in intensity and frequency. 
One of the policy responses include the “Stern Review on 
the Economics of Climate Change” which was prepared 
by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank Executive, for 
the office of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer of the United Kingdom. The Stern Review 
recommended the necessity for all countries to reduce by 
80% or higher the level of anthropocentric emissions 
(Stern, 2006).  

National academies of sciences of the G8 nations 

(comprising the USA, UK, Japan and others) and those of 

developing nations (India, Brazil, and China) jointly issued 

 

  
 
 
a statement advocating for urgent, significant and prompt 

actions designed to respond to the climate debacle in 

June 2005 (The Royal Society, 2005) in Byrne et al. 

2008. 

 
Political attention to global warming: The Kyoto 

protocol 
 
Mathew Humphrey suggests that about 36 years ago, 
climate change started receiving increasing political 
attention due to the way it has become the crux of the 
emergent green politics of the period. A key milestone of 
global political response to climate change is the 
intergovernmental meeting of representatives of national 
governments and organizations in the Japanese city, 
Kyoto in 1997, during which the endorsement of a pro-
posal by 38 industrialized nations led to the emergence of 
the Kyoto protocol. Under the Kyoto protocol, the 38 
industrialized nations (Annex 1 countries) committed to 

reducing their CO2 emissions at an average of 5.2 

percent from 1990 levels by 2012. This measure was by 
far lower than the target of 60% reduction that climate 
scientists recommended as necessary for avoiding the 
widespread catastrophic consequences of climate 
change resulting from further global warming. However, 
the protocol represented a consolation to activists of 
green politics/development that adjudged it as a good 
and initial agreement that forms a basis for further work. It 
was heartwarming to environmental-climate campaig-
ners in 2005 (February) when the protocol came into 
force through the achievement of the 55% endorsement 
by the Signatory nations (NGLS, 2005). 

 
VARIABLE APPROACHES TO NATIONAL 

DEVELOPMENT POLICY 
 
Rejection of the Kyoto protocol by the US 

government led by George W. Bush 
 
Since its inception, series of intergovernmental meetings 
have been organized to mobilize greater political and 
legal forces, authority and power to transform the protocol 
into an enforceable treaty. In the first of these meetings 
held in November 2000 in the Hague, the insistence of 
the USA that forests and vegetation must be counted as 
‘carbon sinks’ thereby providing a favourable standard for 

enormous fossil fuel consumption and associated CO2 

emission could be offset, caused major disagreement 
from the European Union (EU). The EU feared that this 
US proposal would constitute a loophole in the 
agreement due to the uncertainty, temporariness and 
instability of the carbon storage capacity of vegetation. 
The Protocol suffered a major setback due to the 
unilateral withdrawal of the US Government from the 
agreement following the election of George W. Bush 
citing the chances of inflicting disproportionate damage 
on the economy of the US if adopted. The setback posed 



Ingwe  et al.              008 
 
 
 
by the US led to the Protocol arises from the fact that the 

US contributes one of the most enormous CO2 emissions 

(24% of the global total) . Therefore abdicating its respon-
sibility to commit to the binding agreement represents a 
major obstacle in the quest for equity and justice in global 
and national response to the climate crisis. Other 
negotiations of response mechanisms founded on the 
protocol have included: the recent global meeting held in: 
the Indonesian city of Bali in the fourth quarter of 2008; in 
Bonn (Germany) in July, 2001 – where 186 national 
representatives conferred and successfully upgraded the 
protocol into an international treaty. This success was 
realized through the European Union’s (EU) concession 
to Canada, Australia, Japan, and Russia in form of: the 
magnate de of allowances granted to nations interested 
in using forest as “carbon sinks” and also the type of me-
chanisms that could be applied to enforce the agreement. 
The Bali meeting successfully produced a road map for 
further negotiations.  

The EU concession to the four nations effectively 

lowered the size of emission reductions from earlier 

proposal of 5.2% in 1990 levels to between 1.8 and 3% 
(Humphrey in Mclean and McLillan, 2003). 

 
WHY GREEN DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN 

ATTRACTIVE TO GOVERNMENTS IN EUROPE AND 

ELSEWHERE: THEIR CLIMATE-ENVIRONMENTAL 

FRIENDLINESS 
 
Several reasons that have compelled governments in the 
European Union and elsewhere to adopt green develop-
ment policy includes the emergence of climate change, 
crisis in the energy sector of nations that have been using 
over -centralized national grids for supplying electricity 
and social- economic problems such as unemployment, 
collapse of centralized grids. Therefore, the adoption of 
sustainable (renewable energy and energy efficiency) 
systems of powering economic, and social systems have 
become popular because of their environmental benig-
nity, and also the experience that by their decentralized 
nature (that is, implementation in sub-national regional 
scales: states/provinces, local governments, towns and 
municipalities), they create new and more jobs than 
conventional energy stems (large hydro, nuclear power 
stations, coal-fired stations). These factors have led to 
rapid adoption of green energy policy in several nations 
of the world such as Germany, Denmark, India, Brazil 
(Droege, 2008).  

The immense benefits arising from green power has 
encouraged the rapid growth of implementation of various 
types of renewable energy and energy efficiency systems 
around the world. Since 2000, the installed wind energy 
capacity from wind turbines for generating electricity more 
than quadrupled. Output rose from 17,400MW to 
74,220MW in 2006. While the order of global leadership 
in descending order in the wind energy capacity in 2006 
was Germany (28%), Share), Spain, USA and India 

 
 
 
 

(www.dbresearch.com, 25
o
 in Africa: 22 – 3), the USA re-

cently rose to global leadership in wind energy 
implementation. 

Moreover, renewable energy sources are credited with 

specific avoidance of CO2 or “carbon (emission) costs” in 

the following order (in tonnes): photovoltaic (PV) (500 – 
600), wind (60 – 70), hydro (unspecified) (35 – 55), 
carbon separation (28 – 53), new coal- fired power plants 

(14 -26) (Euracoal cited in 25
o
 in Africa, 2008: 23). 

 
THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON 

AFRICA 
 
On November 15, 2006, at the 12 Conference of Parties 
to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 
(UNFCCC) in Nairobi (Kenya), the UN Secretary-General: 
Kofi Annan said, “The impact of climate change will fall 
disproportionately on the world’s poorest coun-tries, 
many of them here in Africa. Poor people already live on 
the front lines of pollution, disaster, and the degra-dation 
of resources and land. For them, adaptation is a matter of 
sheer survival (Annan /United Nations 2006). The 
devastation wrought on Africa by climate change 
expressed by (extreme weather events: drought, flood, 
increased temperature) have increasingly been docu-
mented in the literature. For example, the occurrence of 
flood in Mozambique, food insecurity in Ethiopia, 
diseases, for example, Malaria in Southern Africa and 
drought in Malawi and agriculture and food security have 
been reported (Hellmuth, 2007). However, these reports 
seem to pertain only to the harbingers of climate change 
and do not cover the deleterious or more serious climate 
change impacts that will occur if policy ignores the 
warnings and recommendations for action by climate 
scientists. More devastating impacts might occur in future 
as indicated by past and current climate events. These 
beckon for the creation and use of research – derived 
information for policy and decision making.  

The Official African Union (AU), (formerly Organization 
of African Union, OAU) sources claim that some res-
ponses of the continental political-economic body to 
climate change have occurred. These include: the esta-
blishment of the New Partnership for African Develop-
ment (NEPAD)’s Environment Initiative, which is suppor-
ted by the AU and the creation of a related Action Plan: 
all of which acknowledge the problem of climate change 
and variability and by implication the urgent need to 
address them. Moreover, the recognition of the need to 
coordinate proactive programmes designed to prevent 
and respond to disasters and risks was demonstrated 
through the creation of the AUC – supported NEPAD 
Africa Regional Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction. It 
was proposed that the UN Economic Commission for 
Africa and the African Development Bank (AfDB) would 
collaborate with the UN to support the GCOS – Africa 
Climate (change) for Development – a new programme 
that was scheduled to also respond to climate change 



009       Afr. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
and development issues from 2007. This programme has 
the objective of mainstreaming climate information into 
national development plans and programmes by initially 
concentrating on those sectors of national economies that 
are most sensitive to climate. The programme is also a 
component of the Global Climate Observing System 
(GCOS) designed to combine climate information and 
services with development plans as means of promoting 
the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals 
(MDGs) Babagana in: Hellmuth et al. 2007.  

The foregoing responses to climate change and varia-
bility are restricted to continental institutional framework 
revolving around the AU. The mitigation and adaptation to 
climate change and variability would not be cost-effective 
if pursued based solely on those mechanisms.  

It has long become the mantra that local action and 
solutions are appropriate responses to global issues and 
problems such as climate change. Therefore, national 
institutions, structures, processes and attitudes for res-
ponding to climate change are as important as their sub-
national counterparts. So are those at the regional levels 
such as ECOWAS for Economic Community of West 
African States, South African Development Community 
(SADC) and so forth. Sadly, responses to climate change 
at levels smaller than the African continental region seem 
to be poor if not virtually inexistent. 
 
 
THE POOR RESPONSE OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES 

TO CRISIS IN FINANCE AND ECONOMY CLIMATE 

CHANGE AS INDICATOR OF WEAKNESS OF POLICY 
 
The raising of climate change to global and national 
visibility of policy makers was achieved through the 
meritorious work of research derived information provided 
by universities, think-tanks, non-government and civil 
society organizations (NGOs and CSOs). Some of these 
organizations include: the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC), the Royal Society (UK), Centre 
for Energy and Environmental Policy (USA), World 
Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) (Germany), 
World Wind Energy Association, WWEA (Bonn, 
Germany), among others.  

In Africa, think -tanks of this nature are few. This poses 
a problem for the generation of information and 
knowledge as well as implementation of programmes 
concerning the mainstreaming of multi-sectoral 
programmes into national development programmes at 
national and regional levels (e.g. ECOWAS, SADC, and 
so forth) as obtains in the European Union and 
elsewhere.  

Moreover, recent research indicates that the response 
of national university systems in some African countries 
to climate change has been rather poor. For example, 
despite the emergence of over 100 universities in Sub-
Saharan Africa’s second largest economy (Nigeria), the 
offer of specialized courses for awarding degrees and 
diplomas and specific course streams dedicated or devo- 

 

  
 
 
ted to climate change and variability issues, public enligh-
tenment and awareness raising concerning climate 
change, among other academic and professional pro-
grammes are yet to be seriously undertaken by Nigerian 
universities as obtains elsewhere in the world especially 
in North America and Europe (Ingwe, 2009). Information 
on the AU response to crisis in finance and economy was 
not available to the authors at the time of this research. 

 
POOR RESPONSE OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS IN 

AFRICA TO CLIMATE CHANGE, FINANCIAL AND 

ECONOMIC CRISIS 
 
In context of poor systems of economic management, 
education, science, technology, and environment, the 
response of most governments of nation states to the cri-
sis in climate, finance and economy to be compromised 
or ineffective. This situation is attributable to the 
underlying weaknesses in national university systems, 
poor funding systems and the virtual absence of think-
tanks that specialized in generating research-derived 
information on the affected sectors (Khor, 2001).  

The foregoing crisis portends impediments in the quest 
to achieve the MDGs, which before the global financial 
meltdown and economic recession were feared to be un-
achievable. The UN report of the MDGs in 2007 revealed 
several bleak results. Sub-Saharan Africa presented the 
worst levels (that is, did not show that the MDGs would 
be achieved by 2015). For example, it remained the 
poorest region with 41.1% off people living on less than 
US$1/day in 2004; poverty gap ratio was 17.5% in 2004 
(the highest worldwide); 166 children under five years old 
died per 1000 live births in 2005 (the highest worldwide); 
only 26% of the land area were covered by forests in 
2005 – indicating compromise in ensuring environmental 
sustainability. The region presents the highest proportion 
of slum dwellers (62% of the total population) in 2005. 
This implies the low level of access to electricity and 
energy worldwide. The proposed implementation of a glo-
bal partnership for development was rather poor before 
the global financial meltdown and economic recession. 
There was little to show for donors’ pledge to double their 
aid to Africa at the Millennium Declaration in 2000. The 
official development assistance from developed countries 
as a proportion of donors’ gross national income (GNI), 
between 1990 – 2006 declined from 0.35% in 1992 to 
about 0.25% in 1997, about 0.27% in 2004 before rising 
to about 0.35% in 2006. Access to markets was contrived 
to be preferential and favour developed countries (United 
Nations, 2007). 

 
THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS (GFC) 
 
This economic phenomenon started in September 2008 

and has persisted till today (March, 2009), and has been 

characterized by failure, of merger, or conservatorship of 

numerous large financial firms in USA. Later it spread to 



Ingwe  et al.              010 
 
 
 
the insolvency of other companies, most governments in 
Europe, economic recession, and declining stock market 
prices around the world. Before its manifestation, the 
likelihood of its occurrence had been reported by journals 
of business, which drew attention to the (in)stability of the 
major investment banks in the USA and Europe as well 
as insurance companies. Mortgage banks, which had 
shown signs of the occurrence of the mortgage crisis that 
was experienced during the crisis had been marked by: 
credit crisis, bank failures, and reduction in stock market 
indexes in Europe and also large- scale lowering of the 
value of equities and commodities. It has been reported 
that the section 128 of the Emergency Economic Stabili-
zation Act of 2008 has worsened the situation through its 
allowance of the US Federal Reserve to reward reserve 
requirement balances held on deposit from banks through 
the payment of interest, removal of incentive for banks to 
give credit to rather than providing cash on deposit with 
the Federal Reserve, Liquidity Crisis ensued due to the 
de-leveraging of financial institutions and also the 
declining international trade. The crisis is continuing 
irrespective of the efforts of national ministers of finance, 
governors of national apex (central) banks to work in a 
coordinated manner to address this frightening phenome-
non. Moreover, it is changing its manifestation including 
the currency crisis which occurred in October 2008 in 
form of transfers of huge capital resources by investors in 
the stronger currencies (such as the Chinese Yen, the US 
Dollars, Swiss Franc) and has caused several economies 
to search for or solicit aid from the IMF 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Financial_financial_cr 
isi_of_2008).  

The response has included US government takeover of 
home mortgage lenders. Major features included filing for 
bankruptcy by Lehman Brothers following the refusal of 
the Federal Reserve Bank to offer support, the sale of 
Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; all on 14 September, 
2008 (http;//en.wikipedia.org/…). 

The “EU pledges fresh 75bn to fight crisis” was an 

addition to previous provision of other support to the IMF 

(International Monetary Fund) (The Punch, 2009: 21). 

 
EMERGING GREEN DEVELOPMENT POLICY OF THE 

USA UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND 

CHINA 
 
While renowned experts in climate change response such 
as Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern are still calling on 
President Obama to take leadership of the global green 
recovery from the crises of climate change and the 
financial and economic recessions (Stiglitz and Stern, 
2009), some have already credited the US President of 
being on the lead already (Robbins et al., 2009). The 
financial bailout proposed by president Barrack Obama 
initially was $1.5trillion, and there was a compromise 
between the US Senate$838bn and the US Federal 
Legislature $819bn – versions approved early February, 

 
 
 

 
2009 receding US economy (by a 61-37 vote) to restore 
the……....(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/10/ 
content_10797232.htm) Apart from the proposal that a 
substantial part of the bailout will be invested in 
developing and implementing sustainable (renewable and 
efficient) energy technologies and systems as a means of 
creating most of the three to four million jobs promised by 
the Obama administration, President Obama had 
acknowledged the manifestation of climate change as a 
global threat during his…month campaign and during and 
after his inauguration in and since January, 2009. He has 
further committed the US Government to leading the 
global effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change. 
These actions and positions of the US Government con-
stitute an emerging green development policy promises a 
departure from previous global lack of leadership in the 
environmental sector. President Obama has already 
issued several directives to US Government departments 
and agencies showing how programmes should be 
formulated and implemented to use green development 
strategies to achieve sustainable development. 

 
CHINA JOINS THE GREEN DEVELOPMENT 

PHILOSOPHY 
 
Recently, analysts have declared that “the colour of 
stimulus goes green” (Robbins et al 2009). Robbins et al. 
(2009) reveal that governments across the globe have 
allocated over USD43billion in fiscal stimulus focusing on 
key climate change reduction investment themes with 
China and the USA in the lead worldwide. They believe 
that this represents the beginning of a future green eco-
nomy that is, carbon reduction economic growth strategy. 
The G20 recovery talks and the Copenhagen climate 
negotiations are working / have worked towards this new 
direction of carbon reduction. With a total of US$2,796bn 
funding, the US has invested a total of $973.0, that is, 
US$186.0 (USEESA) and US$787.0 for USARRA, while 
China invested $586.1 (Robbins, Clover and Singh 2009). 
 

 
Conclusion 
 
The crisis in climate, finance, and economy, among other 
sectors at the global and national levels reflect the way 
policy has ignored ecocentric principles and limitation in 
the concept and operation of anthropocentrism. Specifi-
cally, pursuing the objectives, goals and interests of 
human beings without considering ecological principles or 
the inter -relatedness of human and non-human natural 
systems is responsible for the climate-environmental 
crisis. While the corruption of anthropocentric institutions, 
processes, structures and attitudes by top functionaries of 
global and national financial and economic systems has 
led to the crisis in these sub- sectors. The climate crisis is 
also the consequence of the way policy has ignored 
research-derived scientifically based information 



011       Afr. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
and knowledge provided by think-tanks, NGOs/CSOs and 
universities. This point is also applicable to the causes of 
the crises in finance and economy at global and national 
levels. The mitigation and adaptation to climate change 
and resuscitation of financial and economic systems will 
be successful if policy hearkens promptly to the research-
derived information produced by think-tanks, universities 
and civil society in directing development plans and 
programmes.  

Unfortunately, despite the energy crisis in Africa in the 
form of gross inadequacy of electricity and the attendant 
disability of social and economic systems in Africa, the 
adoption of sustainable (renewable and efficient) energy 
has been rather negligible, slow, and by far below the 
level in nations that are in the front line of green power 
implementation. 
 
 
RECOMMENDATIONS 
 
The individual nation states in the membership of the 

African Union generally and in Sub-Saharan Africa in 

particular are by the foregoing findings of this study 

advised to encourage the creation and development of 

think-tanks that undertake research to produce informa-

tion concerning various disciplines in the nexus of the 

development of both human and non-human natural 

environmental systems. It means that think-tanks with 

visions and missions to support or strengthen evidence based 

policy in human development (including economic management 

at global and national levels) and natural environmental 

sustainability deserve the attention, support and patronage 

of African governments. By impli-cation, the previous attitude 

of animosity championed by African governments that are 

almost solely interested self- perpetuation against NGOs 

and CSOs does not bode well for development of the society 

generally and the environment and economy in particular. 
 
 
 
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