Approaching COVID-19 as an Environmental Ethical Problem: A Perspective from African Relational Animal Ethics

After the discovery of the origins of the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to be possibly wet markets in Wuhan, China, the normative questions of what ought to be the ethical relations between human beings and non-human animals have started to attract renewed interest among environmentalists. Although these are not new questions in environmental philosophy, the impact of COVID-19 across the world is challenging human beings to seriously reconsider some of these often-neglected questions. In this article, I examine COVID-19 as essentially an environmental ethical challenge. Specifically, I consider the extent to which the relationships between human and non-human animals can effectively impact the health and lives of humanity and the environment at large. I then provide some alternative ways by which human beings ought to re-think their relationships with non-human animals to avoid future catastrophes like COVID-19. I argue that the African view of animal ethics could at least provide a valuable lens through which to view correct relations between human beings and non-human animals. Ultimately, I set forth and defend an African environmental ethic for the right relations between human beings and animals and to show how such an ethic better places humanity in confronting future zoonoses.