Date of Award
2-2025
Document Type
Dissertation - SCU Access Only
Publisher
Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025
Degree Name
Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD)
Director
Leocadie W. Lushombo
Abstract
This dissertation develops a model based on a three-way dialogue involving emerging understandings of environmental justice, Catholic ecological principle of interconnectedness, and African ecological ethics of kinship with nature for tackling ecological crisis in the context of oil exploitation using the oil-rich Nigeria’s Niger Delta region as an example. It identified the transnational oil corporations as the principal environmental polluters. The study claims the ecological crisis is a civilizational crisis rooted in capitalist and extractive approaches to nature. Hence, the dissertation argues for expanding the notion of environmental justice to account for African Indigenous knowledge of kinship with nature. Further, the study claims that the transformative role of the Church is needed to achieve corporate environmental accountability and cosmic flourishing goal.
The goal contrasts with the traditional environmental justice solution that is anthropocentric and utilitarian. In contrast, the environmental issue in a place such as the Niger Delta region is far more complex than sharing of environmental resources. Corporate environmental accountability in the Niger Delta must begin by recognizing the agency of the people and their worldview. Hence, the study proposes the African Triadic Cosmic System (ATCS) as the best expression of the African worldview. ATCS affirms the God-centered universe and the sacredness of all creation. This affirmation confers a moral responsibility on humans to care for all creation. Here, God is understood as trinitarian because it is crucial for Christian contemplation of God and solidarity in the context of ecological justice.
The dissertation affirms compensation, reparations, and environmental restoration— the domain of transformational environmental justice — as the practical ways of redressing the environmental victims’ past hurt. However, the dissertation’s inclusion of ATCS ensures that people imbibe attitudes that make them proactive rather than reactive in their environmental commitment.
This approach calls for the Church’s transformational role. This responsibility comes from its capacity to imagine an alternative way to the extractive approach to environmental resources. It derives this agency from practicing social imagination and empowering people to embrace it.
Recommended Citation
Agbo, Aloysius Chikere, "Environmental Justice for Accountability and Cosmic Flourishing" (2025). Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations. 144.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations/144
