ABSTRACT
The paper presents a variant of the anthropocentric model of the environment, dubbed moderate anthropocentrism, as a viable environmental model for Nigeria and Africa. With references to empirical data, the work establishes the negative reality of climate change in Nigeria. It is established that traditional Nigerian (African) conservative practices are rooted in the African holistic view of the universe. Crucially, the work argues that both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric models are human epistemological windows on the world, which validate the human-centredness of the anthropocentric model. Since anthropic necessity is implicated in our struggle to understand the mind-independent world, this work argues that the moderate anthropocentric perspective satisfies the conditions of anthropic necessity even while making its peace with liberal ideology-driven non-anthropocentric models like ecofeminism and ecocentrism. The work concludes that any attempt to exhibit the intrinsic value of non-human living organisms and non-sentient things must appeal to panpsychism for the conditions of its possibility if we are to go anywhere near the notion of ‘fundamental rights’ of the environment.
