Abstract

The ecological crisis is one of the greatest threats faced by nations world-wide. The future of planet Earth poses many developmental challenges for our generation, more than ever before. Overpopulation, rapid industrialisation, heightened consumerism, unrestricted technologies and other human activities are affecting every region of land and water resulting in unprecedented environmental degradation. The ecological crisis has not only resulted in climate change and radical undermining of life, but it is also triggering a mass extinction of species (including humanity) as well as putting future generations in a predicament. The situation is deplorable, but arguably religion and spirituality can contribute to the challenge. African countries in general and Zimbabwe in particular, employed westernized methods of environmental conservation and these failed to yield meaningful results. Yet, in Africa, the entire relationship between humans and nature, including activities such as land use, has deep religious and spiritual underpinnings. Religion is central to many decisions people make about their own communities’ development. Using the phenomenological method for its theoretical framework, our chapter explores how Manyika traditional conservation methods have been sucked by Western philosophical approaches such as egoism and selfism. In the first section, we outline how the Manyika people’s cosmology shapes their environmental ethics. We also argue that when the environment is disturbed by human actions, it reacts harshly to the onslaught. What humanity calls the environmental crisis, therefore, is in fact, the environment’s way of retaliating. The next segment elucidates how the Manyika women tap into their indigenous knowledge systems in order to responsibly and sustainably interact with the environmental. Here, we proffer that there is need to engage and deploy the indigenous environmental ethics and methods to mitigate against the impact of the environmental crisis. The chapter concludes by reiterating that an appraisal and recognition of the essence of traditional leadership and efficacy of indigenous environment strategies is imperative if environmental problems are to be curtailed.