Asia Pacific Hope for a sustainable future

This paper expands Prasenjit Duara’s proposal that Asian religions and philosophies offer hope for a sustainable future. After outlining Duara’s sociology of history that describes the crisis of global modernity in terms of three global changes, namely the rise of non-western nations, the crisis of climate change, and the decline of religious or transcendent sources of authority, Duara proposes that grassroots organizations coupled with Asian religious and philosophical beliefs and practices offer different ways of understanding the relationship between the person and the environment, and between our universal-planetary interests and our national interests. Drawing from Asian and Pacific indigenous teachings, I propose a type of depth ecology called “existential parity” that all things and creatures have value, generating a moral corollary called the “existential commitment” that humans take responsibility for the environment and each other. The existential commitment offers an environmental ethics that promotes sustainable agriculture to feed the world’s population. Pacific agroforestry practices can be implemented in urban settings to help mitigate climate change and food shortages. Keywords: depth ecology, agroforestry, Asia Pacific, food ethics, sustainable future.