Humans duties towards the environment in terms of ethics and Islam: Overlapping consensus in environmental ethics

Environmental crisis covers all areas of the planet and getting rid of this requires participation of all humans to protect the environment. This participation is not possible without an agreement on universal norms in environmental ethics. But, given the cultural diversity and schools difference in worldviews and foundations of ethics, the key question is “how to achieve this agreement?”.The main claim of this research is that the idea of “overlapping consensus” can be used to achieve this agreement. Based on this idea, universal norms in environmental ethics should be formulated in a way that their justification is not depended on the specific aspects of religious traditions, comprehensive scientific, philosophical, and moral belief-systems and followers of them by reason accepted in their tradition and belief-system can agree on these norms. Therefore, This thesis attempts to show that this consensus is possible about the “moral necessity of respect for nature” among the supporters of theory of “respect for nature”, which is a fundamental and secular theory in environmental ethics, and Muslims.