The world is facing unprecedented ecological, social and economic imbalances and insecurities. In a lecture at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation on 16 Dec 2018, the UN Secretary-General Mr António Guterres also reiterated this fact. He emphasized that climate change, which is the result of human actions, is the core cause of these uncertainties. He called for multilateralism and conscious efforts to reverse global warming among other perennial challenges facing the world.
It is widely recognized that science and technology have made tremendous progress by learning from nature through different processes such as biomimicry. Nature does not wastewater in the process of the water cycle. The same zero waste rule is applied to the oxygen cycle, the food cycle photosynthesis etc. However, contrary to science and technology, economics, business management and humanities have failed to learn any lessons from nature. The existing linear economic system is based on extracting natural resources, producing, using, wasting, and dumping the waste into landfills, rivers and seas or into the atmosphere as incinerated smoke, causing the alarm about the earth’s uncertain future.
The Secretary-General also outlined the numerous multilateral initiatives, regional and national efforts in order to alleviate climate change and other resultant disasters and human development problems. As an immediate response, we must explore the prospects of economics, business, management and other fields of humanities to learn from nature just like science and technology. Over the last few years, a circular economic system is emerging exploring ways, means and processes to learn from nature and to minimize all types of waste. Furthermore, instead of incinerating and releasing toxins into the atmosphere, it is better to treat waste through chemical and biological processes and to remerge it safely with earth thus ideally targeting to achieve a zero-waste economic system.
Islamic economics and finance are essentially the practical manifestations of the values of Islam. In reference to creation, the Quran mentions and emphasizes the universal scientific law of Meezan (balance); indeed, juxtaposing the ecological, social and economic imbalances that humankind and other species are confronted with in real times due to irresponsible human acts.