Abstract Our global environment is shared by its inhabitants; our global environment is both vulnerable and valuable. It is valuable in the sense that it provides natural resources for its inhabitants which are necessary for the survival of these inhabitants. The environment is vulnerable to maltreatment by its inhabitants. The environment is exposed to many types of issues due to human activity that harm it, this paper identifies these issues, the ethical and social responsibility that man has towards the environment and highlights the need to act to the environment’s vulnerability. This paper also focuses on the decision making possesses involved in making policies that are beneficial to the environment. Ethical and social obligations towards the environment Ethics is a study of the moral choices that people make between right and wrong, people are faced with questions on whether doing the right thing or wrong often, most of these choices concern the environment, examples of such choices are whether to cut down more trees for wood or not? Whether to recycle or not, whether a mining company has the obligation to restore landform and surface ecology or not. These are the types of issues that environmental ethics investigates. These choices may not make much difference to an individual but eventually, these actions have a substantial effect on the environment. The environment faces serious ethical issues as its inhabitants limit their actions to those that benefit them and their descendants not thinking about the long term effects of their actions on the environment. Rather, man should act carefully not to waste the environment’s natural resources so as not to make any present or future people worse off. In a letter from Chief Seattle to President Franklin Pierce in 1885, Chief Seattle said that the earth does not belong to man but man belongs to the earth, whatever befalls the earth befalls on man and whatever man did to the planet he so did to himself. These words emphasize the need to be careful and to avoid mismanagement of the environment as it either directly or indirectly affects man. Environmental ethics have faced several ethical philosophies; these philosophies try to guide man’s behaviour in his relationship with the environment. These ethical philosophies try to instil the moral need for man to act inconsiderate ways towards his environment. Deep ecology is an ethic that was born in Scandinavia and developed by Naess and others; this ethic endorses the view that all living things are alike in having value and usefulness to others. This is an ethic that if possessed by an individual he would be careful not to harm other creatures that live in his environment or damage their habitat. This ethic discourages individualism and connects a person to his wider natural environment. Naess further developed the ethic of ‘biospheric egalitarianism’ which said that all things big and small had a right to flourish. Feminism has also tried to explain environmental issues; the claim is that the oppression of women by men has also extended to man’s environment and the animals. All these ethical philosophies encourage man to act in ways that will not harm th