Environmental Citizenship 

Four key debates

Are we all in this together?

It is common to hear that because the environmental crisis affects all of humanity and ‘our common future’, there should be a universal sense of purpose which can be promoted through global environmental citizenship (see, for example, the Earth Charter).  While this cosmopolitan ideal is attractive for some, the concept of ‘environmental justice’, a central issue in the seminar series, suggests that this approach may be problematic.  It is important that conversations about environmental citizenship take into account global asymmetries and issues of inter- and intra-generational justice.  Environmental rights should be guaranteed to everyone regardless of race, class, gender, nationality (and so on), but responsibility for reducing environmental unsustainability is not shared equally by all.  The powerful have a greater responsibility than the powerless because they have had a greater role in creating the problem.  Those who take up more than their fair share of ‘ecological space’ have a greater duty than those whose enjoyment of ecological goods has been restricted.  (See: Dobson, Andrew (2003). Citizenship and the Environment. Oxford University Press.)

Is ‘green consumption’ an act of environmental citizenship?

This question was a recurring topic of debate among the seminar participants. Many tended to agree that because unsustainable private acts have impacts on the environment, private acts which are more sustainable (e.g., buying eco-friendly cleaning products) should be considered acts of environmental citizenship.  Others, however, argued that the act of purchasing a product from a ‘green’ company is not an act of citizenship because to act as a citizen is to sustain democracy and promote the common good, while acting as a consumer in the marketplace sustains capitalism and private profit.  They suggest that green consumerism might be a way to greenwash business-as-usual.  But does this matter if ‘buying green’ results in greater sustainability?  Should the concept of ‘the citizen’ be defended as something fundamentally different from that of ‘the consumer’?  Or has this distinction outlived its usefulness in the contemporary context?

Does environmental citizenship make individuals responsible while letting institutions off the hook?

This question stems from a concern that there may be too much emphasis on individual responsibility in the emerging discourse of environmental citizenship.  Some participants argued that in the context of neo-liberalism, when governments are getting out of the business of service provision, it is easy to see the promotion of voluntary participation and private responsibility as manipulative and serving the interests of the elite.  One concept that is useful to capture this analysis is ‘environmentality’, defined as a process through which citizens come to internalise the government’s environmental agenda (i.e., changing their ‘attitudes’) so that they police themselves with minimal intervention by the state.  Perhaps this is not problematic if it leads to ‘behavioural changes’ in society.  On the other hand, it might produce an uncritical citizenry who simply follow government plans without asking whether they are effective and just.  Perhaps it is useful to think of environmental citizenship as a Janus-faced concept, one that can be both an ideal that can promote democratic social action towards sustainability and an instrument that can help governments to manipulate the population into behaving as ‘good green citizens’.

Does attempting to promote environmental citizenship actually undermine it?

Related to the debate about environmentality is the question of whether it can be effective to promote environmental citizenship as an idea at all.  In an era when sceptical citizens are reluctant to trust institutions, campaigns and information provision have a low success rate.  Guidebooks and ‘what you can do’ lists are an over-simplistic response to a complex socio-political problem.  Buzz- words soon outlive their currency and become easily dismissed as meaningless.  Including environmental citizenship in the educational curriculum seems an important initiative, but it is too soon to assess the impacts of formal education for citizenship.  People working in the field of social learning suggest that a better way to build the kind of relationships that promote citizenship and good governance is to build trust and consent gradually and indirectly, through participation and role modelling.