Citizenship, Environment, Economy

A. Dobson, A. Valencia, A. Dobson, A. Valencia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415463720
• eBook ISBN: 9781317998631
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As governments around the world grapple with the challenge of delivering environmental sustainability, attention has recently focused on the role that citizens should play in meeting the challenge. In advanced industrial countries such as ours, which operate in the political framework of liberal capitalism, what relevance can we place on 'environmental citizenship'?This book looks at the obstacles and opportunities which exist within this context and examines the possibility of ethical investment, the social economy and considers whether there is space in the capitalist economy for environmental citizens to 'do the right thing?'This book is a special issue of the leading journal Environmental Politics.

Globalisation, Cosmopolitanism and Ecological Citizenship

ÁNGEL VALENCIA SÁIZ

University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

Introduction

Globalisation is patently changing our understanding of politics, involving a different approach to the definition of social problems and the search for political solutions. One of the most interesting questions that the debate on globalisation has posed is the degree to which the traditional role of the nationstate, as a decisive factor unifying political community and shaping citizenship, is currently being eroded. It seems that an idea of global politics is emerging. But in turn this poses questions about the source and nature of political legitimacy. In contemporary political theory, all this has given birth to a new cosmopolitanism that defends the need for a new conception of democracy and citizenship.

This relates to environmental problems in two ways. First, some environmental problems and their effects (for instance, climate change) are global, and hence transnational solutions are required. Second, globalisation might just contribute to the realisation of a sustainable society: today it ‘is possible to think and act globally and locally at the same time’ because ‘the spatial differentiation of global and local has gone’ and ‘the tools of citizens' juries, of citizens' forums and of virtual citizens' networks are all becoming available. Never before has it been possible to act as a global-local citizen in the transition to sustainability. It is also unlikely that we will be able fully to grasp the opportunities on offer’ (O'Riordan, 2001: 237).

These points obviously influence green political theory since its task is to understand the transformation of political community in the context of the global scope of environmental problems. One way in which this has been done recently is through laying the foundations of an idea of citizenship of its own, namely, ecological or environmental citizenship.Work has been done on this in the last ten years especially, beginning with Fred Steward (1991), Bart van Steenbergen (1994a, 1994b), through the more developed ideas of Peter Christoff (1996), Mark Smith (1998) and John Barry (1999, 2002) to the recent and systematic work of Andrew Dobson (2000b, 2003, 2005).

The goal of this chapter, then, is to explore the connections between cosmopolitan reflections on citizenship on the one hand, and green political theory's attempts to develop its own idea of citizenship on the other. This study proposes that although the idea of ecological citizenship may be regarded as a kind of cosmopolitan or global citizenship, its features and current degree of development go further, towards a new kind of citizenship.

The Turn towards Global Politics and the Environment

As indicated above, one of the most important effects of globalisation is the loss of centrality of the nation-state as the core of political community. This is occurring at the same time as issues in the international political dimension are of growing salience. The subject matter here is the close relationship between this political shift towards the global, and ecological issues. In this sense, environmental problems are a component of global politics and green political theory's reflections on citizenship comprise an axis which provides the backbone of a conception of political community that no longer corresponds neatly with those usually assumed by liberal or social citizenship. In this context, some of the aspects of the approach of the ‘new cosmopolitanism’, concretely, those related to the formulation of citizenship, connect to the attempt by green political theory to develop a notion of ecological citizenship. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this theoretical evolution lies in the movement of ecological problems to the domain of what has come to be known as global governance. Thus climate change or the destruction of the ozone layer are examples of new global public goods: those that cannot be satisfied individually and that demand co-operation in the search for solutions. To this would have to be added the global dimension of the risks generated by ecological problems themselves. This dual aspect of ‘the environmental’ as a public good to defend and as a potential threat beyond the nation-state makes necessary new theoretical spaces to justify the conservation of nature and the avoidance of ecological catastrophes. The concept of ecological citizenship constitutes one of these new theoretical spaces.

The argument here is that ecological citizenship is still ‘under construction’, but it can already be seen that this has its own architectural inflections that break with traditional notions of citizenship. The focus is on three aspects: first, the relationship between globalisation, environmental problems and the new cosmopolitanism; second, the reason why it is proposed that ecological citizenship is part of the concept of global citizenship and starts from a notion of collective responsibility; and finally, why it is argued that ecological citizenship is a post-cosmopolitan citizenship not only because it has its own architecture as opposed to the traditional dimensions of the citizenship (as Andrew Dobson has suggested; Dobson, 2003), but also because of its relationship with a green democratic model, which is clearly deliberative.

Globalisation, Environment and Cosmopolitanism

Some analyses of globalisation suggest that it ‘is an expression of deeper structural changes in the scale of modern social organisation. Such changes are evident in, among other developments, the growth of multinational corporations (MNCs), world financial markets, the diffusion of popular culture and the salience of global environmental degradation’ (Held & McGrew, 2002: 5–6). The globalisation of environmental problems and environmental degradation raise two essential issues: on the one hand, the boundaries of liberal democracy for their resolution are put into question (Goldblatt, 1997); and, on the other, the appearance of a cosmopolitan conscience and — perhaps — institutional design may just be discerned. If environmental problems are global, then liberal democracy, despite its potential effectiveness in the context of the nation-state, may turn out to be ineffective in the global context. Against this background, disagreements are located at three levels:

In the first place, there are those who adopt a constructive position with regard to the governability of globalisation but maintain different theoretical positions concerning its definitional criteria and the political project of a cosmopolitan society.

Second, there are those who maintain a pessimistic position with regard to governing globalisation, and who say that the control of natural resources may even be one of the sources of future international conflicts.

Finally, there are those who from a realist position maintain that the situation of the current international order hinders the global political management of environmental problems.

These three positions will be taken in turn. In the first case, the scope of the discussion is the capacity and the options offered by politics to bring about global change that reconfigures the role of the nation-state, our idea of political community and the role of international relationships in the solution of global political problems, such as the environmental one. Globalisation involves, then, a transition from a state-centred politics to a new and complex multilevel global politics in which the positions of both supporters and critics of neoliberalism — and globalisation — are inadequate. This means adopting a transformationalist position, according to which ‘recasting globalisation needs to be conceived as a “double-sided process”’ and ‘by a double-sided process — or process of double democratization — is meant not just the deepening of political and social reform within a national community, involving the democratization of states and civil societies over time, but also the creation of greater transparency, accountability and democracy across territorial borders’ (Held & McGrew, 2002: 107).

The polar opposite of Held's approach is the second in the list above — that represented by those authors who think that globalisation is ungovernable and, therefore, more a source of conflict than the foundation for a cosmopolitan society. This is John Gray's position in referring to the so-called ‘real limits of globalisation’ (Gray, 2003). Gray argues (2003: 355–356) that globalisation is leading us back to a series of long-standing problems that are difficult to overcome — above all, conflicts over the control of natural resources. Wars, he says, will be more and more Malthusian. Battles will not be over ideologies but over land, water and crude oil — frequently in connection with religious and ethnic enmities. From this point of view, the centrality of crude oil to the economies of developed countries and its character as a finite energy source takes the world back to the classical geopolitics of the nineteenth century, where dependence and shortage of natural resources such as crude oil and water will be the source of international conflicts.

The growing shortage of resources provokes, among other effects (Gray, 2003: 357), an increase in the number of ecological and environmental refugees and, as a response, a revival of ultra right-wing parties in wealthy countries. In a nutshell, one of the most interesting elements in Gray's position is his notion that globalisation is ungovernable, among other things, because it is conditioned by environmental limits such as overpopulation or control of natural resources like crude oil or water, which lead to an intensification of instability and conflict and not — not at all — to a cosmopolitan society.

Third — and finally — among our analyses of globalisation is the critical perspective (Falk, 2002) that points out the paradox of the relationship between politics and environment under globalisation. From this point of view, environmental problems are one of the decisive topics on the global political agenda, at the same time as there is no clear way to manage them globally. It may be true that there is a growing environmental conscience around the world and that there is a global consensus as regards environmental protection but there will only be progress in the resolution of these problems if states cooperate to achieve sustainable development. The thesis is simple: the current world order is not suited to dealing with global environmental problems. The main issue is the absence of political will, on the part of both states and markets.

There are, though, different factors at work. First there is an absence of responsibility of political leaders towards adverse effects on environment. Second, electoral terms do not coincide with the time periods characteristic of environmental challenges. Third, the necessary changes in the political culture of citizenship as regards ecological issues collide with consumerism and the submission to market forces of advanced capitalist societies and, finally, there is a prioritising of immediate economic issues over environmental ones. Simultaneously, this has generated a new type of domination, which involves a shift from North to South of polluting processes and wastes, as a consequence of the location in the South of the industries that provoke it and that the North no longer wants. This shift is seen by some critics of globalisation as both a new type of domination generated by capitalism in its current phase (Amin, 1997) and as further evidence of the ecological self-destructive tendencies of the current capitalist system (Wallerstein, 2001).

In this context, the main obstacle the international order faces when confronting ecological issues (Falk, 2002: 28) is not its acknowledgement as one of the main problems the world confronts on a global scale, but the absence of political willingness to cope with them due to the fact that states show a reticent attitude towards making easier the co-ordination mechanisms of effective global government in relation to the environmental agenda. For Falk the paradox is clear (Falk, 2002: 41): the urgency and complexity of the environmental challenge demands a supranational mechanism that has the benefit of political and financial independence, but only states in co-operation are able to produce such a mechanism. Their reluctance to go beyond traditional diplomatic practices suggests that the realist attitude persists. The environmental challenge reveals, then, the persistence of statism, including its adaptive impulses, as well as the gulf that exists between current problems and possible solutions.

In this context, the different positions that have just been analysed show that the key questions revolve not only around identifying environmental problems and recognising that national solutions are less and less appropriate. The real issue is to find theoretical principles and political formulae that might regulate global ecological issues. In the author's opinion, and in this context, reflections around citizenship constitute a way of reorientating globalisation toward the aims of a sustainable society.

Global Citizenship and Collective Responsibility: Keys to Understanding the Concept of Ecological Citizenship

Recently an irresistible rise of citizenship in contemporary political theory and practice has been witnessed, due to the changes the nation-state is going through in western societies as a consequence of processes of social change that strengthen the international dimension of politics. The need to think about institutional change and the democratic control of these processes of social change has led some authors to define a cosmopolitan project (Held, 1995; Archibugi et al., 1998; Linklater, 1998b; Held & McGrew, 2002). This involves its own vision of democracy (Held, 1995) and citizenship (Linklater, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c; Held, 2001). In this context, the concept of citizenship plays a key role in implying

the enjoyment of civil, polítical, social and cultural rights, and corresponding duties to remove barriers to equal membership of the polítical community. A society that is committed to realising the ideals of citizenship is obliged by this conviction to engage outsiders in open dialogue about the respects in which its actions may harm their interests. It has an obligation to transcend the dichotomy between citizens and aliens by establishing systems of joint rule (Linklater, 1998b: 211–212).

One of the most interesting elements of the cosmopolitan approach to citizenship is its role as a ‘mediator concept’ in the dialogue of a polítical community made up of different cultural traditions and polítical discourses in the establishment of a framework that aims at overcoming the dichotomy between citizens and aliens. Thus David Held suggests (as was seen earlier) that one of the polítical challenges of the future will be that

each citizen of a state will have to learn to become a “cosmopolitan citizen” as well: that is, a person capable of mediating between national traditions, communities of fate and alternative styles of life. Citizenship in a democratic polity of the future is likely to involve a growing mediating role: a role which encompasses dialogue with traditions and discourses of others with the aim of expanding the horizons of one's own framework of meaning and prejudice (Held, 2001: 399).

The key insight of this approach is that it locates cosmopolitan citizenship as both a principle for dialogue in a diverse polítical community and an essential starting point for global governance. This is critical for the environment, given all that has been said about the globalisation o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Globalisation, cosmopolitanism and ecological citizenship
• 2. Liberal environmental citizenship
• 3. Environmental citizenship as reasonable citizenship
• 4. Researching environmental citizenship and its publics
• 5. Negotiation as the driving force of environmental citizenship
• 6. Social citizenship and the environment
• 7. Ecological citizenship and ethical investment
• 8. Green citizenship and the social economy
• 9. Shopping for sustainability: can sustainable consumption promote ecological citizenship?
• Index