Environment and Citizenship

The increasing awareness of the human impact on the environment is having a profound effect on the concept and content of citizenship –one of the fundamental institutions that structures human relations. In what is the first introduction of its kind, this book provides an accessible, stimulating and multidimensional overview of the many ways in which concern for the environment –driven primarily by the preoccupation with sustainability– is reshaping our understanding of citizenship.

The content is structured in three parts. Part I introduces the reader to the concept and theories of citizenship and explores the impact that environmental concerns is having on contemporary formulations of citizenship, both traditional ones (e.g. national, liberal and republican) and emerging ones (e.g. cosmopolitan, ecological and ecofeminist). Part II explores the practical manifestations of environmental citizenship, with each chapter focusing on a particular actor: citizens, governments, and corporations. These chapters include references to examples and case studies from a wide range of countries, broadly categorised as belonging to the global North and the global South. Part III explores the making of green citizens and outlines the dominant articulations of environmental citizenship that emerge from formal education, news media and popular culture. The book concludes with a general reflection on the present and future of environmental citizenship.

The book contains a variety of illustrations, boxed case-studies, links to online resources and suggestions for further reading. This original and engaging text is essential reading for students and scholars of environmental politics, sustainability studies and development studies, as well as for environmental activists, policy practitioners and environmental educators. More broadly, this book will appeal to anyone interested in and concerned with issues of sustainability, social justice and citizenship in the 21st century.

Benito Cao is Lecturer of Politics at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His main area of research focuses on the intersection of politics and popular culture, in particular the articulations of this intersection in the formation and formulation of colonial, imperial and national identities. He has received numerous teaching awards and has published in the fields of pedagogy, cultural studies, identity politics and environmental activism in Brazil.