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In-Depth Information
parties if a willingness to review their own positions is to follow. The
exploration of how political arrangements with an environmental focus
should be structured to encourage the internalisation of ecological con-
siderations, public acceptance of the need for ecologically protective
action, and a related sense amongst non-governmental actors that they
are valued partners alongside the state in environmental management
has therefore provided a common theme in green political literature.
26
Realisation of the latter aspiration would require that people should
cease to regard their own interests as paramount in every case and
begin to see themselves as citizens. Citizenship as a concept encom-
passes the formation of connections between individuals and institu-
tional
a common identity which links
otherwise disparate individuals together as a collectivity with common
interests
levels of society, and of
'
.
27
Reviving citizenship in liberal democracies is viewed as a
necessary precursor to the cultivation of ecologically virtuous patterns
of behaviour.
28
Accordingly, green political theorists have also sought
to identify the means by which individuals can be made to recognise
that they are part of wider social networks and to accept that they bear
responsibilities and duties towards each other.
29
The ideal outcome
from an environmental perspective would be to create a sense of
ecological citizenship based on awareness of increased interdepend-
ence between people and resulting recognition of the relations that
exist between otherwise unconnected populations by virtue of the
negative impacts of human activities on the functionality of natural
systems.
30
Ultimately, this new self-perception may lead, because
ecological citizenship is based on notions of interconnectedness and
reciprocality, to the formation of
'
transnational allegiances ranging
from the bioregional through to the global, as well as to other species
and the survival of ecosystems
'
.
31
'
26
For example see Barry,
'
Sustainability
'
, pp. 121
-
6; Barry,
'
Rethinking Green Politics
'
,
pp. 206
-
26; Baber and Bartlett,
'
Deliberative Environmental Politics
'
,pp.119
-
42;
Dobson,
'
Green Political Thought
'
,pp.103
-
14.
27
Barry,
28
Barry,
'
Sustainability
'
,p.123.
'
Rethinking Green Politics
'
,p.103
-
6.
29
Smith,
'
Liberal Democracy
'
,pp.139
-
40; Barry,
'
Sustainability
'
,pp.126
-
8; Baber and
Bartlett,
'
Deliberative Environmental Politics
'
, pp. 165
-
82; Barry,
'
Rethinking Green
Politics
'
, pp. 226
-
36; P. Christoff,
'
Ecological Citizens and Ecologically Guided
Democracy
in B. Doherty and M. de Geus (eds) Democracy and Green Political
Thought: Sustainability, Rights and Citizenship (London: Routledge, 1996), 149
'
-
66.
30
Barry,
'
Rethinking Green Politics
'
, pp. 106
-
7, 228
-
9; Smith,
'
Deliberative Democracy
'
,
5.
31
Christoff,
pp. 64
-
'
Ecological Citizens
'
,p.154.
