Ecology And Justice Citizenship In Biotic Communities

This is the first book to outline a basic philosophy of ecology using the standard categories of academic philosophy: metaphysics, axiology, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. The problems of global justice invariably involve ecological factors. Yet the science of ecology is itself imbued with philosophical questions. Therefore, studies in ecological justice, the sub-discipline of global justice that relates to the interaction of human and natural systems, should be preceded by the study of the philosophy of ecology. This book enables the reader to access a philosophy of ecology and shows how this philosophy is inherently normative and provides tools for securing ecological justice. The moral philosophy of ecology directly addresses the root cause of ecological and environmental injustice: the violation of fundamental human rights caused by the inequitable distribution of the benefits (economies) and costs (diseconomies) of industrialism. Philosophy of ecology thus has implications for human rights, pollution, poverty, unequal access to resources, sustainability, consumerism, land use, biodiversity, industrialization, energy policy, and other issues of social and global justice. This book offers an historical and interdisciplinary exegesis. The analysis is situated in the context of the Western intellectual tradition, and includes great thinkers in the history of ecological thinking in the West from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.​ Keller asks the big questions and surveys answers with remarkable detail. Here is an insightful analysis of contemporary, classical, and ancient thought, alike in the ecological sciences, the humanities, and economics, the roots and fruits of our concepts of nature and of being in the world. Keller is unexcelled in bridging the is/ought gap, bridging nature and culture, and in celebrating the richness of life, its pattern, process, and creativity on our wonderland Earth. Holmes Rolston, III University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University Author of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth (2012) Mentored by renowned ecologist Frank Golley and renowned philosopher Frederick Ferré, David Keller is well prepared to provide a deep history and a sweeping synthesis of the "idea of ecology"—including the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical aspects of that idea, as well as the scientific. J. Baird Callicott University Distinguished Research Professor, University of North Texas Author of Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic (2013)

In this inter-disciplinary follow-up to Future as Fairness: Ecological Justice and Global Citizenship (edited by Haugestad and Wulfhorst, Rodopi 2004) 14 chapters explore a variety of conceptual and practical pathways to the building of sustainable communities. Five chapters provide different perspectives on sustainable and unsustainable agriculture. Other cases explored are wildlife valuations, distributional effects of environmental policy, the emerging American nuclear power renaissance, regulation of care use, job losses with a raising GDP, cooperation between labour and environmentalists, plant biotechnology, participatory decision making, acoustic ecology, decent competition, and fractality as a key to global citizenship and ecological justice. The introduction sketches a framework for constructive evaluation of the interrelationships between environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, communities, and social interactions.

Who holds the power when considering environmental justice and global citizenship? The roles of individuals, governments, media, educators and policy makers are considered to provide a thought-provoking look at power relationships for environmental justice in the start of the 21st century.

This is the first book-length treatment of the relationship between citizenship and the environment. Andrew Dobson argues that ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in terms of the two great traditions of citizenship - liberal and civic republican - which have been bequeathed to us. He develops an original theory of citizenship, which he calls 'post-cosmopolitan', and argues that ecological citizenship is an example and an inflection of it. Ecological citizenship focuses on duties as well as rights, and these duties are owed, non-reciprocally, by those individuals and communities who occupy unsustainable amounts of ecological space, to those who occupy too little. The first virtue of ecological citizenship is justice, but post-cosmopolitanism follows some feminisms in arguing that care and compassion may be required to meet its special obligations. Dobson suggests that ecological citizenship's conception of political space is not the state or the municipality, or the ideal speech community of cosmopolitanism, but the 'ecological footprint'. Most governments around the world have signed up to sustainable development, and they cannot afford to ignore ecological citizenship as a means of getting there. Government policies usually revolve around financial sticks and carrots, but these leave people uncommitted to the idea of sustainability and only to the rewards that are attached to it. Dobson contrasts citizenship with fiscal incentives as a way of encouraging people to act more sustainably, in the belief that the former is more compatible with the long-term and deeper shifts of attitude and behaviour that sustainability requires. Both citizenship and sustainability, though, are often viewed with suspicion in liberal societies because they refuse to accept the inviolability of individual preferences. Dobson therefore offers an original account of the relationship between liberalism and sustainability, arguing that the former's commitment to a plurality of conceptions of the good entails a commitment to so-called 'strong' forms of the latter. How to make an ecological citizen? Dobson examines the potential of formal high school citizenship education programmes through a case study of the recent implementation of the compulsory citizenship curriculum in the UK. He concludes that the Department of Education and Skills has constructed a Trojan horse capable of kick-starting ecological citizenship, if teachers are willing and able to travel in it. This book will be of interest to those working in the fields of environmental political theory, citizenship, globalisation, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and citizenship education.

This interdisciplinary volume analyses environmental justice and proposes means for enacting it, particularly at the citizen level. According to authors, promoting environmental justice addresses contemporary problems far beyond those of ecology.

Citizenship and the environment are hotly debated, as climate change places more responsibility on individuals and institutions in shaping policy. Using new evidence and cases from across the globe, Environment and Citizenship explores the new vocabulary of ecological citizenship and examines how successful environmental policy-making depends on the responsible actions of citizens and civil society organizations as much as on governments and international treaties. This accessible and thought-provoking book: - provides a comprehensive and timely guide to the debates on environmental and ecological citizenship, expertly combining examples of practice with theory; - examines how environmental movements have become increasingly involved in governance processes at the local, national, regional and intergovernmental levels; - explores the increasing importance of corporations and transnational networks through examples of stakeholding processes and participatory research in environmental decision-making; - calls on researchers, policy-makers and activists to face a new challenge: how to effectively link environmental justice with social justice. Breaking new ground, Smith and Pangsapa address how environmental responsibility operates through politics, ethics, culture and the everyday experiences of ctivists, as well as how awareness of environmental and social injustice only leads to responsible actions and strategic change through civic engagement.

This book examines the greening of civil codes from a comparative perspective. It takes into account the increasing requirements of supranational rules, which favour measures to reduce global warming and its negative environmental impacts; it discusses the necessity to expand distributive justice given the current ecological emergency; and it reflects on which private law legal tools potentially may be employed to defend nature’s interests. The work fills a gap in the growing literature on developing rights of nature and ecosystem in transnational law. While the focus is on the environmental issues pertaining to the new civil codes and new projects of civil codes, the book promotes interdisciplinary research applicable to a range of environmental and natural resources–focused courses across the social sciences, especially those related to comparative law systems, legal anthropology, legal traditions in the world, political science and international relations.

A group of distinguished environmentalists analyze and advocate for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). They offer an overview of this transnational movement and its links between environmental management and social justice agendas. This book will be valuable to instructors, practitioners, and activists in environmental anthropology, justice, and policy, in cultural geography, political ecology, indigenous rights, conservation biology, and community-based cultural resource management.