Notions of ecological citizenship in climate justice campaigns
Abstract
Within the climate change debate, organisations within the environment
movement who stress a specific type of differentiated approach have come to be
referred to as climate justice campaigns. These campaigns advocate a
differentiated approach based on the recognition of historical contributions to
the problem, an awareness of the colonial past, and current resource extraction.
Thus they advocate solutions to the problem that recognise these inequities.
Through the embrace and application of the environmental justice “lens” to the
issue of global warming, these groups advocate a very particular position on
global environmental issues.
The criteria of justice necessitates that groups and movements who
subscribe to this viewpoint reconsider important questions re‐presented by
shared ecological issues. Thorny challenges around individualism versus
community, disjunctures between human beings and their consumption, issues
around the displacement of environmental damage (physical and temporal), as
well the human relationship with the environment is re‐problematised. In
doing so, this paper argues, climate justice campaigns have contributed to the
discussion of an “ecological citizenship”. A distinct conception of what this
citizenship might entail is implicit in the work of climate justice groups. This
notion of ecological citizenship includes a right to sustainable and equitable
consumption and environmental space, as well as the recognition of ecological
debt and borrowing, the importance of compensation and protection, as well as
respect for sovereignty, human, cultural and