A Tough Walk: Environmentalists on Democratic Terrain

Abstract

In 1992, Robyn Eckersley argued that one could discern three “major ecopolitical preoccupations” in green political thought. These were participation, survival, and emancipation; respectively, they correspond loosely to the three previous decades of environmental politics. In the two decades since Eckersley’s book, there has been a new focus among green political theorists, which could be called the democratic preoccupation. While a great deal of variety remains within this stage, almost all take a human-centered¹ view (Jelin 2000, 49), and almost all attempt an articulation between ecological or environmental thought and democratic theory. Specifically, green political theorists have, as John Barry (1996; 1999, 193) points out, realized “that any plausible modern political theory embodies a commitment to the view of individuals as deserving of equal respect and concern,” suggesting democracy must be “an essential part of all political theories,” including environmental ones. Green citizenship,² a particularly intriguing subsection of this “new” stage, is the focus of this chapter and the next.

We do not boast that we possess absolute truth; on the contrary, we believe that social truth is not a fixed quality, good for all times, universally applicable or determinable in advance…Our solutions always leave the door open to different and, one hopes better solutions.

—Malatesta 1965[1921], 269