En este artículo se abordan dos cuestiones diferentes, aunque interconectadas. La primera es: ¿puede articularse una política de la ecología en términos de ciudadanía? Mi respuesta a esta pregunta es afirmativa, presentando una propuesta de «ciudadanía ecológica». Esto conduce a la segunda cuestión: ¿cómo afecta la ciudadanía ecológica a la noción misma de ciudadanía? Esta cuestión se responde mediante la articulación de una «arquitectura » de la teoría de la ciudadanía que se organiza a través de las oposiciones entre derechos (...) y deberes, la esfera pública y la privada, la ciudadanía activa y la pasiva y, por último, entre las concepciones «territorializadas » y «desterritorializadas» de la ciudadanía. Se defiende que la noción de ciudadanía ecológica desestabiliza la arquitectura estándar de la ciudadanía al poner el énfasis en los deberes de los ciudadanos más que en los derechos; al sugerir que el ámbito privado es un espacio tan legítimo para la actividad ciudadana como el espacio público, al negar la asociación habitual entre la ciudadanía «pasiva» y el ámbito privado, y al revalidar las concepciones desterritorializadas de ciudadanía. Finalmente, se presenta la contribución de la ciudadanía ecológica a la «remoralización» de la política, y se trazan algunas de las tensiones resultantes de su confrontación con las exigencias de la democracia liberal. (shrink)

Both scientific realism and social constructionism offer unpromising and even destructive ways of trying to understand nature and human–nature relations. The reasons include what these apparent opponents share: a commitment to the (latterly) modernist division between subject/culture and object/nature that results from what is here called 'monist essentialism'. It is contrasted with 'relational pluralism', which provides the basis of a better alternative – ecopluralism – which, properly understood, is necessarily both ecocentric and pluralist.

In 2012, China officially declared, as a national strategy of governance, the development of ecological consciousness, the promotion of what has been called “eco-civilization,” and the development of “ecological citizens.” In this paper, we argue that the concept of green burial reflects a number of the values underlying “eco-civilization” and ecological citizenship: respect for nature, respect for humanity, and the ecologically-sensitive rational awareness of the “harmony between nature and humanity, as in the saying “天人合一” Tian Ren He Yi = “Nature (...) and human beings combine into an integral whole”). The practice of green burial can play a valuable role in promoting the construction of an eco-civilization, although many people in China—and elsewhere—may be reluctant to accept it. One reason for this may be that the concept and practice of green burial are so new that it does not yet have a place in the ecological awareness of China’s citizens, who are the main subjects of the construction of eco-civilization. In our view, it is necessary to increase citizen awareness of green burials and their value, and to encourage people to participate in the practice. This is a reflection of the values that underlie ecological citizenship, but also serves to promote these values. While our proposal in this paper is to argue for green burial as an element in realizing this model of “eco-civilization” in China, its relevance clearly extends beyond the Chinese context. (shrink)

Stewardship—the caring for fellow human beings as well as the nonhuman world—is receiving increasing attention from scholars in the field of global environmental change. Recent publications underscore that stewardship is becoming a key norm within the global international system of states, but that in remaining state-centric, stewardship fails to create a deeper systemic transformation of the international system’s normative structure. In this article, we examine whether stewardship also underpins hybrid governance arrangements, which are a combination of public requirements and private (...) standards, with a specific emphasis on certification. We argue that a stewardship ethos requires citizenship, compassion and sufficiency. We, thus, contribute to the burgeoning literature on certification by focusing on normative principles that are fundamental for sustainability governance, but have so far been neglected in governance research. Empirically, we are able to reveal broader implications of the normative transformations underway in global sustainability governance. To add depth to our analysis, we concentrate on palm oil, an agricultural commodity, which serves for food purposes and as a substitute for fossil fuels to mitigate global warming. Palm oil is representative of the interlinkages between social and environmental objectives, which are at the core of the notion of stewardship as conceptualized in this article. We find that stewardship underpins hybrid governance arrangements but momentarily it is realized only in niches. We argue that in order to move to a state of global stewardship, we need a bolder public policy agenda which respects environmental limits, acknowledges boundaries for the global poor, and allows for the expression of emotions in public dialogue. (shrink)

El artículo busca profundizar en el examen de la noción de “ciudadanía” a partir del contexto teórico desplegado por la problemática ecológica, teniendo en cuenta las determinaciones y desafíos que impone a la figura de la ciudadanía la supuesta existencia de un fenómeno de devastación antropogénica como el que se sostiene que afecta al planeta en nuestros días. Se intenta esbozar algunas consideraciones que permitan el avance de una reflexión particular sobre “ciudadanía ambiental”, asumiendo que la literatura filosófico-política contemporánea presenta (...) variados alcances teóricos que podrían ser atendidos en este sentido, puesto que ellos también buscan ampliar el concepto canónico de ciudadanía presentado inicialmente por Marshall. (shrink)