Environmental citizenship and ecological meta-citizenships: review and alternatives in Latin America

Abstract

This paper reviews the relationship between citizenship and the environment in Latin America. It hinges on the classical view of citizenship that emphasizes the rights in which the environment is incorporated as a third generation right. However, this approach has limitations that lead to problems like weak co-verage of environmental quality rights, while at the same time explaining many environmental conflicts. Some of these problems are derived from market reforms that promoted the minimal citizenship concept and from market-driven environmental management. Today, the idea of environmental citizenship still meets with resistance, its territorial coverage is incomplete, and its multicultural approach is limited. The concept of ecological meta-citizenships is introduced to cover alternative citizenship proposals bearing stronger interaction with the environment. Two examples illustrate the diversity of these meta-citizenships. First, ecological citizenship based on obligations derived from the unequal use of the global environmental space and second, the so-called “florestania” (forestship) proposed in Amazonian Brazil as ecosystem-specific socio-environmental bonding. Ecological meta-citizenships include a critical re-action to Modernity, have a multidimensional approach with strong territorial components, and require the adoption of the relational ontologies concept, if other social-environmental interactions are to be accepted in order to overcome the Man-Nature duality. The review ends by emphasizing the importance of the classical environmental citizenship idea, particularly its role in current environmental policies and politics in Latin America, but also warning that it should allow, and encourage, the emergence and strengthening of new ecological meta-citizenships.