Environmental and Ecological Citizenship in Civil Society

Drawing from the work of Andrew Dobson, two notions of citizenship in civil society can be distinguished: environmental citizenship, which focuses on environmental rights and seeks to redefine the relationship between the state and the citizen; and ecological citizenship, which goes beyond a rights-based notion of citizenship to advocate the fair usage of ecological space across international borders. Using civil society initiatives to conserve forests, this article argues that these two notions of citizenship should be seen as overlapping in that civil society groups seek to work through national and international law to reduce the ecological footprint of some countries on others. The article concludes by drawing a distinction between the environmental state and the ecological state.