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Environmental obligations and the limits of transnational citizenship

Environmental obligations and the limits of transnational citizenship
Environmental obligations and the limits of transnational citizenship
Notions of cosmopolitan and environmental citizenship have emerged in response to concerns about environmental sustainability and global inequality. But even if there are obligations of egalitarian justice that extend across state boundaries, or obligations of environmental justice to use resources in a sustainable way that are owed to those beyond our borders, it is far from clear that these are best conceptualised as obligations of global or environmental citizenship. Through identifying a core concept of citizenship, I suggest that citizenship obligations are, by their nature, owed (at least in part) in virtue of other aspects of one's common citizenship, and that obligations of justice, even when they arise as a result of interconnectedness or past interactions, are not best conceived as obligations of citizenship in the absence of some other bond that unites the parties. Without ruling out the possibility of beneficial conceptual change, I argue that Andrew Dobson's model of ecological citizenship is flawed because there is no good reason to regard the obligations of environmental justice which it identifies as obligations of ecological citizenship, and that other models of cosmopolitan or global citizenship face a similar objection
0032-3217
280-297
Mason, Andrew
6e0103d9-267a-456c-9150-256c588a5107
Mason, Andrew
6e0103d9-267a-456c-9150-256c588a5107

Mason, Andrew (2009) Environmental obligations and the limits of transnational citizenship. Political Studies, 57 (2), 280-297. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00737.x).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Notions of cosmopolitan and environmental citizenship have emerged in response to concerns about environmental sustainability and global inequality. But even if there are obligations of egalitarian justice that extend across state boundaries, or obligations of environmental justice to use resources in a sustainable way that are owed to those beyond our borders, it is far from clear that these are best conceptualised as obligations of global or environmental citizenship. Through identifying a core concept of citizenship, I suggest that citizenship obligations are, by their nature, owed (at least in part) in virtue of other aspects of one's common citizenship, and that obligations of justice, even when they arise as a result of interconnectedness or past interactions, are not best conceived as obligations of citizenship in the absence of some other bond that unites the parties. Without ruling out the possibility of beneficial conceptual change, I argue that Andrew Dobson's model of ecological citizenship is flawed because there is no good reason to regard the obligations of environmental justice which it identifies as obligations of ecological citizenship, and that other models of cosmopolitan or global citizenship face a similar objection

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Published date: June 2009
Organisations: Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences

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Local EPrints ID: 80233
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/80233
ISSN: 0032-3217
PURE UUID: c0738517-7fa2-4b79-9dcb-0b03facee5a6

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Date deposited: 24 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 00:36

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Author: Andrew Mason

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