Locating democratic politics in ecological citizenship

Ecological (or environmental) citizenship has recently experienced a coming of age, signalled in part by an April 2005 special issue of this journal devoted to the topic. To date, ecological citizenship has largely been taken up as an instrument for normative theorising about how to promote and/or structure ‘greener’ forms of political organisation. This focus has come at the expense of not appreciating how the turn toward citizenship might revitalise a concern for democratic politics in ecological thought. While elements of democracy are certainly treated in the existing literature on environmental citizenship, there is a failure to address issues of recognition and inclusion, and to identify the subaltern voices that open the possibility for greater democratic participation through their politicisation of dominant socio-ecological orders. This failing can be partly remedied by making connections between research in ecological citizenship and environmental justice.