Engaged Environmental Citizenship

The topic of this book, engaged environmental citizenship, is a 'big idea'. It raises many issues about democracy; governance; consumer society; how people, their environments and ecology are connected; and how we can take better account of ecological realities and minimise environmental impacts. Environmental and natural resource issues need to be addressed at a range of scales and by many different people. They can seldom be solved without concerted, coordinated and cooperative action. Some people who become involved do so in a professional capacity. Others are involved because of the citizenship obligations they feel and their care for the common good. Many government programs rely on the voluntary expression of environmental or corporate citizenship, as do community-based environmental movements. What then do we mean by 'environmental citizens'? How and why do people and organisations become these kinds of citizens? How can they engage with critical environmental issues and make a difference? What gets in their way? These are the kinds of questions this book addresses

Wildlife and world views: Australian attitudes toward wildlife

Research in a number of western and non-western cultures suggests there are only a limited number of basic orientations toward other species. In the broadest sense, these can be related to fundamental cultural assumptions about what the world is like - world views, world metaphors or cosmologies —and how other species are represented as a result of these assumptions. In this paper we explore our topic in relation to two cultural traditions - those of Aboriginal Australians and Anglo-Australians. We discuss how the differing world views represented in these cultures relate to wildlife attitudes. Aboriginal society before British setdement of Australia shared a substantial consensus about what other animals were like and what was acceptable or unacceptable behavior toward animals. This is reflected in the Aboriginal concept of \u27country\u27, Aboriginal totemic systems, and the responsibilities Aboriginal people have by virtue of \u27belonging to country\u27. By contrast, Anglo-Australian society, with its roots in a diverse Greco- Roman philosophical tradition now spread around the world, and highly fragmented into subcultures, shows litde agreement about appropriate behavior towards other species. Not only this, but the often abstract and distanced nature of western interests in wildlife means that many Anglo- Australians, particularly those living in urban areas, have no personal connections to or responsibilities for wildlife in place or in country. We also discuss how the different cultural categories and conceptions of wildlife used by Aboriginal and Anglo-Australians influence their attitudes and behavior. In particular we discuss the terms \u27native\u27, \u27exotic\u27 and \u27feral\u27. As a specific example, we consider attitudes toward the feral cat in Australia and how they differ between the two cultural systems. In conclusion, we compare wildlife management concepts in the two cultures

Citizenship, engagement and the environment

[Extract] The need to involve resource users, citizens, communities and other stakeholders as active participants in managing environments and natural resources has become so widely accepted as to seem common sense. Beyond the basic democratic principle that people have a right to be involved in decisions affecting their livelihoods, values and ways of life, community engagement and participation are seen as ways to reduce conflicts over managing resources, ensure that social strategies and, perhaps most importantly, 'capture' and apply local knowledge (Lockie 2001). Scientific organisations and regulatory agencies are no longer seen as the sole repositories of relevant knowledge and expertise. Government and corporate policies and expenditures are no longer seen as being sufficient to address environmental problems. Resolving the environmental challenges of our time is seen as such a large and complex set of tasks as to require all citizens to be actively involved

Technology assessment in social context: The case for a new framework for assessing and shaping technological developments

Traditional expert (or technocratic) approaches to Technology Assessment have been fundamentally challenged by two observations. The first is that social impacts are not side effects of technology; they are core dimensions of new technology and technological development, and are a function of the coproduction of technology and society. As such, they can only be understood in social, not technical terms. Secondly, technological developments are driven by particular visions for society that are normative. Because these visions (and the latent premises that underpin them) are implicit and not negotiated by society, they are, in effect, undemocratic. Participatory methods have been utilized by Technology Assessment to improve the evaluation of the social and ethical dimensions of technology, and to democratize decision making about science and technology. However, we argue that public participation on its own does not necessarily lead to deeper understandings of social effects, nor necessarily to democratic input into decision making. We therefore make a case for a new form of Technology Assessment which we call TASC - Technology Assessment in Social Context. It takes a constructive, social systems approach to assess technology in social context and seeks to shape technology and social contexts through information, interaction and dialogue