The Environmental Responsibility Reader

The Environmental Responsibility Reader is an anthology, rich in its commentaries, very opportune and welcome, which brings together legendary environmentalist authors with extracts from their most significant works. To these are added recent studies of innovative concepts which need to be discussed and understood by all of us, to ensure that they reach the political agenda: concepts such as 'ecological citizenship' and 'environmental responsibility', for example.

The first aspect that caught my attention in this collection was the choice of seminal texts, frequently cited but not always easily accessible, like those of Garrett Hardin, Aldo Leopold, Fritjof Capra, and Rachel Carson. Having these all assembled together and to hand for direct reading is without doubt a great help to the student who is getting to grips with the subject. A second positive aspect is the organisation of the texts in four sections which are extremely pertinent to the environmental debate: ethical and cultural traditions; nature matters; individual and collective responsibility; and ecological citizenship.

I begin this review by highlighting the fourth section, from which I sought to learn how the interface between the terms 'citizenship' and 'environment' was analysed and conceptually considered, and what contributions the authors could make to the process of making environmental citizenship a reality in my country and in all those other countries which, like Brazil, are repositories of natural riches (forests, 'genetic banks', 'biodiversity', fresh waters, arable soils, etc.) but where to this day the greater part of the population suffers from poverty and a lack of citizenship. (I apologise to any who were hoping for a more generic reflection, but I do not know how to think about the world other than from within the bounds of my own backyard. This should not be seen as political proselytising or solipsism, rather as a methodological determination.)

Brazil and Latin America - my backyard - continue to experience an intense process of citizenship construction, to the point where the term is almost worn out, a tired catchphrase, even though genuine citizenship is still rarely enjoyed, as a consequence of the general context of inequalities. We are still in the process of constructing rights. As a result, the concept of environmental citizenship takes two distinct and inadequate forms in Latin America. The first of these forms is social militancy, the demand for new rights, such as the right to quality of life, and the right to residence: not to be banished from one's own place, whether because it has become targeted by exploitative interests or because it has become definitively degraded. The second form of environmental citizenship is the one that predominates in general among governments, the media, and the entrepreneurial class, for whom the concept is reduced to one of environmental education, understood as advocating good ways of dealing with waste products, the incorporation of scientific information, and rational patterns of consumption. To put it another way, among ourselves environmental citizenship is perceived either as a reaction against the powerful in disputes over lands and resources, or as a mere question of individual awareness - awareness within the limits of that which the powerful wish us to be conscious of. Article 225 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution, which deals with the natural environment, defines it as a right 'of all', in other words of every citizen; but the responsibilities for it are worded in terms of abstractions such as 'public power' and 'collectivity', and not of each one concretely and individually. This is even less the case with regard to commercial companies. Indeed I understand the spirit of this article in the constitution, drafted as it was by environmentalists in the 1980s, as being to prevent weak citizens being penalised in the name of the environment, which is referred to in a vague and abstract way, by virtue of a legal clause.

On the other hand, the absence among us of an exact comprehension of 'the Commons', which is to say communal areas and their natural riches (a theme so well presented and analysed in this collection by Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern), means that these areas - a common asset for all, and which all should take care of - are perceived as being owned by the government, and by the powerful who privatise the State; or these areas are seen as no-man's-land, which can as a result be annexed and exploited by anyone, for any kind of usage.

An example of the first case occurred in Brazil with the forests of babaçu, an oil-bearing palm, native to the States of Maranhão and Tocantins, where women who traditionally gathered the babaçu nuts were killed or threatened with eviction so that the landowners could fence in the forests and turn them into pasture for cattle-grazing. It is worth remembering that the struggle of these women to exert their rights to remain where they lived, to collect and make use of the babaçu, was successful because of the sentiment of 'ecological citizenship', and because of the support of international environmental and feminist NGOs, and the support of the churches with their international organisational structures.

Examples of the second case - where common property is treated as a no-man's land - can be seen in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforests for logging (often by people with no alternative means of survival) and for the creation of pastures and the cultivation of soya beans; and equally in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where favelas (shanty towns) have been constructed on morros (steep hillsides) and on banks of rivers and lakes, by people whose right to housing was not respected. The organised sectors of the favela communities created a neologism to defend their right to residence: the so-called 'favelania', meaning the citizenship of the shanty-town dweller. Achieving harmony between favelania and ecological citizenship has been a complex and contradictory undertaking, which has involved discussing limits to the expansion of the favela, engaging the shanty-town population in reforestation in the surrounding areas and in income-generating schemes through the recycling of refuse, and recognising their land rights.

I have dwelt at length on these examples and their inherent contradictions in order to reflect on why we are still unable to agree on a vision of what ecological citizenship might be, in the solid terms so well proposed by Dobson in this collection: a 'post-cosmopolitan citizenship, non-territorial, focused upon rights and responsibilities, rooted also in the private sphere and inspired by feminine virtues' (Dobson, p. 257, Table 1). In my understanding, this implies a planetary citizenship, which seems to be inspired by anarchist thinking and directed towards the care of mother Earth.

But how to incorporate this non-territorial concept of citizenship in countries which feel vulnerable to the depredations of those who covet their natural riches, and resentful towards the colonialism to which they are still subjected, and for which reasons they feel honour-bound to defend their territories? How to construct a planetary citizenship in a world divided and lacking in solidarity, where dangerous and polluting industries and their wastes are shunted from Europe across the globe to the south of the Equator? On the other hand, how not to incline towards ecological citizenship if solidarity and support - as shown in the example above - come from networks of international organisations and not from fellow citizens? How may we reconcile all these aspects?

It is on this point that the book lacks a fifth section, dealing with development: a critique of the hegemonic notion of development which is reduced to economic growth and a model of production which generates inequality and degradation. It offers no comprehensive analysis of proposals of another kind of development and another globalisation (which the World Social Forum calls alter-globalisation, and environmentalists call planetisation).

Partly filling this gap is the chapter by Martin Reynolds which describes the case of the construction of a hydroelectric complex in India along the Narmada River. But Reynolds's focus is on Environmental Ethics: the anthropocentric and 'instrumental' values which predominantly view water merely as a resource for irrigation and to move turbines for the generation of electricity - values which are only secondarily brought into play to defend the rights of the displaced populations - and 'eco-centric' values, which simply consider human beings as part of a moral community of beings, both living and non-living (rivers, mountains, etc.).

From the perspective of the search for another model of social, political, and economic well-being and in respect and defence of the system of life in which human beings play a part, one very complex question looms large for what the UN terms 'developing countries', and what Goldman Sachs called 'emerging economies' (the BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and for the African continent. This question, which this collection does not address, is how to build a society of well-being, of technically developed peoples, happy, free, and healthy, without cutting down our forests and degrading our rivers? Is the economic growth of China - achieved at the cost of much pollution - the only road? What is the nature of the State in these countries, and what should be its role? Is it really the case that the substitute for declining State power and weak international UN regulation is self-regulation by the business sector, as Smith and Pangsapa suggest in their analysis of the environmental responsibility of companies (pp. 321, 322)?

Latin America, India, and Africa are bastions of the world's remaining biodiversity, with the most important hydrographical resources, and are also territories in which the majority of the population is poor. The book lacks texts which take account of this reality. And some seminal authors are missing: Vandana Shiva, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, and Robert Bullard, who have together made environmental analyses from the point of view of a critique of the inequalities promoted by bad development. The book deserves contributions from other absent authors: Barry Commoner in Part Two, about Nature; and in Part One, dealing with ethical values, James O'Connor could have represented a Marxist point of view.

In summary, this book is an excellent resource for students and social and environmental activists. It is not dogmatic: it informs, it stimulates questioning, and it prompts debate. This is what we expect from a good book. The gaps that I have identified in no way detract from its merits. They are merely an invitation to engage in dialogue with representatives from this, the other side of the world.

(Translated by Peter Williams)