Liberal Citizenship, Republican Citizenship, and Environmental Challenges
MA Thesis PhilosophySpecialization: Philosophical Perspectives on Politics and the Economy Author: Xiran Zheng
Student number: s2257122 Word count: 15410 Supervisor: Dr. W.F. Kalf
Second reader: Prof. dr. F.A.J. de Haas Leiden, July 2019
Introduction
A healthy environment is an essential foundation for human life. It provides us with the goods and services that we need to survive and thrive, like drinking water, clean air, food, energy, and a livable climate. However, in the past decades, many human behaviors are putting the planet under enormous pressures: people are depleting the Earth’s natural resources, polluting its air and water, destabilizing the climate, and driving many of its species to extinction. According to the annual report of the United Nations Environmental Program in 2018, the well-being of human and non-human beings is now under a variety of environmental threats. For example, global warming has already caused many climate-related disasters like wildfires and heatwaves; hazardous chemicals released as by-product into the environment makes people and animals suffer; dirty air shortens lives and is causing public health crises in many parts of the world; nutrient over-enrichment of land and water is causing shifts in ecosystems and a significant loss of biodiversity (UN Environment 2018). In addition to these manifested problems, there are some hidden threats to sustainability, like a shrinking availability of land and water for food production, the health and productivity problem of the oceans, the risks associated with the profound changes occurring in the Arctic (Worldwatch Institute 2015). All these environmental threats are urging people to think: how to deal with these environmental challenges?
In academia and policy, economic analyses have been applied to environmental issues. According to the traditional cost-benefit analysis, if a particular environmental project can
produce net benefit, then it will be said as a worthy project (Gardiner 2011, 250). Besides, science has been expected to provide or at least suggest solutions to these environmental problems. For example, pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuel may be reduced if the scientists invent a kind of clean fuel as alternative energy. However, I do not think that science and economics are enough for tackling environmental problems. I agree with Gardiner who argues that environmental challenges are also bringing “a number of serious, and mutually reinforcing, problems, which creates an unusual and perhaps unprecedented challenge” to existing political theories (Gardiner 2011, 7). For example, environmental crises are pushing people to think political and moral questions like what are the rights of future generations and what are our obligations towards them, how to tackle global environmental challenges through international cooperation, how to relate these discussions in academia to environmental decisions in practical politics et cetera.
While a connection between political theory and environmental concerns can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle, a self-conscious field of inquiries into environmental issues have primarily emerged in political theory in the late 1980s (Meyer 2008). In these discussions on environmental issues, one important category of work is the study of political concepts from a “green” perspective (Gabrielson et al. 2016). Environmental issues are leading people to reconsider political concepts which permeate political discourse, like rights, justice, property, and democracy. For example, environmental problems suggest that the concept of right needs to be deployed beyond the context of human beings to the context of animals. In this thesis, I will examine the recent study of this category: the study of the concept of citizenship from a green perspective.
I think citizenship is an essential concept in the discussions of environmental issues because it is intimately related to the environmental rights and environmental duties a person has, as a member of a particular political community. By citizenship, I mean a concept composed of three dimensions (Cohen 1999). First, citizenship as a legal status defines the citizen as the legal person who is free to act according to the law and has a set of legally specified rights. Second, citizenship as a political agency defines the citizen as an active participant in political
life, exercising civic responsibilities and obligations. Third, citizenship as a form of membership provides the citizen with a civic identity in a political community. I find that all these elements of citizenship are linked to essential aspects of the debates about environmental challenges, which are environmental rights, environmental obligations, and civic identity associated with these rights and duties. It has been argued that in order to tackle environmental challenges, it is crucial to for people to press environmental claims as rights (Christoff 1996; Dean 2001; Eckersley 1996), and it is essential to take environmental duties and responsibilities (Barry 2012; Bell 2005; Dobson 2006; Smith 1998). Besides, it has been noticed that what kinds of environmental rights and duties people have usually depend on which political community these people belong to (Barry 2012; Christoff 1996; Dobson 2006; Slaughter 2005).
Many political theorists have proposed new conceptions of citizenship with explicit green concerns and associated them with comprehensive political doctrines, like liberalism (Bell 2005; Christoff 1996; De-Shalit 2000; Dobson 2006; Hailwood 2004; Stephens 2001; Wissenburg 1998), republicanism (Barry 2012; Cannavò 2012; Curry 2000) or communitarian (Kenis 2016). However, as Barry points out, “this extension of environmental citizenship is evidence of it being open to a wide variety of interpretations, not all of which are reconcilable with one another” (Barry 2006, 21). Therefore, I think it is worth exploring the possible tensions and contradictions between these different theories of citizenship. In this thesis, I try to figure out which conception of citizenship is more capable of providing theoretical resources to formulate solutions to environmental challenges, and in this sense, more capable of dealing with environmental challenges. My central aim is to show that republican citizenship is more capable of tackling environmental problems than liberal citizenship.
There are three main reasons why I focus on liberal and republican citizenships, rather than other citizenships. First, much of the contemporary normative literature on citizenship is dominated by the liberal and civic republican frameworks. Second, liberal citizenship as part of the dominant political theory, liberalism, has a significant influence on the discussions of environmental issues. Third, I think republican citizenship can provide different insights into
how to cope with environmental challenges since republicanism has deep connections with green theories.
The strategy I will use in this thesis is to make comparisons between one specific version of liberal citizenship and one of republican citizenship, which are “green republican citizenship” proposed by John Barry (2012) and liberal “ecological citizenship” developed by Andrew Dobson (2006)1. Since both liberal and republican theories are composed of many strands and
their essential cores are highly contested, I think this strategy makes comparisons between liberal and republican citizenships feasible. Besides, I think by adopting this strategy, the real potential of liberal or republican citizenship in tackling environmental crises could be explored: Barry’s and Dobson’s theories are selected because I find they are capable of tackling environmental challenges within republican and liberal frameworks respectively. As for the method for making comparisons, I have selected several specific criteria and plan to compare Barry’s and Dobson’s theories according to these criteria one by one. More specifically, this thesis is structured as follows.
In the first chapter, I will show the connections between the concept of citizenship per se and environmental issues, by introducing three dimensions of citizenship and showing their connections with the discussion of environmental concerns. I will also explain in detail why republican and liberal citizenships are worthy of distinct examination and why I choose to use the strategy mentioned above to compare them.
In the second chapter, I will spell out Dobson’s ecological citizenship. I will focus on two distinct elements of ecological citizenship, which I think render his theory capable of coping
1 It is worth noting that Dobson distinguishes the term “ecological citizenship” from “liberal citizenship”
in his work Citizenship and the Environment (2006). By “liberal citizenship,” he means right-based conceptions of liberal citizenship (I will discuss this in the first chapter). By “ecological citizenship,” he means the conception of citizenship he proposes with distinct characteristics like non-contractual and non-reciprocal (I will explain this in detail in the second chapter). However, since Dobson mainly discusses ecological citizenship in the context of liberalism, I think his ecological citizenship also belongs to liberal citizenship in a general sense.
with environmental crises as a liberal theory. One element is his emphasis on ecological civic obligations. Another element is the justification he provides for teaching ecological citizenship in liberal educational systems.
In the third chapter, I will explain Barry’s green republican citizenship. I will discuss the substantive concerns for the environment that Barry finds in republicanism, and the republican civic duty to achieve sustainability that Barry emphasizes. I will also discuss a kind of practices of green republican citizenship that Barry defends, called civic sustainability services (Barry 1999, 2012).
After explaining one particular version of liberal citizenship and one of republican citizenship, I will move to the fourth chapter: the comparisons between these two citizenships. Due to the limit of space, I will only endorse four criteria for the comparisons. First, does the theory has the ability to include global civic obligations? Second, does the fulfillment of civic obligations, the obligations incorporated in this theory, bring great positive effects to the environment? Third, can the education for this citizenship be delivered effectively? Fourth, does the theory give a good explanation about the motivations to fulfill civic obligations towards the environment? I will compare the capacity of Dobson’s and Barry’s conceptions to deal with environmental challenges according to these criteria one by one, along with explanations of why I think these criteria are essential, rather than arbitrarily chosen. I will show that according to the first criterion, liberal citizenship and green republican citizenship are equally capable, while according to the rest three criteria, green republican citizenship shows greater capacity to deal with environmental problems than ecological citizenship. In the conclusion part, I will summarize the results of the comparisons.
Chapter 1 Citizenship and Environmental Issues
From the late 1980s onward, political theories focusing on environmental concerns have been significantly developed. In these green or environmental political theories, the study of citizenship constitutes a recognizable part: many theorists have proposed conceptions of “green”
“environmental” or “ecological” citizenship2. These conceptions are usually very different from
each other because they are embedded within distinct comprehensive political doctrines, like liberalism, republicanism, or communitarianism. In this thesis, I will argue that republican citizenship is more capable of dealing with environmental challenges than liberal citizenship. In this chapter, I will first give a general definition of citizenship as a concept composed of three dimensions, and show the connections between this concept and the discussions of environmental issues. Second, I will explain why liberal and republican citizenships are two theories specifically worthy of attention among many theories of citizenship. I will also explain the strategy I will use to make the comparisons between liberal and republican citizenship.
1. Three Dimensions of Citizenship and Environmental Issues
A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. Kymlicka and Norman points out that “almost every problem in political philosophy involves relations among citizens or between citizens and the state” (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, 353). I think in the discussions of environmental issues in political theories, all the three dimensions of citizenship, which are citizenship as a legal status, citizenship as a political agency, and citizenship as a membership, are all deeply involved.
First, citizenship as a legal status is involved with environmental rights. In the dimension of citizenship as a legal status, the citizen is the legal person who is free to act according to the law and has a set of legally specified rights, like the right to claim the law’s protection. It is conceivable that when the environmental rights of citizens are protected by the law, like the right for fresh air and clean water, many actions which produce damages on the environment will not be allowed by the law for these actions violate people’s environmental rights. However, in reality, the public interest in environmental protection is often traded off against more immediate economic demands. For example, if the costs of an environment protection project
2 Environmental citizenship has been widely used. Ecological citizenship is less common but can be
seen in Christoff (1996), Smith (1998), and Dobson (2006). As for the idea of green citizenship, it can be found in Dean (2001), Gabrielson (2008) and Barry (1999, 2012). In this thesis, when not referring to a specific conception of citizenship, I will use “environmental citizenship” to denote this sort of conceptions of citizenship.
outweigh its immediate benefits, then such costs may be used as an adequate defense in actions based on the infringement of environmental rights. It suggests that it is necessary to make specific environmental claims non-negotiable by pressing them as environmental rights. Questions like what particular environmental rights citizens have and how to justify these rights have been discussed by political theorists (Bell 2005; Christoff 1996; Dean 2001; Eckersley 1996).
Second, citizenship as a political agency is related to citizens’ environmental duties and responsibilities. In the dimension of citizenship as a political agency, the citizen is defined as an active participant in the decision-making and policy-making in political institutions. Given that in reality, many decisions and policies made by citizens are not environmental-friendly, many theorists pay attention to the attitudes and conducts of citizens. Discussions about the civic duties and responsibilities to the environment constitute one important part of the discussions of environmental challenges. Many political theorists have been working on questions like what kinds of environment obligations a citizen should be required to fulfill, what civic virtues are needed for the fulfillment of these obligations, how to motivate citizens to fulfill these environmental obligations et cetera (Barry 1999, 2012; Bell 2002; Dobson 2006; Smith 1998).
Third, citizenship as a form of membership provides people with a civic identity, which is associated with a specific set of environmental rights and environmental duties. What kinds of environmental rights and obligations that people have are dependent on which political community these people belong to. Only when people are treated as a full member in a particular political community, they will be entitled to specific civic rights and be required to take specific civic responsibilities and duties. This membership component is often seen as “exclusionary” for it is a special and privileged status based on considerations regarding access to such a status (Cohen 1999, 250). This exclusiveness of membership is posing interesting questions to theorists in the context of globalization. For example, there have been debates on whether the distribution of environmental rights or obligations should be decided on a territorial basis (Christoff 1996; Dobson 2006; Gabrielson 2008; Slaughter 2005).
In sum, citizenship as a legal status and citizenship as a political agency are related to environmental rights and obligations, which are both important discussions regarding the solutions to environmental problems. As for citizenship as membership, it is related to specific inquiries into environmental rights and environmental obligations in the context of global ecological crises. Next, I will explain why I focus on liberal citizenship and republican citizenship.
2. Two Theories of Citizenship and Environmental Issues
There are three main reasons why I decide to focus on liberal and republican citizenships. The first one is based on the fact that they belong to two main traditions of citizenship respectively. However, given that there are also other conceptions of citizenship in the discussion of environmental issues, it still seems arbitrary that I choose these two conceptions. Therefore, I will give two further reasons to explain why in the area of environmental problems, I find liberal and republican citizenships are especially worthy of examination. Now, I will explain these reasons one by one in detail.
First, discussions about citizenship usually have, as their point of reference, the republican model or the liberal model. Therefore, it is worth considering two influential contemporary theories of citizenship, which are rooted in the liberal tradition and the republican tradition respectively. The republican model’s sources can be found in the writings of authors like Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, and Rousseau, and in the historical experiences like Athenian democracy, Republican Rome and Italian Renaissance state-cities. In the republican tradition, a citizen is typically defined as a political being with the capacity to self-rule, that is to say, republican citizenship usually emphasizes one dimension of citizenship mentioned above: citizenship as a political agency. For example, while classical republican citizenship often requires citizens to participate in preserving the Republic from both internal and external threats, contemporary republicans usually call for more involvements in political activities like the deliberation of common goods.
As for the liberal model of citizenship, it can be traced back to the juridical practices in the Roman Empire like the law made by the Roman jurist Gaius (Pocock 1998), and the early-modern reflection on Roman Law like the works of Bodin and Montesquieu (Walzer 1989). In the liberal tradition, a citizen is often defined as a member of a legal community who is free to act by law and free to ask the law’s protection, that is to say, the liberal citizenship usually emphasizes citizenship as a legal status. One often-cited liberal conception of citizenship is articulated by T. H Marshall (1950), a sociologist who identifies the expansion of citizenship with the expansion of rights from civic to political and to social and economic rights. He argues that citizenship is a matter of ensuring everyone as a full and equal member of society, and this aim can be achieved by according citizen an increasing number of civic rights.
Second, it is essential to examine liberal citizenship because liberalism is a political theory that has gained the “dominant position” and has produced significant influence not only in academia but also in practice (Dryzek et al. 2011, 72). It may be argued that liberalism with its reluctance to regulate the economic process perpetuates ecological harm produced in the process, or western liberal democracies are unable to provide a lasting solution to environmental crises. However, it is noteworthy that there is a distinction between liberalism as a political theory and the practices ascribed to liberalism3. It suggests that even though certain practices of liberalism
are judged as detrimental to the environment, it is not necessarily the case that liberalism as a political philosophy is incompatible with green intentions. Some liberal theorists have already been working on “greening” liberalism and trying to show how liberalism can make room for environmental concerns while still being recognizably liberal. For example, Wissenburg (2001) proposes a “restrained principle,” and Wallack (2004) introduces a “minimum irreversible harm principle” as liberal-based guiding principles to deal with ecological problems. I believe that for people who still cherish the values of liberal theory or see the significant influence of it,
3 Wissenburg (2006) gives an example to explain this distinction between the theory of liberalism and
the practices of liberalism. He points out that it is true that classical liberalism supports the idea of a free market. However, it does not mean that any existing free markets or any of their effects are desirable from a liberal perspective. For example, involuntary exploitation of humans through slavery in the free market is not.
whether liberal citizenship as part of liberal theory is capable of dealing with environmental issues is worthy of consideration.
People may argue that even though liberalism as a political theory has significant influence, it is not the case for liberal citizenship. Since liberalism usually emphasizes people as individuals rather than members of a particular political community, citizenship is not always given a central place in liberalism. However, in the current discussions about environmental issues, liberal citizenship is one of the focal topics. As Stephens (2016) observes, in the early 2000s, liberals mainly debated on the value of nature and the potential of Rawlsian neutralist style of liberalism to encapsulate green concerns, while recently works on these themes attract “relatively little commentary” (Stephens 2016, 65). The focus of debates has been shifted to the concept of citizenship since many liberals from different camps in the previous debates have recognized the importance of citizenship.
Third, I choose to compare liberal citizenship with republican citizenship, rather than other citizenships because there are deep historical and theoretical relations between republicanism and green theories, suggesting that republican theory of citizenship can bring different insights into how to address environmental problems. Historically, some environmental values may have partly derived from republicanism. For example, it has been observed that civic republicanism was prominent in the United States during the Revolutionary and Founding eras (1763–1824) and the American environmentalism partly grew out of Jeffersonian republicanism in the mid-nineteenth century (Cannavò 2010). Theoretically, green theories and republicanism share many similarities. For example, many green theorists cherish the goods of nature and encourage people to fulfill their duty to preserve those goods, for creating a community where these goods can be secured and enjoyed by its members collectively. The non-neutral attitude towards common goods, the emphasis on duties, and the emphasis on the flourishing of the community can all be found in republicanism (Cannovò 2016).
In summary, the reasons for comparing liberal and republican citizenships rather than other citizenships are given from two perspectives. From the perspective of citizenship, these two
conceptions represent two main traditional models of citizenship. From the perspective of environmental issues, the liberal citizenship belongs to a widely accepted political theory which has a significant influence on the discussions of environmental problems, while the republican citizenship belongs to a political tradition which has deep connections with green ideas.
Before entering a detailed exploration of liberal and republican citizenships, it is necessary to explain the strategy that I will use in the comparison between these two theories. As I mentioned in the introduction, my strategy is to only focus on one specific kind of republican citizenship and one of liberal citizenship, which I think are both very capable in dealing with environmental challenges. One reason for choosing this strategy is that both liberal and republican theories are composed of many strands, and their essential cores are highly contested. Thus, it is not feasible to find the essential core of their theories of citizenship and discuss them in general. Another reason is that by adopting this strategy, the real potential of liberal or republican citizenship in coping with environmental problems could be explored. In other words, the kind of “unfair” and not very meaningful comparisons could be avoided, like a comparison between particular liberal citizenship with few green implications and particular republican citizenship with explicit ecological concerns. In the second chapter, I will spell out the specific version of liberal citizenship that I plan to focus on, which is Dobson’s theory of ecological citizenship. In the third chapter, I will explain the main ideas of the particular version of republican citizenship I have selected, which is Barry’s theory of green republican citizenship.
Chapter 2 Liberal Citizenship and Environmental Challenges
In this chapter, I first will review the previous discussions on the compatibility between liberalism and environmental values and goals. I will primarily focus on the possible limiting factors in liberalism for its capacity to deal with environmental challenges: the ignorance of civic obligations and the commitment to liberal-neutrality. In the second part, I will explain Dobson’s ideas of ecological citizenship, mainly his non-contractual and non-reciprocal understandings of ecological civic obligations. In the third part, I will show how Dobson justifies the teaching of ecological citizenship in the formal educational systems in liberal states that claim to be neutral to competing conceptions of the good.
1. Liberalism and Environmental Problems
There have been debates over the possibilities of synthesizing liberalism with environmental values and goals. Many liberalists argue that liberalism is at least not incompatible with environmental concerns (Bell 2002; De-Shalit 1995, 2000; Eckersley 1996; Hailwood 2004; Stephens 2001; Wissenburg 1998, 2001). For example, De-Shalit (1995) gives four reasons why liberalism can be a fertile ground for ecological attitude and environmental deliberation. First, liberalism cares about respect for others as equals, and such respect may be extended to non-human species in the natural environment. Second, liberals always put different positions, values, and ideas under critical scrutiny and are proponents of openness and tolerance, which gives room for the different opinions on environmental issues. Third, the defense of individual rights is also a liberal tradition, and thus fighting against unsustainable practices which ignore individual rights is allowed by liberal states. Fourth, liberalism embodies a strong belief in a multilateral agreement, and it enables liberals to take international relations as a sphere for treating existing environmental damage (De-Shalit 1995, 288-292). I think while the first, third, and fourth features that De-Shalit gives may be contestable or not particularly belong to liberalism, the second one he gives is a characteristic mainly of liberalism. Many environmental theories have indeed emerged, like eco-centrism, partly due to the open and tolerant attitudes towards different ideas.
However, this characteristic of liberalism does not indicate that liberalism is capable of tackling environmental problems: tolerant attitudes towards different ideas also leave room for non-green or anti-non-green ideas. In fact, many liberalists acknowledge that some elements in liberalism limit the capacity of liberalism to tackle environmental challenges. In this part, I will discuss two elements which are usually taken as limiting elements and are especially pertinent to the discussions of citizenship. The first one is the ignorance of civic obligations, and the second one is the commitment to liberal neutrality. Let me explain these two possible limiting factors one by one.
First, liberal citizenship only has a limited capacity to tackle environmental challenges if this citizenship ignores civic obligations. Liberal citizenship is often characterized as right-based
and passive: it usually emphasizes the citizen as a legal status carrying a significant range of rights but only thin obligations, and it seems that a liberal citizen only needs to sit back and claim the rights that are due to him as a citizen. However, a mere emphasis on the passive acceptance of civic rights is not enough for tackling environmental challenges. As Kymlicka and Norman point out, the importance of caring about the conduct of citizens is made clear by a set of political events, like the failure of environmental policies that rely on voluntary citizen cooperation (Kymlicka and Norman 1994, 352-353). It suggests that in order to ease environmental crises, a passive and right-based conception of citizenship needs to be supplemented with the active exercise of citizenship, which concerns the duties and responsibilities of citizens.
Second, many prominent figures in liberal-green debate define the liberal state by its neutrality (Bell 2002, 2005; Hailwood 2004; Wissenburg 1998, 2001), but a commitment to liberal-neutrality is usually seen as limiting the capacity of liberalism to tackle environmental crises. By liberal-neutrality, I mean the kind of “substantive state neutrality” that Bell describes: “the state must not offer (or accept) comprehensive arguments as justifications for policy” (Bell 2002, 718). More specifically, liberalism is often seen as defending the liberty to live the life of one’s choice, and as requiring the state to remain impartial concerning individual conceptions of the good. Since environmental citizenship implies a substantive conception of the good including an understanding of a good citizen and a good environment, the teaching of environmental citizenship in the formal educational systems may be seen as unjustified because it undermines liberal-neutrality. However, since citizenship is not something that people are born with and schools are important places for teaching citizenship, the teaching of environmental citizenship in schools is essential for dealing with environmental challenges. If the teaching of environmental citizenship in state-sponsored schools is taken as unjustified in liberal societies, then the capacity of liberal citizenship to tackle environmental challenges is limited.
It is clear now that the capacity of liberal citizenship to deal with environmental challenges will be limited if the citizenship ignores civic obligation, or it takes the delivering of environmental
citizenship in public schools as a violation of liberal-neutrality. It suggests that for liberalists who want to propose a conception of citizenship, which is very capable of tackling environmental challenges, they need to take civic obligations and liberal-neutrality into serious considerations. Next, I will consider Dobson’s theories of ecological civic obligations, then his attitudes towards liberal-neutrality.
2. Ecological Citizenship and Its Obligations
Dobson does not accept the right-based and passive liberal citizenship and proposes a new conception of citizenship emphasizing on civic obligations, called ecological citizenship. According to Dobson, the obligations of ecological citizenship have a distinct non-contractual characteristic, and the principal ecological citizenship obligation is to “ensure that ecological footprints make a sustainable, rather than an unsustainable impact” (Dobson 2006, 118-119).
Dobson finds that citizenship is usually regarded as a contract between the citizen and the state: while the citizen can claim rights against the state, citizen needs to undertake to contribute to the state’s ends by fulfilling certain obligations, that is to say, “there is a reciprocity in which rights are earned” (Dobson 2006, 44). However, Dobson thinks that this view relates citizenship too closely to the spheres of trade and exchange, failing to distinct citizenship from other forms of social relationships. He argues that a contract only has a contingent rather than necessary connection with citizenship, and he further proposes that the source of ecological civic obligations is not a contract and should be a concrete relationship between citizens.
For Dobson, one key factor that influences the concrete relationship between citizens is every citizen’s ecological footprint. Dobson points out that people rely on nature in the sense that nature supplies people with raw materials and assimilate people’s wastes. The indicator of this metabolic relationship between a citizen and the goods and services provided by nature to the citizen is often called as the citizen’s ecological footprint (Dobson 2006, 111). The citizen’s ecological footprint will be judged as too large when the citizen produces an unsustainable effect on others: the citizen occupies a particular ecological space in a way that compromises or forecloses the abilities or options important to the other people (including people in the
present and the future) (Dobson 2006, 127)4. Dobson believes that in this case, the citizen owes
ecological space to these people whose right to sufficient ecological space are violated by this citizen, and this citizen has the civic obligations to reduce the size of his ecological footprint.
It is now clear that ecological citizenship obligations are non-contractual in the sense that they are decided by the relationships between the causers of environmental harm and the victims of the harm, rather than by an implicit contract between the citizen and the state. It is also understandable that in which sense these obligations are “non-reciprocal” (Dobson 2006, 167): while those causers of environmental harm should reduce their ecological footprints, the victims do not have the ecological obligation owed reciprocally to those causers.
I find this non-contractual and non-reciprocal understanding of civic obligations makes Dobson’s theory of citizenship very capable of tackling environmental challenges as a liberal theory. First, not only does Dobson emphasize citizenship obligations, but also bases these obligations on solid grounds, the concrete relationships between citizens, which provide a relatively “binding type of reason for obligation” as Dobson himself says (Dobson 2006, 49). Dobson emphasizes that ecological civic obligations are owed in virtue of the citizen’s overlarge ecological footprints. This source of ecological civic obligation implies a reason to fulfill these obligations, that is to be responsible for one’s actions which have already produced a negative impact on others. It is conceivable that if a citizenship theory only arbitrarily lists several civic obligations and claims that citizens should fulfill these obligations, then it is hard to provide a binding type of reason for citizens to take these ungrounded obligations.
Second, Dobson’s ecological civic obligations are global obligations, which is essential for a theory of citizenship to tackle environmental challenges as global challenges. I will discuss this point in the first part of the fourth chapter in detail. Briefly speaking, ecological citizenship
4 As I mentioned in the introduction, Dobson mainly discusses ecological citizenship in the context of
liberalism. Here, based on the liberal idea that people should be free to choose and to live their versions of the good life, Dobson argues that the foreclosure of options should be prevented. He points out that the absence of certain types of physical environment could make it impossible to conceive and live some versions of the good life (Dobson 2006, 162-166).
obligations are not confined with particular political boundaries because the civic obligations are not based on the relationship between the citizen and a political community occupying a specific territory. By fulfilling these obligations beyond political boundaries, citizens participate in solving global environmental problems.
3. Liberal Neutrality and Civic Education
In this part, I will discuss Dobson’s idea attitudes towards liberal neutrality and how he justifies the delivering of ecological citizenship in public schools in liberal societies, without abandoning the commitment to liberal-neutrality. The idea that liberalism is committed to neutrality faces many critiques. One kind of critique points out that certain claims regarding liberal-neutrality are actually value-laden and thus, in fact, undermines the claim itself. For example, Stephens (2001) finds that even though Locke seems to abandon the search for a definitive summum bonum of human life, he praises specific values like the values produced by the labor on the land. Beckman (2001) points out that some liberals believe that liberal states should treat all kinds of lifestyles equally. However, being neutral to different lifestyles is not justified in liberal politics since one’s lifestyle concerns one’s ethical belief about what is good and what is bad. Another critique is that there are many versions of liberalism without a commitment to state-neutrality, indicating that the liberal state is not bound to be neutral. For example, referring to historical researches, Stephens (2001) claims that the neutralist account of liberalism does not always exist in the liberal tradition. He also argues that the non-neutral Millian liberalism is the variant best suited to synthesis with environmentalist values and goals (Stephens 2016).
However, Dobson notices these two kinds of critiques but remains committed to liberal neutrality (Dobson 2006, 159-161). Dobson points out that these two critiques have one common problem, that is their “all-front assault” towards liberal neutrality as a comprehensive doctrine of liberalism (Dobson 2006, 161). He believes that liberal-neutrality can be regarded “as a jewel in liberalism’s crown” since many cherished items in liberalism like the commitment to toleration partly depends on it (Dobson 2006, 161). Therefore, Dobson chooses to keep the neutral version of liberalism and he thinks by this way, liberals can “remain on their
own ground” when considering the possibility of teaching ecological citizenship legitimately (Dobson 2006, 161).
With a commitment to liberal-neutrality, Dobson provides two points to justify the teaching of ecological citizenship in state-sponsored schools in liberal societies. First, given that ecological citizenship is an essential part of the current discussions about citizenship and environmental issues, the liberal education system would violate its neutrality if it particularly omits this part of the discussions (Dobson 2006, 198-200). Dobson argues that only when the current debates of environmental issues are presented to students in a systematic and balanced way, then the civic education being delivered does not partially focus on certain conceptions of citizenship, and in this sense does not violate state-neutrality.
Second, Dobson emphasizes that ecological citizenship curricula should “embrace the full implications of the indeterminate and contested nature of ecological citizenship” (Dobson 2006, 203) and as a result, the education of ecological citizenship is not a delivering of one determinate version of the good. Dobson finds that science cannot answer all the doubt about sustainability because the notion of sustainability is a highly contested normative notion concerning a threshold for being sustainable (Dobson 2006, 146). For example, science may help to decide whether a particular practice can push people over the threshold of being sustainable, while it cannot decide what values should be maintained and how to determine which values should be maintained. Considering that sustainability is a contested normative notion, it is unsurprising that there are many “tensions, ambiguities and contradictions” in current discussions of sustainability (Dobson 2006, 200). Dobson believes that when these tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions are presented to students, the teaching of ecological citizenship is not about teaching an absolute truth or right understanding of sustainability. Therefore, the teaching is not an indoctrination of a determinate version of the good life, and would not undermine liberal-neutrality.
In summary, unlike many liberalists, Dobson does not conclude too quickly that teaching particular citizenship in public schools in liberal societies is incompatible with a liberal
commitment to state-neutrality. Furthermore, he gives a solid justification for teaching ecological citizenship legitimately in liberal societies through formal educational systems, and he keeps state-neutrality as a liberal doctrine with its own merits as well. Besides, as explained in the previous part, Dobson pays sufficient attention to the conduct of citizens by emphasizing civic obligations and responsibilities. I think these two points make his theory of citizenship very capable of tackling environmental problems within the liberal frameworks. Next, I will move to a specific version of republican citizenship proposed by Barry, called green republican citizenship (Barry 2012).
Chapter 3 Republican Citizenship and Environmental Concerns
Many contemporary republicans are especially interested in environmental issues. They are usually devoted to an interpretation of the environmental heritage in classical republican tradition (Cannavò 2010, 2012; Curry 2000), or dedicated to developing insights from the tradition into an attractive contemporary political doctrine with a green perspective (Barry 1999, 2012, 2016; Barry and Smith 2008; Dagger 2006). In the aspect of citizenship, some initial and important work has been done by Barry (2012, 2016).
In this chapter, I will first introduce the republican liberty as non-domination and its connection with the concern for environmental problems, referring to Pettit (1997). I think the connections are essential for understanding the discussions of environmental problems within republican frameworks. Then in the second part, I will explain the basic ideas of Barry’s green republican citizenship, mainly his ideas about the civic duty to achieve sustainability. In the third part, I will discuss one specific practice of green republican citizens that Barry defends, called civic sustainability service. I will focus on its consistency with republicanism and its possible advantages.
1. Republicanism and Environmental Problems
The republican theory was superseded by liberalism in the 19th century, and “hardly figured in political theory” before the early 1960s (Haakonssen 2007, 729). From the 1960s onward, the republican theory started to develop and has experienced a revival since the 1990s, which is
often called as “civic republicanism” or “neo-republicanism” (Pettit 1997; Skinner 1990). For these republicans, the paramount value is the liberty as non-domination, and Pettit has done significant work in developing this idea of liberty.
According to Pettit, domination means that a certain person or group “has the capacity to interfere on an arbitrary basis in certain choices that the other is in a position to make” (Pettit 1997, 52). Pettit emphasizes that what constitutes domination is the fact that the power-bearer has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily in a certain aspect, even if they never interfere or are never going to do so. It means that when a person enjoys liberty as non-domination, he is not subject to a capacity for arbitrary interference by anyone else. In other words, liberty as non-domination means “the absence of non-domination in the presence of other people” (Pettit 1997, 66).
I think the contemporary republican theory is usually seen as compatible with green intentions because it is not difficult to connect environmental problems with domination. For example, Pettit argues that when the damage is done advertently to the environment, it is clear why domination is involved: someone or some group exercises an arbitrary power to harm certain people living in the environment at its pleasure (Pettit 1997,137-138). I think it suggests that people who value liberty as non-domination need to pay attention to environmental problems because they need to be careful about the domination power behind these environmental problems, which poses a threat to their liberty as non-domination.
Furthermore, Pettit also argues that when the damage is done inadvertently, people’s liberty as non-domination is conditioned. According to Pettit, as long as the damage is caused, it assaults “at least on the range of people’s undominated choices” (Pettit 1997,137). I think by undominated choices, Pettit means the choices people can make when no other people can interfere arbitrarily, or to say, in the absence of domination power (Pettit 1997, 76-77). It is conceivable that people living in a damaged environment may lack certain conditions to make particular undominated choices, or they can only make these choices at a higher cost than before. For example, it is imaginable that people would lack natural resources to make certain choices
because of nuclear devastation. In this case, due to the inadvertent damage done to the environment, the undominated choices open to certain people are limited, and these people’s liberty as non-domination is conditioned.
In sum, I think the link that Pettit makes between environmentalism and republicanism explains why people who value liberty as non-domination should care about the environment: both the domination power behind environmental problems and the harm caused by environmental problems are threatening people’s liberty as non-domination. Even though Pettit only discusses environment issues briefly, I think his discussions are vital for understanding Barry’s green republican theory. The reason is that Barry also takes the concern with promoting republican liberty as one key issue, and he often refers to the link between republican liberty and the care for the environment when defending green republican citizenship (Barry 2006, 28).
2. Green Republican Citizenship and Its Obligations
Besides the link between promoting liberty as non-domination and tackling environmental challenges, Barry also finds other substantive concerns for the environment in republican theories. In this part, I will show how he builds his theory of green republican citizenship upon these substantive concerns, especially his theory of civic duties.
First, following the republican tradition, Barry is concerned with the human conditions with the defining features of dependency and vulnerability. As Barry (1999, 2012) finds, classical civic republicans have already realized that citizens are dependent on the natural environment, in the sense that the contingent features of the natural environment shape the possibilities for political actions open to citizens. For example, at the beginning of Discourse of Livy, Machiavelli points out that if people want to have enough resources to secure themselves, they should avoid choosing a sterile place for building cities (Machiavelli 1996, 8). Similar to these classical republicans, Barry emphasizes that every citizen is a concrete person who is embedded within a particular environment and is dependent on the environment. Furthermore, he notices that citizens embedded in different natural environment face a universal situation, that is the vulnerability to nature: the common dependence on nature makes citizens vulnerable to the
unpredictable threats from nature (Barry 2012, 201-204). In a word, Barry believes that “both biological and ecological dimensions of human vulnerability and dependency as constitutive elements of what it means to be human” (Barry 2012, 55).
Second, dependency and vulnerability as essential features of human beings highlight the value of sustainability, which Barry believes is “a central value for republicans” (Barry 2012, 206). Barry notices that for many classical republicans like Machiavelli, politics is an attempt to achieve the aim of “building an enduring and safe home for human lives in a world ruled by contingency and filled with potentially hostile agents” (Barry 2012, 202). However, in the face of many possible threats, the built republic has the feature of fragility. This feature of fragility poses a crucial question for republicans, that is how to achieve the sustainability of the republic. Republicans find that in order to preserve a republic for a relatively long time, citizens need to take the responsibility to maintain the republic through time, which entails an obligation to achieve sustainability owed to the present and also the future generations.
Different from classical republicans, Barry no longer specifically discusses the republic and its sustainability. Instead, he considers how the republican thought can “make a positive contribution to our thinking about the transition from unsustainability” (Barry 2012, 245). Barry takes sustainability as a public good in our current time, and he encourages republican citizens to fulfill their civic duties to achieve sustainability.
A possible critique of this duty-based republican citizenship is that it appears to be too burdensome for citizens. It seems that a good green republican citizen needs to spend much time and energy on fulfilling the obligation to promote a more sustainable society. Therefore, it will be difficult for the citizen to pursue other interests and to do other activities in his life. However, I think the following two points that Barry mentions make this citizenship not that burdensome.
First, Barry does not think that green republicanism requires a commonly held conception of a good life, therefore, to be a responsible green republican citizen does not mean to follow a
standard conception of a good life (Barry 2012, 232). According to Barry, even though republicanism is non-neutral to competing conceptions of goods, it can be compatible with a plurality of goods. In republicanism, there has been a tension between a unitary conception of a common good, which would tend to constrain political deliberation, and an emphasis on open-ended political deliberation (Cannavò 2016; Honahan 2002; Pettit 1997). Barry rejects a priori sense of an overriding common good, and he defends that green republican citizens can participate actively in the open-ended deliberation and contestation to decide which conceptions of good a republican society ought to pursue or prioritize. Based on this understanding of common goods, Barry claims that green republicanism does not demand a citizen’s personal views of sustainability (as a common good) to “conform to some standard or master conceptualization,” as long as these views do not undermine or threaten sustainability (Barry 2012, 232).
Second, Barry does not take active citizenship as a “highest excellence towards which all individuals should strive” or a standard “by which all other modes of human life are to be judged” (Barry 2012, 232). Even though Barry stresses republican citizenship as active citizenship and encourages republican citizens to be active participants in political lives, he does not claim that republican citizens should take the development of their identity as a political participant as the most meaningful thing in their lives. To be a responsible republican citizen does no entail to limit oneself to a narrow range of political opportunities and life experiences.
While Barry argues that this active republican citizenship is not very burdensome, he defends a kind of practice of republican citizenship which also seems to be burdensome, called civic sustainability service (Barry 2006, 2012). In the next section, I will discuss this contestable practice of green republican citizenship, including its consistency with republicanism and its possible advantages.
Civic sustainability services are a kind of practices of green republican citizenship that Barry defends. They are services enforced by the state for sustainable goals, which can take forms of citizens giving up some of their time to engage in sustainability activities, like cleaning up a polluted river, participating in public information initiatives about sustainability and environmental education, working in community-based recycling schemes, working on community farms and so on (Barry 2012, 234).
Barry believes that this idea of civic services is entirely consistent with republican theories. He argues that there is nothing inherently wrong and oppressive about “the state obliging citizens to do things they may not necessarily want to do” if citizens are performing these actions for achieving or maintaining the public or collective good(s) (Barry 2012, 233). Since sustainability is a significant value for republicans and can be taken as a public good or collective good, then it is justified for the state to require citizens to do certain services to maintain this value.
People may worry that the “compulsory” element in these services implies a violation of the citizen’s freedom. I think, in fact, within Barry’s republican frameworks, doing sustainability services can be justified as a way to maintain or promote liberty as non-domination. In the previous part, I explained that environmental problems are deeply involved with domination: while causing harm to the environment advertently subjects certain people to arbitrary power, causing harm to the environment inadvertently limits the range of choices which people have. Therefore, when doing sustainability services, citizens are fighting against the existing unsustainable environmental practices as threats to their freedom. As Barry says, “curbing certain liberties can be justified on the ground of guaranteeing a greater system of liberties” (Barry 2012, 234).
Not only does Barry justify civic sustainability services, but also points out two possible advantages of promoting these services. First, Barry thinks that if the state enforces this civic service, then more citizens will take part in the sustainability activities and may produce more positive effects associated with these services (Barry 2006, 30). Barry finds that even though
there has been tremendous voluntary work aiming at achieving sustainability in the western world, these voluntary actions of citizens does not bring out much progress except in certain areas (Barry 2006, 28). He points out that it is the failure of voluntary work that makes a compulsory path toward sustainability understandable and desirable.
Second, Barry also suggests one “not insignificant” advantage of this compulsory civic service, that is a compulsory scheme enforced by the state can distribute civic services under the guidance of distributive justice principle (Barry 2012, 235). Barry suggests that in a voluntary scheme of civic practices, there are no such explicit distributive rules. It seems unfair that in a voluntary scheme, people who choose to participate in civic services are taking most of the responsibilities to create a sustainable society, even though the responsibility is not especially theirs.
One possible critique concerning the second advantage is that: it is likely the unemployed, the poor and the marginalized end up doing the bulk of this compulsory services, while the rich and the powerful can find sophisticated ways to evade this obligation. Barry agrees that whether compulsory civic sustainability services will bring positive effects depend on many factors, like whether the state which enforces the services is roughly equal and green. However, Barry does not think these possible adverse effects of civic sustainability services undermine the plausibility of these services. He believes that the possible negative effects only highlight the importance of creating a well-designed system of civic services and an equal society where the system can function well (Barry 2012, 235-236).
In summary, Barry’s green republican citizenship has two crucial points. First, green republican citizens are required to take the obligation to maintain sustainability as an essential republican value. Second, Barry defends civic sustainability service as a practice of green republican citizenship. Barry argues that such compulsory service is not inherently opposed to the liberty of citizens and may bring some desirable results, like more civic participation in sustainable activities and a just distribution of civic duties.
Chapter 4 The Comparisons Between Liberal Citizenship and Republican Citizenship After spelling out Dobson’s ecological citizenship and Barry’s green citizenship in the last two chapters, I will turn to assess their capacity to tackle environmental challenges in this chapter. Due to the limit of space, I will only give four criteria that I believe are essential for the assessment. First, does the theory has the ability to include global civic obligations? Second, does the fulfillment of civic obligations, the obligations incorporated in this theory, bring more significant positive effects to the environment? Third, can the education for this citizenship be delivered in a more effective way? Fourth, does the theory give a better explanation about the motivations to fulfill civic obligations towards the environment? In the following parts, I will assess Dobson’s and Barry’s conceptions of citizenship according to these four criteria one by one, along with explanations of why I think each criterion is appropriate and essential, rather than arbitrarily chosen. Roughly speaking, I think according to the first criterion, i.e., the ability to include global civic obligations, liberal citizenship and green republican citizenship are equally capable, while according to the other three criteria, green republican citizenship shows greater capacity than ecological citizenship to deal with environmental challenges.
1. The Ability to Include Global Civic Obligations
The first criterion I have selected is the ability to include global civic obligations, which concerns the form, not the contents of civic obligations. By this criterion, I mean the ability to justify the claim that the citizen as a member of a political community has global civic obligations, “global” in the sense that these obligations are not confined within the territory of the community. In contrast to “global,” I use “territorial” to describe obligation confined within specific political boundaries5. I will first explain in which sense this ability is related to a
theory’s capacity to tackle environmental challenges. Then I will examine whether Dobson’s ecological citizenship and Barry’s green republican citizenship has the ability to include global civic obligations.
5 While the first criterion concerns the form of civic obligations, the second criterion concerns the
contents of civic obligations. Based on the content of an obligation, people usually identify the obligation as positive (the obligation to do something) or negative (the obligation not to do something). I will refer to this distinction between positive and negative obligations in the next part, but not in this part, because global obligations can be either positive or negative, and it is the same case for territorial obligations.
As we know, many environmental problems, like the contamination of the oceans and ozone layer depletion, have an undeniable global characteristic, while it is not necessarily the case for a conception of citizenship to have a global characteristic as well (even though it is possible). As I mentioned in the first chapter, one dimension of citizenship is a form of membership of a political community located in a specific territory, usually the nation-state for contemporary citizenship. This dimension of citizenship is usually associated with environmental rights and environmental obligations: what environmental rights people are entitled with and what environmental obligations people are required to fulfill are dependent on which political community they belong to. It has been argued that many liberal and republican conceptions of citizenship are territorial: civic rights (usually emphasized by liberalists) and civic duties (usually emphasized by republicans) are distributed on a territorial basis, among members of the same political community (Gabrielson 2008; Hanasz 2006; Dobson 2006). Since I have already argued that an active exercise of civic obligations is especially needed for creating a better environment, I will specifically discuss why it is essential for civic obligations to be global.
I think if citizens only have civic obligations owed to other members in the political community they belong to, they do not have civic duties to deal with many environmental problems emerging not within the territory of their political community, and they will perpetuate the existing environmental problems. For example, the trashes produced by people in one country may float to the coast of another country, causing damage to the environment of this country. If these trash producers claim that they are not required to take the responsibility to tackle environmental problem not affecting their fellow citizens, then it is clear that they are not helping cope with the pollution problem. It suggests that if civic obligations are not global, citizens are not required to change their behaviors which impose damage on the environment and bring adverse effects to people outside their communities.
Dobson’s theory has the ability to include global civic obligations because the space of ecological civic obligations is produced by the activities of individuals, rather than “pre-politically given” or fixed as taking the form of a political community like a state or a nation
(Dobson 2006, 117). Dobson does not refer to an ideal of global political community and then claim that every member of this global community is required to do civic obligations at a global level6. According to Dobson’s non-contractual view of ecological civic obligations, these
obligations are not obligations between the citizen and the political authority. Instead, they are owned by ecological citizens whose ecological footprints have a damaging impact on the environment, to citizens who are affected by the damaging impact. Since the impacts of ecological footprints do not necessarily remain within a particular political territory, the corresponding obligation to reduce the unsustainable impacts is not confined within a particular political territory, and in this sense, the ecological civic obligation is global.
Barry’s green republican citizenship seems to be a territorial conception for it is “state-focused” (Barry 2012, 235). For example, civic sustainability services as practices of green republican citizenship are enforced by the state, encouraging citizens to do their bit for the environment. However, the state-based feature of Barry’s green republican citizenship does not imply that green citizenship is confined within the political sphere of a state. As Barry points out, “the primary locus of green citizenship may be territorially defined within the nation-state, the latter does not delimit its scope” (Barry 1999, 235). Next, I will show in which sense Barry’s theory can include global obligations, even though Barry does not talk much about the global feature of green republican citizenship.
Barry mentions that “to be a good green citizen requires expanding one’s sphere of action to transnational and even global levels” (Barry 1999, 236) and I think this requirement for citizens can be justified in his republican theory. Environmental problems are not merely about how people treat nature, and they are also about how people treat each other. As many republicans point out, in many instances, to cause harm to the environment is to undermine the freedom as non-domination of certain people living in the environment (Barry 2012; Pettit 1997; Slaughter
6 Dobson calls citizenship based on this idea “cosmopolitan citizenship.” In order to distinguish his
ecological citizenship from cosmopolitan citizenship, he describes his ecological citizenship as “post-cosmopolitan” (Dobson 2006, 80-81).
2005). The global feature of environmental problems suggests that citizens are facing threats to their liberty as non-domination coming outside the state in which they are living. In order to preserve and promote liberty as non-domination, citizens need to deal with global environmental challenges. Besides, Barry argues that green citizenship has a global feature because the environment “not only includes but also transcends the nation-state” (Barry 1999, 236). Barry emphasizes that human conditions with the characteristics of dependency and vulnerability. Thus, he takes citizens not only as political agents living in the political community but also as human beings embedded within the natural environment. I think it suggests that citizens need to care about the natural environment as a global system, and thus, the political sphere of green republican citizenship is not confined within the state.
Besides, I think green republican citizens can expand their spheres of action to global levels by doing state-based civic sustainability services. As mentioned in the third chapter, the scheme of civic sustainability services is enforced by the state, which suggests that the state can intervene in the design of this scheme. Since requiring citizens to do global civic obligations towards the environment is entirely compatible with a state-focused conception of green republican citizenship, the scheme of civic sustainability services can be designed as aiming to tackle not only local but also global environmental challenges. For example, civic sustainability services may include participating in public information initiatives about the environmental education of global ecological threats, such as climate change. I think by doing these civic services, citizens are also taking civic duties which are not confined with political territories.
In summary, I think both liberal and republican citizenships can include global civic obligations. The space of ecological citizenship is not fixed within a specific political community, and the ecological citizens are encouraged to fulfill global civic obligations towards the environment. As for green republican citizenship, even though this conception is state-centered, it includes a concern for global environmental issues based on the concern for liberty as non-domination and the concern for nature. It is justified to require green citizens to fulfill global civic obligation within the republican framework.
2. The Positive Effects Associated with The Fulfillment of Civic Obligations
In this part, I will assess the capacity of a theory of citizenship to tackle environmental challenges according to a criterion concerning the positive effects associated with the fulfillment of civic obligations. I will examine in fulfilling the obligations required by which theory of citizenship, liberal or republican citizenship, the actions of citizens can bring greater positive effects to the environment. I will argue that the fulfillment of obligations incorporated in Barry’s theory will bring more positive benefits to the environment than that of obligations incorporated in Dobson’s theory.
I think it is not hard to see why this examination is essential for assessing the capacity of liberal and republican citizenships to tackle environmental crises. Active citizenship is essential for creating a better environment because by doing civic duties, citizens can make contributions to creating a better environment. It is evident that the actions of citizens will bring effects to the environment, and the greater positive effects are produced, the better. Therefore, it is worth examining how great positive effects the actions of citizens can bring to the environment in fulfilling civic obligations. While the first criterion concerns the form of civic obligations, the second criterion concerns the substantive content of civic obligations: what actions citizens are required to take are based on the contents of civic obligations.
Before comparing liberal and republican citizenships, I think one point needs to be made, that is in this part, I will mainly focus on the contents of positive obligations incorporated in Dobson’s and Barry’s theories. Based on the content of an obligation, the obligation can be identified as positive or negative. By positive obligation, I mean the obligation to do something, which cannot be fulfilled by inaction. It is in contrast to negative obligation, the obligation not to do something. I mainly consider the contents of positive obligations because, in this part, I mainly examine the benefits associated with an active exercise of citizenship, and also because I think the negative obligation incorporated in Dobson’s theory and Barry’ theory is the same, which is the obligation not to harm the environment. Dobson suggests that every citizen has the obligation not to harm the environment, no matter whether the impact of the citizen’s activities is sustainable or not. He mentions that there is “a general injunction against wanton harm” even
