The scale and severity of the environmental challenges we face are quickly becoming apparent. The Indian Ocean region features many places that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation and climate change, which will have profound social, economic, and cultural impacts. The increasing preoccupation with the state of the environment is also having significant political effects, including on the concept and content of citizenship. The language of citizenship has permeated environmental discourse and, conversely, environmental issues are often articulated in the language of citizenship. Thus, for example, states around the world are recognizing environmental rights; activists and governments refer to our duties to the environment; and corporations present themselves as good environmental citizens; all the while citizens are exhorted to ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle’. These three political actors – states, citizens, and corporations – are being drawn into addressing our serious environmental predicament. In the process, traditional formulations of citizenship are being deployed and transformed, and new ones are gradually emerging (Cao, Citation2015, pp. 72–103); and scholars have begun to consider the political implications of environmental challenges and ecological values under a new field of study called environmental citizenship.
This special edition of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (JIOR) focuses on environmental citizenship and civil society responses to environmental challenges in the Indian Ocean region. The significance of environmental citizenship as an emerging field of study is well established by now (e.g. Cao, Citation2015; Dobson, Citation2004; Dobson & Bell, Citation2006; Latta & Wittman, Citation2012; Smith & Pangsapa, Citation2008), but there is a dearth of research on environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean context. This volume aims to improve our understanding of the intersections between environment and citizenship and showcase their manifestations across this vast region, from Mauritius to Malaysia. The research presented here is informed by the desire to understand and the need to address the environmental challenges facing the peoples of the Indian Ocean. We hope the articles included in this edited collection provide practical insights to improve resilience and adaptation, as well as useful conceptual insights into the nature of environmental citizenship discourse and practice in the Indian Ocean region.
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The volume opens with an article by Victor Savage and Lin Qi Feng that sets the context for this special edition. Their piece calls for a profound transformation – a metamorphosis – to tackle the environmental predicament of the Indian Ocean region. Their climate change adaptation program contains five suggestions to survive and thrive under climate change: enhancing regional cooperation; integrating indigenous traditions and folk science; embracing the region’s terraqueous geography; creating inland developmental corridors; and ensuring sustainable urban development. Savage and Lin advocate a new paradigm of human-nature relations, informed by indigenous knowledges and based on a terraqueous geography of water, soils and wetlands – one that can generate and sustain new productive activities and facilitate diasporic movements throughout the region. Theirs is in many ways a radical and ambitious proposition, but one that is well suited to a time of existential challenges. Moreover, their concept of terraqueous geography could help us rethink the spatial dimension of environmental citizenship within and beyond the Indian Ocean region.
The article by Erika Techera shifts the focus to environmental stewardship and fisheries governance. Her contribution is also rich in suggestions, derived from a comparative analysis of regulatory frameworks of small-scale fisheries in six Indian Ocean states: three littoral states (Tanzania, Kenya, and Bangladesh) and three island states (Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka). Her starting point is the notion that inclusive governance (e.g. civil society engagement and citizen participation in institutions, laws and processes) is essential to address the ongoing challenge of balancing conservation and sustainable fishing. Techera examines the extent to which national fisheries legislation in those states supports public participation in fisheries governance, looking at its three elements: decision-making (i.e. public participation itself), access to information, and access to justice. The article is only a foundational study, but a very useful and important one at that, not least because it provides a sound methodology that can inspire and drive further research; but also because her analysis draws out best practice provisions that can serve to advance fisheries governance in the region, and beyond. To the extent that fisheries governance through public participation reflects the integration of citizens into environmental management, this line of research can also advance environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean region.
Public participation is also at the heart of Rita Rambaree’s contribution. Her article presents a case study of company engagement with civil society in coastal communities in Mauritius. Rambaree works with concepts and realities that are not typically presented together: ecosocial work and corporate social responsibility. Her article shifts the focus of the volume to environmental justice, drawing heavily on Karen Bell’s (Citation2014) work on this field to explore the potential of delivering ecosocial work through corporate social responsibility. Rambaree examines the extent to which corporate social responsibility projects in Mauritius deliver on the three dimensions of environmental justice: distributive, substantive, and procedural. Her findings suggest that such projects can have positive social and environmental impacts, but these seem to be limited to employment (through training) and advocacy (through capacity building). However, where others might emphasize limitations and view corporate initiatives as exercises in greenwashing, Rambaree highlights possibilities and advocates for a more collaborative approach to corporate social responsibility. This opens up an intriguing set of questions (and line of research) about the role of the private sector in articulations of environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean region – not least because the environmental dimension of corporate social responsibility is driving companies to embrace the language of environmental citizenship (see Cao, Citation2015, pp. 181–188). Yet, as Rambaree points out, inequalities and substantial issues are difficult to address through corporate social responsibility. Indeed, as one of her interviewees notes: looking after the community is ultimately the state’s duty.
The state and political elites are at the heart of Ramya Tella’s contribution. Her article revisits our environmental predicament – this time in terms of the Anthropocene. Tella explains how this new (albeit contested) geological epoch is forcing us to rethink the law. Drawing upon an intricate articulation of theoretical perspectives to present a discussion of law and climate change through the voices of Indian elites, the article shows how Indian climate elites use the Indian Constitution to underwrite narratives of Indianness. These elites, whilst appreciating the need for a cosmopolitan approach to climate change (framed as a planetary crisis), reassert the nation-state as the paramount political community, and deploy exclusionary forms of identity to address climate change in India. This nationalist construction converges with articulations of postcolonial modernity – only that rather than puncture the nationalist narrative, these articulations serve to negate other sub-national voices (activists and refugees). In other words, activists who challenge the environmental credentials of the Indian state, and displaced peoples from climate breakdown (climate refugees), become the victims of an official environmental citizenship discourse underpinned by an exclusionary conception of Indianness. Tella’s article not only provides a critical engagement with environmental citizenship but – alongside the papers by Simpson and Rahman – it also brings the concept to the forefront of this special edition of JIOR.
The critical engagement with the concept of environmental citizenship is also central to Ian Simpson’s contribution. His article takes as critical look at the way in which environmental citizenship is deployed as a political instrument in the Arab Gulf states, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), revealing the contradictions of environmental citizenship in the Arabian littoral. Simpson examines the ways in which labor relations and discourses of environmental citizenship enable or foreclose environmental reform in the Arab Gulf states. His work shows how the citizen-foreigner distinction structures the allocation of rights and duties – although this does not translate into substantial environmental rights afforded to citizens. Instead, the state uses the discourse of environmental citizenship to promote a neoliberal conception of environmental citizenship, one that treats citizens (and non-citizens) as economic units. In other words, environmental citizenship is used to promote a discourse of individual responsibility that manufactures green consumers as the ideal environmental citizens (see Cao, Citation2017). His analysis also reveals how national identity, in the form of cultural heritage, limits the transformative potential of environmental citizenship by naturalising exploitative relations between citizens (consumers) and foreigners (producers), and marginalizing trans-regional social intermingling in the Arabian littoral. If Tella’s and Simpson’s articles are anything to go by, there is a long road ahead before the region is ready to embrace the terraqueous geography advocated by Savage and Lin.
The volume ends with an uplifting article that traces the development of Kelab Alami, a community organization established in Malaysia in 2008. Their story is told and examined by one of its founders, Serina Rahman. Her piece has a distinctive personal voice, and is grounded on the author’s experience and knowledge of Kelab Alami. Rahman recounts how Kelab Alami evolved from an environmental education club for the local youth to an organization that uses environmental citizenship as the basis for engagement with business, government agencies, and other stakeholders. In its first phase, the youth were trained as citizen scientists, habitat monitors, and community researchers, relying to an important degree on local and traditional ecological knowledge. In a second phase, the youth were trained as ecotourism guides, providing a source of income, and expanding their impact by sharing their understanding of the local natural environment with others. Kelab Alami’s engagement with authorities and developers during the second phase echoes the calls for collaborative approaches in Rambaree’s article. Notwithstanding the challenges ahead, this is ultimately a story of empowerment that offers a model of action which other communities might be able to adapt and adopt. In essence, Kelab Alami is a wonderful grassroots, community-driven, illustration of environmental citizenship at work in the Indian Ocean region.
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Environmental citizenship is an idea whose time has come, and there is no question that our environmental predicament will shape what it means to be a citizen in the twenty-first century (Cao, Citation2013). This collection of articles showcases the complex field of environmental citizenship, alongside closely related concepts, such as environmental governance, environmental education, environmental justice, and corporate social responsibility. The volume provides a rich, diverse and multidimensional portrait of environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean context. The articles explore all major geographical dimensions of citizenship: global (Savage and Lin); regional (Savage and Lin, and Simpson); national (Techera, Rambaree, Tella, and Simpson); and local (Rahman). They also explore hybrid political spaces: transnational and trans-regional (Simpson), and the terraqueous geography articulated by Savage and Lin. The explored territories extend across the region, including island states (Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka), and littoral states in Africa (Tanzania, and Kenya), Asia (India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia), and the Arab Gulf (UAE). The articles examine the three main actors of environmental citizenship: states (Techera, Tella, and Simpson); citizens (Savage and Lin, Simpson, and Rahman); and corporations (Rambaree). Last but not least, they explore the three main elements of citizenship: membership, understood in terms of status, identity and/or political community (Savage and Lin, Tella, Simpson, and Rahman); rights (Techera, Rambaree, and Simpson); and duties (Rambaree, and Simpson). The dominant themes across the volume are public participation and civil society engagement. These were the intended focus of this special issue all along, but they are also themes that reflect a broader push to articulate citizenship not as passive status but as active practice.
The call for papers proposed a comprehensive list of topics associated with environmental citizenship, including different actors, elements, dimensions, and articulations, many of which are explored in this volume: environmental activism (Rahman); environmental governance (Techera, and Simpson); constitutional texts (Tella); indigenous citizenship (Savage and Lin); corporate citizenship (Rambaree); and environmental pedagogies (Rahman). Yet this collection of articles has only scratched the surface of what is happening in the region, and thus of what can be explored through the lens of environmental citizenship. Indeed, this volume leaves many important issues untouched, or only briefly touched upon, such as: climate refugees (briefly explored by Tella); food citizenship (indirectly explored by Techera); and the rights of nature (evoked by Savage and Lin). I hope this special edition of JIOR has gone some way to enhance our collective knowledge and inspire further research on the discursive and practical articulations of environmental citizenship in the Indian Ocean region.
Disclaimer
The contents of this journal are based exclusively on the views of the authors and in no way do these views reflect the views of the IORG Inc., IORAG, IORA, or its member states.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Chief Editor, Prof Tim Doyle, for entrusting me with the edition of this special issue, and the Commissioning Editor, Dr Adela Alfonsi, for her invaluable assistance throughout the whole process. I would also like to thank the authors for their contributions and their diligent engagement at the different stages of this project. Last but not least, I would like to extend a special thank you to the peer reviewers. Their generous, substantial and constructive feedback has enhanced each and every paper, and consequently this special edition of JIOR.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Benito Cao is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Adelaide. He has a vast teaching experience in a wide range of areas, including political theory, security studies, international relations, and European politics; and has received numerous teaching awards. He has published in the fields of political culture, identity politics, critical thinking, citizenship studies, and environmental politics, and is the author of Environment and Citizenship (Routledge, 2015).
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References
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