Environmental Citizenship 

About this website

In 2004-5 the ESRC funded a seminar series - organised by the Open University and University of Newcastle - to consider the questions:

• What is the relationship between citizenship and environment?
• What are the possibilities and limits of citizenship as a way of promoting sustainability? 

This website and the booklet 'Environmental Citizenship: the Goodenough Primer' are part of the dissemination of insights from that seminar series.  They are intended to generate wider debate and support a growing network of people interested in this area.

Website and booklet produced by Public Space.  Authors: Dr Sherilyn MacGregor and Dr Simon Pardoe (Public Space) with Professor Andrew Dobson and Dr Derek Bell.

About the Seminar Series

Overview  -  Co-ordinators and funding  -  Participants  -  Themes

The seminar series examined the possibilities and limits of citizenship as a way of promoting sustainability.  It brought together political theorists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, geographers, planners and educationalists with policy-makers, representatives of non-governmental organisations and practitioners.  The intention was to begin to develop an integrative and interdisciplinary understanding of the theory and practice of environmental citizenship.

The five seminars were held between November 2003 and May 2005.  Most (but not all) of the participants were based in the UK and the discussions focused primarily on the UK political and environmental policy context.

Co-ordinators and funding

Andrew Dobson is Professor of Politics at the Open University, UK.  He works in the field of environmental political theory, and among his publications in this area are: Green Political Thought (3rd edition) (London: Routledge 2000), Justice and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), and Citizenship and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003).  He has also edited The Green Reader (London: André Deutsch, 1990), The Politics of Nature (with Paul Lucardie) (London: Routledge 1993), and the forthcoming Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge (with Robyn Eckersley) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005), and Environmental Citizenship: getting from here to there? (edited with Derek Bell) ( MIT Press, 2005).

Dr. Derek Bell is Lecturer in Political Thought at Newcastle University. His research interests are in contemporary liberal political philosophy and environmental political thought, with a particular focus on the place of the environment in political liberalism. He is currently leading ESRC-funded projects on 'Deliberating the Environment: Scientists and the Socially Excluded in Dialogue' and 'Citizenship and the Environment'.

Seminar series funded by the ESRC.
(Research Seminars Award: RES-451-26-0044)

Seminar participants

(Participants attended one or more of the five seminars.  The views reported in the dissemination booklet and website should not be taken to represent the views of individual seminar participants.)

• Maria Adebowale  (Capacity)
• Julian Agyeman  (Tufts University)
• Alison Anderson  (Plymouth University)
• Georgina Ayre  (Head of Policy and Research, Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future)
• John Barry (Queen's University, Belfast)
• Derek Bell  (Newcastle University)
• Anna Carr (University of Surrey)
• John Colvin  (Environment Agency, Social Policy Director)
• Helen Chalmers (Environment Agency)
• Anna Davies  (Trinity College, Dublin)
• Patrick Devine-Wright  (De Montfort University)
• Andrew Dobson  (Open University)
• Brian Doherty  (Keele University)
• Rebecca Ellis  (Lancaster University)
• Jake Elster  (LSE)
• Bob Evans  (Northumbria University)
• Steven Gough  (Bath University)
• Caroline Harrop (Newcastle University)
• Anne Haugestad  (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim)
• Maxine Holdsworth  (National Consumer Council)
• Meg Huby  (University of York)
• Jack Jeffery  (Stakeholder Forum; Chair of the Royal Institute for Public Health)
• Sherilyn MacGregor  (Lancaster University)
• Duncan McLaren  (Friends of the Earth Scotland)
• Michael Mason  (LSE)
• Suzanne Moffatt (Newcastle University)
• Tara O'Leary  (Head of Community Action, FoE Scotland)
• Yvonne Rydin  (LSE)
• Eurig Scandrett   (Head of Community Action, FoE Scotland)
• William Scott  (Bath University)
• Mark Smith  (Open University)
• Piers Stephens  (Liverpool University)
• Rebecca Trimnell  (Open University)
• Gordon Walker  (Staffordshire University)
• Claire Waterton  (Lancaster University)
• Jeremy Wates  (Aarhus Convention Secretariat)