Politization of ecology and ecological citizenship

During 1970's people were thinking that industrialization would bring an ecologic crisis and therefore, they came up with the idea of creating an ecologic awareness and consciousness within the society in order to find solutions against such crisis. Till then until today, the solutions brought to this matter were all short-termed and "local" scaled solutions. Such short-termed solutions generated without a holistic approach were failed to stop and prevent the ecologic crises which affected all over the world. It is possible to see this fact on the statistical records issued about the deteriorations on the biosphere. Ecologic discussions have been carried out on the basis of human-nature relations. The relationship to be referred on within this study is the mutual complementarity and coherence among the human and nature relations. The basic starting point of this study includes the argument that the human being is not at a superior position over other creatures and that domination or a hierarchical relation may not be imposed over the Mother Nature and that the human being can and should live in harmony with the nature without destroying it. It is a quite indisputable fact that, we the humans, as the responsible ones from ecologic deterioration need to acquire some certain awareness about this problem. Therefore, in democratic societies wherein the political decisions are taken together by the citizens and states, some certain measures are required to be taken in order to prevent the ecologic deterioration. Inter alia such measures, the suggested idea of "ecological citizenship" constitutes the subject-matter of this study. The idea of ecological citizenship is shaped over the rights, instead of duties and includes the relevant liabilities both before the society and nature and it incorporates the awareness of citizenship into ecologic awareness. The literature argues that we have many opportunities in order to prevent the irreversible effects of ecologic crisis and deterioration and in this regard, the government incentives are required. The literature also underlines the need for increasing the political participation by the society and new regulations should be enacted, as well. Thus, by virtue of an ecologic awareness to be created along with a new definition of citizenship, the severe impact of ecologic crisis would also be mitigated. There are numerous studies in the citizenship literature in relation to the ecologic problems. Hence, we will examine the discussions of the literature concerning the "ecological citizenship" in this study.