Environmental Conflict and Democracy in Canada

Book excerpt: The urgent need to resolve conflicts over forests, fisheries, farming practices, urban sprawl, and greenhouse-gas reductions, among many others, calls for a critical rethinking of the nature of our democracy and citizenship. This work aims to move the ideas of green democracy and ecological citizenship from the margins to the centre of discussion and debate in Canada. Environmental Conflict and Democracy in Canada offers sixteen case studies to demonstrate that environmental conflicts are always about our rights and responsibilities as citizens as well as the quality of our democratic institutions. By bringing together environmental politics and democratic theory, this path-breaking collection charts a new course for research and activism, one that reveals the deficits of citizenship and how democracy must be extended to achieve a socially just, ecologically sustainable society.