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ecological citizenship — English
The quality of peoples’ attitude and views of the environment. Everybody on Earth is a citizen of the environment in the broadest sense of the word. Some of us are “good” ecological citizens who try our best to live an environmentally friendly life and have as small as possible an ecological footprint (see “ecological footprint”). Others do not concern themselves with their ecological footprint and do not deliberately try to limit their impact on the environment. In this current age of high technology, materialism and consumerism, good ecological citizenship is hardly an asset. A few hundred years ago, people lived a simple, non-technologically driven, subsistence type of existence. They lived in harmony with the seasons, the vagaries of the weather, the natural recovery time of the soil fertility, and the natural resilience of all forms of life in the ecosystem. During the Industrial Revolution, all of this changed (see “industrial revolution”). Today, very few people can actually be described as “good” ecological citizens. The Environmental Movement started in the 1960s (see “ecological niche”) when scientists started to realise that the environment is being destroyed by human activities. Environmental legislation was introduced, first in the United States of America, then in Canada and later in almost all countries in the world, including South Africa to regulate humankind’s impact on the environment (see “environmental management”). In a way, this “forces” all people to be good ecological citizens. Till now, the failures of environmental legislation far outnumber the successes. In short, the current generations are not really good ecological citizens. In spite of all the international and national environmental legislation, the environment is being impacted negatively to such a concerning degree that we can categorically state that the generations that follow will inherit an environment that is completely different from the one we inherited.
