Societal Issues and Environmental Citizenship

Abstract

This chapter investigates the role of Environmental Citizenship within the twenty-first-century societal issues of human activities – urban development, transport systems, tourism, and cultural heritage. The first part of the chapter analyses the relationship between Environmental Citizenship, urban development, and cultural landscapes. Cities are home to the majority of the world’s population and are responsible for most of the resource consumption and waste production, which places them in the focus of Environmental Citizenship discourses. The issues of urbanisation and Environmental Citizenship are followed by issues of sustainable transport that, among others, have a goal of reducing transport disadvantage of marginalized social groups. Cultural heritage is identified as a new fourth pillar of sustainable development (along with environment, economy and society), and its role in Environmental Citizenship is explored. Sustainable tourism is reviewed using new approaches that have adopted elements of Environmental Citizenship and were introduced as a reaction to unsustainable mass tourism. Finally, the chapter presents certain practices of Environmental Citizenship within the investigated fields of expertise that could be promoted and implemented elsewhere.