Environmental Citizenship is an idea that each of us is an integral part of a larger ecosystem and that our future depends on each one of us embracing the challenge and acting responsibly and positively toward our environment. It’s about making changes in our daily lives to be environmental citizens all day, every day. Religious notions of indigenous communities in India provide an understanding of the natural order, and resources to resist its degradation.

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Need for environmental citizenship to be practiced:

• Cutting of trees, escalating construction without consideration to secure water catchment areas or aquifers.
• The approaching national water emergency is not because of lack of rains or water bodies, but mismanagement of resources on the ground.
• The disturbance in water, earth, vegetation, river and mountain ecology system has threatened all manner of life.
• Increasing number of irresponsible decisions made in the name of development by governments and private stakeholders benefiting from environmental clearances.
• The traditional wisdom in the semantics of development is marginalised — building roads, setting up industries, creating infrastructure spell short-term gains for the few and apocalypse for humanity as a whole.
• Social groups, traditionally, create livelihoods by harnessing available natural resources. Not factoring cultural wisdom to conserve natural environment impacts geographies and, in turn, reconfigures cultural responses.

Methods of practicing Environmental Citizenship:

• A Green Lifestyle:
  • Different parts of our website show how important it is to adopt a lifestyle that helps the environment.
  • Another way that you can engage in good environmental citizenship is to keep waste down to a minimum in your home.
  • The key to this is to reduce, reuse and recycle.
• Culture as a tool:
  • The Hindu concept of Rta dharma, explained by Kapila Vatsyayan in her essay ‘Ecology and Indian Myth’, states that the moral duty of communities is through karma towards sustaining and maintaining Rta (cosmic natural order).
  • The same thought is reiterated in the Guru Granth Sahib: The book enunciates a concern for the environment as an integrated approach to life and nature by stating that air, water, earth, and life — all originated from the True Lord who resides in each one of us and requires protection.
  • Islamic scholar Sigrid Nökel offers similar ideas through terms such as fitra creation as natural order; tawhid — that all things in the world are related to one another and are, as aspects of God, valuable and worthy of preservation; and, that khilafa refers to the role of mankind as the trustee of creation.
• Participate in Environmental Decision Making:
  • One good way of exercising environmental citizenship is to get involved in the environmental decision making process.
  • The community ownership expressed in the protests in Chhattisgarh requires duplication in many more areas.
  • To protect their forests and sacred hills, the indigenous forest communities organised protests initiated by the Sanyukt Jansangraha Samiti against the mining of Deposit 13 of the Bailadila iron ore mine in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district
• Hold Businesses to Account:
  • Industries and businesses have a tremendous impact on the environment. Help them to act responsibly as you make your consumer choices on goods or services.
  • The uprising a few years ago of the Dongria Kondhs of Odisha who eventually won a David-and-Goliath battle against mining giant Vedanta Resources.
• Access to Environmental Information:
  • It will be difficult to participate in environmental decision making, without having adequate access to environmental information.
  • Environmental information includes, information held by public bodies on air, water, soil, land, plants and animals, energy, noise, identity of polluters from the pollution registers, waste and emissions.
  • Using the RTI act, Forest Rights Act to protect the rights of the Scheduled tribes and Forest dwellers.
• Access to Justice in Environmental Matters:
  • It involves the right of all to access legal help and to get adequate judicial redress on environmental issues.
  • The cost of taking a case to court has been identified as a major barrier to access to environmental justice.

Conclusion:

A systematic citizens’ network of environment panchayats to promote environmental sustainability is required. What is needed is the will to support, and to ensure, environmental protection for and by the people of India.