Green citizens are persons who set about creating, maintaining and defending an environmentally sound society. They abide by the principle of sustainable development. Sustainable development has been defined by Brundtland Commission of World Commission on Environment and Development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainable development can be implemented in all areas of human endeavour. Green citizens enforce it in their private lives and carry its message to organizations in which they work. Green citizens often transform to green warriors when undertaking direct action in pursuance of green goals.
Though everyone cannot chain themselves to trees to prevent their felling like the Chipko movement activists in India or attack whaling ships at sea like Greenpeace’s Captain Paul Watson, we can all become ‘green consumers’ through altering our patterns of demand that is driving environmental degradation. Green citizens posses the capacity to make informed environmental judgements as well as the motivation to act on those judgements. They use their democratic power as voters and financial powers as consumers to protect the environment.
Green citizenship comes about through environmental education. According to political theorist and educator, Derek R. Bell, “the ultimate aim of formal environmental education is for each school leaver to have formulated a responsible attitude towards the sustainable development of Planet Earth, an appreciation of its beauty and an assumption of an environmental ethic.”
The Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education held in Tbilisi in 1977 has identified three goals of environmental education:
(a) To foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas;
(b) To provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment;
(c) To create new patterns of behaviour of individuals, groups and society as a whole towards the environment.
The goals of environmental education are not modest. Indeed, environmental education aims at nothing less than ‘saving planet earth’. The conference clearly indicates that green citizens are made and not born.
Green citizen is really a Green world-citizen. Environmental problems though local in their creation, are global in their effects. Hurricane Katarina, which in laid waste vast tracts of land in U.S. or the heat-wave in France which killed thousands of senior citizens is rooted in carbon emissions throughout the world. Coal- burning power stations in China, gas-guzzling cars in U.S., burning of Amazonian forests to make way for farms which provide poultry feed for chickens to be consumed in Macdonald burgers – all emit considerable amounts of green house gases (GHG) Can an individual who eschews China made toys, adopts a once-a-week vegetarian diet and use recycled, unbleached paper make a difference to the planet? Environmental economists think they do.
Many countries and institutions give ‘Green Citizen’ awards to honour a few whose exemplary work serves as an example to many. But where is the award to the individual who cycles to work and builds his house with renewable, local material? The majority cannot be honoured. The majority is not recognised. However the satisfaction of green citizenship is not t be denied. The silent satisfaction, which lies in knowing that one’s actions protect the environment, is the reward for the ‘green citizen.’ Ultimately green citizens make a green country and green countries make a green world.
