Alex Latta and Hannah Wittman have put together an excellent volume that makes a valuable contribution to the literature in political ecology. Political ecology places nature at the centre of analysis, with an explicit focus on struggles over its exploitation. It asks how development affects environmental sustainability and who bene?ts from it, who is hurt and why. Because of this focus, political ecology is vitally interested in the democratization of environmental politics to include the interests of populations who are generally the victims of progress. Latta, Whittman and collaborators engage these themes through the lens of citizenship. Their effort sheds much-needed light on two key questions. How can we more adequately specify the concept of environmental citizenship? What conditions facilitate the expansion of environmental citizenship to social groups that are traditionally excluded from decisionmaking and on the losing end of development projects? The cases mostly focus on rural areas and subaltern social groups that call them home; thus, Latta and Wittman’s collection of essays places the subject of environmental citizenship front and centre in debates about agrarian change.
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