Session 1: Effective Engagement
10th Global Conference
Friday 8th July 2011 – Sunday 10th July 2011
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Market Driven Spaces versus Democratic Spaces for access, use and distribution of resources: changing contours of citizenship under globalization: A study of Special Economic Zones in India
Neha Vaddiparti
Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, India
Citizenship contains both individualistic and collectivist elements. It bestows rights which enable the individual to participate in decision making. But citizenship is a function of the sovereignty of the state and it is the duty of the state to provide security, both economic and territorial to all its citizens. The state is the only viable form of governance from which citizens can seek justice. Thus the underlying principle of citizenship is egalitarianism where all citizens are treated on par with one another in terms of rights, privileges and duties.
But globalization is changing the very notion of sovereign membership. As states open themselves up to political, economic, social and cultural influences, the contours of citizenship and rights are also undergoing a sea change. The most important influencing factor is the increasing dominance of the neoliberal political and economic paradigm which is changing the way the world operates in all spheres. With emphasis on less government intervention and greater reliance on the market, there has been a shift in activities and services from the public to the private sphere. With this comes changing patterns of access, use and distribution of resources with environmental issues impacting the maintenance of citizenship rights negatively which only further exacerbates existing inequalities in society especially in developing countries.
Fukuyama is of the view that the two institutions of market and democracy have a close relationship and that the two institutions of capitalism and citizenship in combination create the most favorable conditions for individual freedom and stable government. The Indian state seeks to prove this thesis right but is way off the mark. An example is the Special Economic Zones Act of 2005 passed by the government of India which channelizes foreign direct investment into these zones that are specially cordoned off for the private sector. No domestic laws operate in these zones and this has great implications for democratic environmental governance because they come up on agricultural lands and common property resources which causes large scale displacement and dispossession.
The displaced have organized themselves into farmers groups, watershed communities and self-help groups principally to bargain with the state for their rights. The issue here is that rights, environmental and otherwise are mediated, exercised and governed through ‘membership or market driven spaces’ rather than through the framework of democratic governance where the state at least can be held accountable. The dangerous trend is that laws governing these groups come about through temporary arrangements arising out of membership of these groups rather than the constitution of the land.
The paper seeks to analyze the implications of the above for environmental justice and citizenship that is now influenced by ‘global’ factors.
Global Environmental Citizenship – The Polish Approach
Rafal Wonicki
Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Science, Poland
Environmental citizenship conceived as the pursuit of sustainability has the potential to
establish a sense of ethical engagement in civic life – a sense that has been
eroded by the neoliberal market approach. We could say that global neolibaralism needs global response. So environmental citizenship irretrievably points to the global scale and it is understood as citizenship without a state (ethical framework lies before political and institutional solutions). This global focus exists for many reasons. One is that environmental problems are themselves increasingly global scale problems – climate change, ozone depletion, habitat loss, and many other issues manifest themselves at the global or regional scale and can only be resolved through concerted and comprehensive international action. More than that, without global environmental and social standards improving economics, market has reduced domestic environmental and social standards. At the same time, on the individual ethical level, environmental citizenship can be seen as a set of obligations that individuals owe to the non-human world and to the Earth itself.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Systematic Stakeholder Engagement a Key for assessing and managing changes in the global societal environment
Barbara Dubach
University of Zurich, Switzerland
In recent years, companies have come to recognize the value of identifying, meeting with and listening to their stakeholders. Whether to gain trust in local communities, to mitigate the negative effects of potentially ‘hot issues’ or even to further innovation, companies have increasingly solicited external views and ideas from amongst their stakeholders.
Today several international standards such as the UN Global Compact, ISO 26000, the Global Reporting Initiative and many more have identified stakeholder engagement as a key success factor for corporate social responsibility.
While the value of stakeholder engagement is fast becoming apparent, many companies have also learned that it is not necessarily easy. For many organizations finding the right approach to stakeholder engagement and tapping the wider benefits it offers to their business is still uncharted territory.
Most companies are used to communicate with market stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders or business partners on a regular basis providing information about the organization and its products. Collective bargaining with workers through trade unions as well as reactive stakeholder engagement in case of a crisis when an organization has to engage to solve an issue are other forms of stakeholder engagement companies are getting used to.
Most of these engagement activities however are one-off or reactive two-way engagement. To assess and manage changes in the global societal environment systematic stakeholder engagement with non-market stakeholders such as community members, neighbours or NGOs should be a standard element of daily business.
Significant strategic advantages can be won through the implementation of pro-active stakeholder engagement processes such as needs assessments, on-going community advisory panels, integration of stakeholders in advisory boards or strategic partnerships. These methods of engagement provide a forum for identifying controversial issues before they turn into conflicts or new opportunities for everyone involved.
Therefore, identifying and engaging stakeholders is not a one-off affair, rather it is a learning process involving long-term commitments.
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