European Green Deal and Environmental Citizenship: Two Interrelated Concepts

The world is facing an unprecedented global environmental crisis as environmental problems have been exacerbated in recent decades. Climate crisis, plastic pollution, and the loss of biodiversity are just some of the many environmental issues we are facing every day. Actions by citizens are central to EU plans to tackle the recent environmental crisis, to achieve the European Green Deal, and the EU 2050 strategy for a low (neutral) carbon Europe. Perhaps, more than any other previous environmental policy, the European Green Deal (EGD) has set participation and citizen engagement as one of its main priorities. Empowering citizens for transition towards a climate neutral, sustainable Europe is one of the horizontal priority areas of the EGD (Thematic area 10: Empowering citizens for transition towards a climate neutral, sustainable Europe Call). According to the EGD, the green transition must be just and inclusive and requires ambitious actions to engage people, communities, and organizations to bring about a fair and inclusive transition, leaving no-one behind. Such actions must promote change at the collective level through deliberation, as well as through research to foster behavioral and social change, and at an individual level by empowering citizens as “agents of change”. This is a fundamental aim of the recent conceptualization of Environmental Citizenship.