Republican Environmental Rights

As Philip Pettit makes clear ‘republicanism cannot be represented by any stretch of the imagination… as a tradition of rights akin to that which is sometimes associated with liberalism’ (Pettit, 1999: 303). Rights are said to have ‘secondary or derivative status’ within the republican tradition (Ivison, 2010: 31) which instead chooses to ‘elevate responsibility over rights’ (Dobson, 2006: 222). This focus on responsibility is one of the key attractions for environmental theorists and has become a key aspect of green republicanism and should be maintained. But relegating rights to a secondary position is not the same as rejecting rights entirely. Looking to the history of the republican tradition shows that rights have long been a part of republican thought. This is not the same understanding of rights that we see in the liberal tradition, but this difference may prove to be an advantage particularly if it leads to a more grounded conception of rights. This paper will argue that this republican understanding of rights, especially as conceptualised by Mary Wollstonecraft, is particularly useful and appropriate for thinking about environmental rights, and explores what a specifically republican conception of environmental rights would be.