ABSTRACT
Why should the environment movement be at all interested in pressing its claims in the idiom of rights, given that its primary concerns are largely collective in nature? Surely an environmental rights discourse would introduce an unwelcome degree of individual abstraction-not to mention an aggressive and rugged individualism-into the environmental policy debates and detract from what ought to be an overriding emphasis on cultivating civic virtue, social solidarity and community responsibility in tackling ecological problems?
