Citizens, Environmental Sustainability and Local Democracy

Dear Colleagues, 

The environmental and climate crisis is now widely acknowledged by politicians and populations around the world. The issue is omnipresent in the media and is increasingly studied in academia, largely due to environmental activism, especially by young generations that have deliberately drawn attention to the urgency for change (Pickard, Bowman and Arya 2021, 2022; Wahlström et al. 2019). Responding to these protests, international bodies, such as the United Nations, and political leaders have sought to engage with environmental activists (Henn, Sloam and Nunes 2021). Meanwhile, certain national governments have officially declared a climate emergency and set up citizens assemblies and deliberative democracy initiatives (Pickard 2020).

Although such climate-focused citizen/elite engagement is evident at national and international levels, there is a dearth of empirical evidence of local-level interactions between powerholders and individual citizens. Some work has shown that such local-level interactions are likely to increase the “voice” of citizens and their sense of political efficacy, as well as feelings that they are part of the solution to the climate crisis (Henn and Arya 2021) and democracy.

This Special Issue of Societies entitled “Citizens, Environmental Sustainability and Local Democracy” welcomes international contributions that consider local-level engagement of citizens in the debate about policy development and the design of policies intended to combat climate change. Contributions of original research and conceptualization are welcome from scholars, civic practitioners and activists operating in a range of different local settings, and using diverse disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories (article/review/conceptual paper) of papers for the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue. Please read details at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/societies/instructions.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Matt Henn
Dr. Sarah Pickard
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• civic engagement
• citizens’ policymaking
• citizen/elite engagement
• climate policy
• carbon-reduction policy
• climate crisis
• environmental activism