Ross E Mitchell

Green politics or environmental blues? Analyzing ecological democracy

Unlike several previous efforts that have discussed ecological forms of democracy in vague or esoteric terms, this article elucidates key factors that may affect the realization of ecological democracy. In the first section, ecological democracy is defined as an alternative democratic model that 1) strives to incorporate interested citizens into environmental decision-making, and 2) lacks structural features that systematically concentrate environmental amenities into the hands of particular social groups, while imposing environmental and ecological degradation on others. This leads to a discussion of several hindering and facilitating factors that either thwart or encourage ecological democracy. Two examples in support of this discussion on ecological democracy are provided: border contamination due to heavy industrial use along the US-Mexican border, and community forestry in the southeastern state of Oaxaca. By analyzing relevant factors that either have prevented or encouraged democratic environmental decision-making, this research will serve to improve environmental policy formulation and governance.

Introduction

Democracy has unquestionably achieved much around the globe during the past century. Nonetheless, some critics feel that its triumphs have mostly benefited privileged social sectors and wealthy nation-states (Dryzek, 1996a;[START_REF] Korten | When Corporations Rule the World[END_REF]. According to many observers, political and neo-liberal institutional arrangements on a global scale have encouraged environmental degradation, shifting social and environmental costs to marginalized peoples [START_REF] Barndt | Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization[END_REF][START_REF] Boyce | Inequality as a Cause of Environmental Degradation[END_REF][START_REF] Hill | The Environmental Divide: Neoliberal Incommensurability at the U.S.-Mexico Border[END_REF][START_REF] Martinez-Alier | The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation[END_REF][START_REF] Morton | Mexico, Neoliberal Restructuring and the EZLN: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Obi | Globalization and Local Resistance: The Case of Shell versus the Ogoni[END_REF][START_REF] Stephen | Globalization, the State, and the Creation of Flexible Indigenous Workers: Mixtec Farmworkers in Oregon[END_REF][START_REF] Williams | Voice, Trust and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failure of Liberal Representation[END_REF]. Existing societal institutions have done little to stem the spread of environmental crises such as global warming, severe water scarcities, urban smog, unchecked deforestation, and escalating species extinctions [START_REF] Beck | [END_REF][START_REF] Bunker | Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State[END_REF][START_REF] Lafferty | Democracy and the Environment: Congruence and Conflict, Preliminary Reflection[END_REF].

While declining environmental conditions are worrisome, and although most democracies are inextricably linked to global markets and capitalism, it would be unfair to single out democracy, and in particular, "liberal" democracy, as the main culprit. Nonetheless, several troubling weaknesses in many liberal democratic arrangements can be singled out,

Conceptualizing ecological democracy

While still in its infancy, a handful of distinct insights have begun to take shape within the expanding body of scholarship that jointly examines environmental and political relationships. Supporting the contention that democratic environmental governance is possible, substantial writings on environmental politics and citizenship have been published in recent years (e.g., [START_REF] Dryzek | The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses[END_REF][START_REF] Faber | The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States[END_REF][START_REF] Mason | Environmental Democracy[END_REF]Minteer and Taylor, 2002;[START_REF] Morrison | Ecological Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF][START_REF] Torgerson | The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere[END_REF][START_REF] Ungaro | Ecological Democracy: The Environment and the Crisis of the Liberal Institutions[END_REF]. For most Western countries, democratization has been a key element of environmental management and governance. In the United States, at least three periods of environmental protection occurred during the twentieth century: the conservation movement of the early to mid-1900s, the relatively successful environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the renewed environmental concern that arose in the late 1980s; all of these movements were supplanted by "democratic closure," or bureaucratic calls for scientific resource management and continued economic growth [START_REF] Paehlke | Cycles of Closure in Environmental Politics and Policy[END_REF]. Attempts to explain these interrelated environmental openings and democratic closures have led to a substantial body of work on "political ecology," or the merging of cultural ecology and political economy [START_REF] Adger | Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental Discourses[END_REF][START_REF] Burns | How Environmental Movements Can Be More Effective: Prioritizing Environmental Themes in Political Discourse[END_REF]Dryzek, 1996b[START_REF] Dryzek | The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses[END_REF][START_REF] Villanueva | Political Ecology vs. Free Trade: Struggles for Bio-Ethnic Diversity in the Americas[END_REF]. With political ecology, dominant neo-capitalist arrangements in the Western world are believed to be grossly insufficient when it comes to addressing complex ecological problems [START_REF] Dryzek | Ecology and Discursive Democracy: Beyond Liberal Capitalism and the Administrative State[END_REF][START_REF] Morrison | Ecological Democracy[END_REF]. This has led to a discourse of "green radicalism," which rejects the basic structure of industrial society and the way the environment is conceptualized, but promotes instead radical transformation in human awareness, economics, and politics [START_REF] Dryzek | The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses[END_REF].

Some scholars urge the replacement of these hegemonic economic and political arrangements with "autonomous public spheres," or discursive spaces in which diverse participants can "rationally" engage in democratic debate [START_REF] Dryzek | Ecology and Discursive Democracy: Beyond Liberal Capitalism and the Administrative State[END_REF]. These spheres may take the form of "analytical deliberative strategies" [START_REF] Alario | Science, Democracy, and the Politics of Urban Ecosystem Management: Ecosystem Restoration as Green Urbanizing Policy[END_REF], in which concerned citizens would have opportunities to participate in setting environmental policy by joining the efforts of scientists and government officials. Furthermore, the development of a green public sphere is premised upon an ecologically motivated citizenship, or "civic environmentalism," whereby citizens assume a strong sense of civic responsibility for developing local solutions to environmental problems [START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF].

The argument for some, then, is that only participatory forms of democracy may create an ecologically sustainable society. 2 Other theorists have considered whether participatory or deliberative democracy is indeed compatible with environmental values. Andrew Dobson, for instance, makes explicit the lack of "fit" between meeting social objectives and ecological targets [START_REF] Dobson | Green Political Thought[END_REF]. Still others have focused on the possibilities for deliberative democracy in natural resource management [START_REF] Mitchell | Practitioner's Guide to Deliberative Practices in Natural Resource Management[END_REF][START_REF] Parkins | Public Participation as Public Debate: A Deliberative Turn in Natural Resource Management[END_REF]). Yet although deliberation clearly helps in some areas (e.g., transformation, self development), uncertainty exists whether environmentally friendly outcomes can be secured [START_REF] Mason | Environmental Democracy[END_REF]. Moreover, ecological degradation might proceed without harmonized plans of action or without agreement between parties based on reasoned argument. On the other hand, given the observation of many scholars that liberal democracies have become increasingly ineffective at instilling participatory forms of decisionmaking, conflicts over the distribution of environmental amenities serve as a particularly intriguing area for future inquiry. Considering that the pursuit of individual preferences characteristic of liberal democracies has proven itself to be a decidedly poor means of distributing environmental amenities, environmental politics may be a central avenue for facilitating the transformation of current forms of decision-making (see, e.g., [START_REF] Hailwood | How to be a Green Liberal: Nature, Value and Liberal Philosophy[END_REF][START_REF] Mason | Environmental Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Torgerson | The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere[END_REF].

Another context in which the tension between environment and democracy is highlighted includes the numerous instances of political reaction to the inequitable distribution of environmental ills. The concentration of pollution and its impacts in certain neighborhoods and among certain groups, particularly women and minorities [START_REF] Bullard | Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots[END_REF][START_REF] Cole | From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement[END_REF][START_REF] Melosi | Equity, Eco-racism, and Environmental History[END_REF][START_REF] Szasz | Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice[END_REF], as well as rapid resource development in newly industrializing regions with lax environmental standards [START_REF] Fritz | Searching for Environmental Justice: National Stories, Global Possibilities[END_REF], have given rise to locally based, ecologically democratic initiatives. The environmental justice movement, in particular, has been treated with tremendous optimism for its potential to reform environmental politics in a manner that prioritizes social welfare and democratic decision-making [START_REF] Capek | The Environmental Justice Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application[END_REF][START_REF] Martinez-Alier | The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation[END_REF][START_REF] Schlosberg | Environmentalism and the New Pluralism[END_REF]. The response by many communities to perceptions of environmental injustices may represent an avenue for the re-invigoration of, and the formation of new modes of exercise for, participatory democracy in modern social systems.

Since the relevant literature appears far from resolving these tensions and commonalities inherent to environment and democracy, this synopsis demonstrates that a more explicit definition of the concept of ecological democracy is needed. From this conceptual base, we can then take up the challenge of attempting to measure or evaluate it, or at least being able to recognize when and where it is occurring.

Ecological democracy defined

The notion of ecological democracy is often marked by definitional ambiguity and inadequate empirical evidence. Related terms such as "public ecology" [START_REF] Robertson | Beyond Biology: Toward a More Public Ecology for Conservation[END_REF], "civic environmentalism" [START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF], and "liberation ecologies" [START_REF] Peet | Liberation Ecologies: Environmental Development and Social Movements[END_REF], appear to also suffer these weaknesses, or may be overly prescriptive for constructive theoretical and empirical analysis. Some authors frame this discourse in specialized contexts such as ecofeminism [START_REF] Gaard | Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens[END_REF][START_REF] Mies | Ecofeminism[END_REF] and ecoradicalism [START_REF] Luke | Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology: Departing from Marx[END_REF], both streams of literature which have been widely studied and theorized. These focused perspectives suffer certain limitations when compared to the more encompassing concept of "democracy," a central theme in sociology and political science. Democracy is a term that incorporates such diverse areas as social movements, electoral processes, civil rights (and obligations), equality, and participatory or representative governance. Yet, its attainment or existence is contested terrain (e.g., [START_REF] Botz | Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform[END_REF][START_REF] Young | Inclusion and Democracy[END_REF]. Even if "true" democracy exists, there may be several models or degrees of democracy [START_REF] Held | Models of Democracy[END_REF].

For this research, I chose ecological democracy as a conceptual tool, given the wide applicability, yet often-imprecise notion of democratic forms and processes related to the environment. Bringing democracy directly into the equation unpacks a rich theoretical and empirically measurable body of literature from the vantage of multiple scales, positions, and actors to interested researchers. While the study and application of democracy might be the key to future environmental management, few examples exist where ecological democracy has been empirically tested (cf., [START_REF] Dietz | Ecological Democracy and Sustainable Development[END_REF]. Moreover, key factors that may hinder or facilitate its attainment need better elucidation. An integrated version of ecological democracy would outline an empirically measurable framework with appropriate indicators or features that could be tested, compared, and adapted to any given scenario involving environmental governance/justice (or lack thereof).

Ecological democracy can be conceived as an alternative democratic model that: 1) strives to incorporate interested citizens into environmental decision-making, and 2) lacks structural features that systematically concentrate environmental amenities into the hands of particular social groups, while imposing environmental and ecological degradation on others (Mitchell, 2005a). Ecological democracy appears whenever citizens are freely incorporated into inclusive environmental decision-making-or, at minimum, those desiring to participate are provided with meaningful opportunities to do so, and their input well considered. Moreover, environmental "bads" such as industrial pollution and rampant deforestation would not be passed on to any specific group. Ideally, both technoscientific and alternative forms of knowledge and experience would be encouraged, as well as adequate space provided for citizen activism and legal-political avenues. Certainly no guarantee exists that a reformed democracy will produce desired ends such as sustainable development, decreased environmental degradation, greater public participation, or more equal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. An ecological democratic system could conceivably fail on any or all of these ends, not least because all these ends may not themselves be compatible with one another. These concerns notwithstanding and for the purposes of this analysis, ecological democracy is premised on the hypothesis that environmental improvement is positively associated with the presence of participatory democratic institutions (see, e.g., [START_REF] Menegat | Participatory Democracy and Sustainable Development: Integrated Urban Environmental Management in Porto Alegre, Brazil[END_REF], and the future health of existing democracies is premised upon the equitable distribution of environmental resources.

Ecological democracy scenarios

Four potential states that illustrate various tensions and commonalities of ecological democracy are presented in Figure 1. Democracy is simply categorized as "open" (democratic) or "closed" (autocratic), and ecology as "green" (sustainable) or "brown" (unsustainable). In reality, many dynamic gray areas will overlap boundaries, even within a given situation with its varying ideological, locational, temporal, moral, or other circumstances. Still, these scenarios do serve as ideal types for the purposes of comparing or contrasting differing states of ecological democracy. Scenario A-the optimist. This Win-Win scenario combines open democracy with green ecology, achieving the highest possible state of ecological democracy. Informed, inclusive, and participatory decision-making is successfully combined with environmental sustainability for the benefit of all. Participating citizens willingly compromise certain individual gains by deliberating together to promote social and ecological well-being. An example is a community-oriented forestry operation employing sustainable logging practices (e.g., selective cutting of poor quality trees using low-impact techniques and silvicultural practices that favor ecological health). Economic earnings are equitably shared and decisions made on a participatory, inclusive basis.

Scenario B-the ecocrat. This Lose-Win scenario combines closed democracy with green ecology. Ecological well-being is achieved at the expense of democratic principles by invoking strict environmental protection policies detrimental to certain groups. Decisionmaking and management follow centralized, hierarchical avenues of control. An example is the removal of human inhabitants for the designation of a "wilderness" area. External concerns are prioritized over basic civil liberties of local residents, including the right for sustainable livelihoods.

Scenario C-the democrat. This Win-Lose scenario combines open democracy with brown ecology. Citizens have full access to informed decision-making, but ecological wellbeing is not a priority. Substantial environmental degradation takes place by chance or design. An example is a community's decision to endorse a strip coalmine on an area of critical biological and watershed significance. While the process may have been open, inclusive, and consensual, this decision could have serious negative consequences for the local environment and those who rely upon its healthy functioning.

Scenario D-the status quo. This Lose-Lose scenario combines closed democracy with brown ecology. Entirely market-driven decision-making greatly expands environmental degradation. It complements and reinforces the neo-liberal, hyper-capitalist paradigm; namely, global market control driven by speculation, competition, and consumerism, but leading to worldwide environmental degradation. An industrializing nation that favors polluting, resource-intensive manufacturing for rapid economic growth serves as a prototypical example. Severe social costs and subsequent environmental deterioration accompany highly selective wealth. Hence, we end up with two "losers" (e.g., [START_REF] Boyce | Inequality as a Cause of Environmental Degradation[END_REF].

"Scenario A" describes a truly successful ecological democracy, although the possibility may remain an idealistic dream under current circumstances. It encapsulates "robustness," or the idea that our expectations of society toward science and the environment are changing as people demand ever-greater involvement in democratic decision-making [START_REF] Nowotny | Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty[END_REF]. A precautionary principle is adopted to minimize global warming and other environmental risks. Progressive environmental policies are implemented by strict enforcement of polluters and rewards proffered for clean industrial initiatives. Environmental degradation is not passed on to any specific group or individual, and local ecological management is highly encouraged.

In contrast, "Scenario D" more realistically defines current global conditions. Certain classes and places are privileged by a "privatized environment" policy, leading to an unequal distribution of health and environmental hazards [START_REF] Schrecker | Place, Class and the Privatized Environment[END_REF]. Two promising changes are occurring, however. In some instances, progressive environmental agencies are trying innovative models that incorporate alternative forms of ecological knowledge, and even making some room for public involvement. In other cases, local or regional governments have adopted experimental cases of citizen-led governance. However, the former continues to allow environmental science to take the lead, whereas the latter encourages citizen involvement but may neglect "green" aspects. At minimum, such willingness to change suggests that some groups are perhaps steering towards "true" or an idealized version of ecological democracy.

Hindering factors

Several factors hinder the potential for ecological democracy as represented by "Scenario A." Five hindering factors discussed here include international capital, closed democratic systems, the premise of equality of conditions, scientific prioritization, and ineffective or nonexistent mediating structures that serve as a conduit for democracy.

First, a global political economy of international capital, development, and regulatory arrangements favors powerful interests (Dryzek, 1996a;[START_REF] Hettne | Development Theory and the Three Worlds: Towards an International Political Economy of Development[END_REF], while concurrently shifting industry-generated environmental ills to weaker actors [START_REF] Bullard | Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots[END_REF][START_REF] Shrader-Frechette | Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy[END_REF], often with government complicity [START_REF] Gould | Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production[END_REF]. Furthermore, companies feeling "harassed" by environmentalists and tough environmental regulations, but blaming economic factors, may shift operations to less problematic countries with Export Processing Zones (EPZs) [START_REF] Frey | The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern Mexico[END_REF].

Second, closed democratic systems are antithetical to ecological democracy by definition, but they may actually increase environmental impacts [START_REF] Dietz | Ecological Democracy and Sustainable Development[END_REF][START_REF] Winslow | Is Democracy Good for the Environment?[END_REF]. 3 For example, peripheral countries with high levels of political repression tend to be highly carbon intensive and their nation-states often assume less responsibility for environmental protection, presumably to keep production costs competitive (Roberts et al., 2003). 4 On the other hand, wealthier countries might improve their environments by "displacing" ecological risks and burdens elsewhere, such as shipping toxic wastes or locating ecologically degrading production processes outside the home state, or even globally in the case of climate change. Still, a generally putative positive relationship between democracy and ecological well-being/health is presumed to exist by most accounts. In any case, democracies are not homogeneous: "certain characteristics that help determine the level of democracy in a nation, such as the free flow of information or the level of corruption, are important determinants of how successfully a democratic government can and will control environmental degradation" (Winslow, 2005: 781).

Third, institutionally imposed social inequities hinder the attainment of ecological democracy. With the publicity generated from Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, and other environmental crises, a burgeoning environmental justice movement has highlighted how racial, gender, and/or class differences are implicated in environmental inequities [START_REF] Bullard | Environmental Justice: Grassroots Activism and its Impact on Public Policy Decision-Making[END_REF][START_REF] Kalof | Race, Gender and Environmentalism: The Atypical Values and Beliefs of White Men[END_REF]. Strong evidence of racially distributed pollution can be found in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, for instance [START_REF] Roberts | Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline[END_REF]. Gender inequities that shift environmental ills to working and nursing women have been brought out in public light by the ecofeminism movement [START_REF] De Chiro | Environmental Justice from the Grassroots: Reflections on History, Gender, and Expertise[END_REF][START_REF] Gaard | Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens[END_REF][START_REF] Mies | Ecofeminism[END_REF]. A class focus "helps reveal that workers in their workplaces and homes are more vulnerable to environmental hazards than the affluent" (Torgerson, 1999: 46), since the working class stand to lose a healthy existence and scarce jobs.

Fourth, current policies and programs prioritize scientific sources of information over alternative forms of knowledge. While specialized scientific and technological information helps policymakers, planners, and researchers understand complex technologies and ecosystems, this is hardly conducive to greater public involvement in environmental management. During the twentieth century, government and industry have given precedence to scientific solutions to address environmental challenges [START_REF] Fischer | Citizens, Experts and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge[END_REF]. Even environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have relied on scientific findings, often hiring their own experts. In the process, technical and normative questions are often kept out of ordinary citizens' hands irrespective of their increased exposure to environmental risk [START_REF] Beck | Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk[END_REF][START_REF] Beck | [END_REF]. Moreover, ecological democracy is impeded when science is used to increase production, consumption, and profits instead of in understanding and reducing environmental impacts [START_REF] Schnaiberg | The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity[END_REF]. Alternative information sources such as indigenous, layperson, or local knowledge are often ignored or downgraded (e.g., [START_REF] Berkes | Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management[END_REF][START_REF] Fischer | Citizens, Experts and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Wiersum | Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge in Formal Forest Management: Adaptation or Paradigm Change in Tropical Forestry?[END_REF]. While lay or public knowledge is not necessarily truer, better, or greener [START_REF] Wynne | Scientific Knowledge and the Global Environment[END_REF], in an age of risk and uncertainty, more input from diverse sources for scientific and technical assessments can only help improve decision-making. That is, if "improved" administration and governance is measured by fairness, transparency, accountability, robustness, and other "socio-cultural" variables (e.g., [START_REF] Bullard | Environmental Justice: Grassroots Activism and its Impact on Public Policy Decision-Making[END_REF][START_REF] Hull | The Language of Nature Matters: We Need a More Public Ecology[END_REF][START_REF] Nowotny | Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty[END_REF][START_REF] Smith | Beyond Public Participation: Fairness in Natural Resource Decision Making[END_REF].

Fifth, how current mediating structures perpetuate existing inequalities is particularly evident in environmental politics [START_REF] Buttel | Some Observations on States, World Orders, and the Politics of Sustainability[END_REF][START_REF] Couto | Making Democracy Work Better: Mediating Structures, Social Capital, and the Democratic Prospect[END_REF][START_REF] Price | Community, Mediating Structures, and Public Policy[END_REF]. Mediating structures include non-profit sectors, civic associations, voluntary associations, and similar organized bodies. There are both positive and negative consequences attributable to mediating structures. On the one hand, such structures have been designed to intervene on behalf of the public, acting in our best interest. In regions such as Chiapas in southern Mexico, mediating structures have included supportive NGOs that trained or informed leaders during the mid-1990s and helped the rebels gain access to the Internet for increased media attention [START_REF] Harvey | Resisting Neoliberalism, Constructing Citizenship: Indigenous Movements in Chiapas[END_REF][START_REF] Rich | NAFTA and Chiapas[END_REF][START_REF] Stephen | Between NAFTA and Zapata: Responses to Restructuring the Commons in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico[END_REF]. Recent research has differed on whether these mediating structures should be considered as alternatives to governmental action [START_REF] Putnam | Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy[END_REF], or as essential fora in which democratically sound government action is defined [START_REF] Couto | Making Democracy Work Better: Mediating Structures, Social Capital, and the Democratic Prospect[END_REF].

In contrast, others are skeptical of the potential of mediating structures, highlighting their ability to become instruments of privilege (Salamon, 1993 cited in Couto and[START_REF] Couto | Making Democracy Work Better: Mediating Structures, Social Capital, and the Democratic Prospect[END_REF]; their inaccessibility among the poor and powerless [START_REF] Price | Community, Mediating Structures, and Public Policy[END_REF]; their tendency to evolve into oligarchic institutions, where political power is concentrated in the hands of major players [START_REF] Piven | Poor Peoples' Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail[END_REF]; or the tendency among many to represent particularistic agendas and lack wider ties to society [START_REF] Barber | Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age[END_REF]. Citizen activism, with experiential learning that builds social capital [START_REF] Couto | Making Democracy Work Better: Mediating Structures, Social Capital, and the Democratic Prospect[END_REF], may go much further than formalized and often top-down mediating bodies in consolidating democracies (cf., [START_REF] Young | Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy[END_REF]. As described above, mediating structures pertaining to the mainstream environmental movement are dominated by Western-based agencies, which often prioritize conservationist (nature) over humanistic (social) agendas, although there is some hope for reconciliation among the two agendas (see Martinez-Alier, 2002: 168-212). Such NGOs may be well meaning but can also end up implementing programs without adequate understanding of local realities and needs. They may also lack accountability in local regions when offering solutions to environmental challenges. At any rate, the ineffectiveness, unsuitability, or absence of mediating structures may represent barriers to ecological democracy.

Facilitating factors

Many factors also facilitate ecological democracy. Five factors that may be particularly relevant include environmental altruism, discursive democracy, perceptions of environmental crises, cultures supportive of participatory democracy, and local-global networks.

First, environmental altruism, defined by one's degree of selflessness with respect to the environment, would be necessary to the emergence of ecological democracy. Recent theoretical work suggests, ironically, that the structurally disadvantaged in society are more likely to shun narrow self-interest in favor of positions that take into account the situation of others [START_REF] Stern | A Value-Belief-Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism[END_REF]. This may be especially so concerning one's family, health, and the environment. For example, Linda Kalof and her colleagues measured altruism and other values on environmentalism [START_REF] Kalof | Race, Gender and Environmentalism: The Atypical Values and Beliefs of White Men[END_REF]. Their findings included that White men as a group were less environmentally altruistic compared to other groups (e.g., Black women, Black men, Hispanic men, etc.). Some differences were attributable to factors such as risk perception, shared experiences of repression, and dependence on "common pool" resources [START_REF] Kalof | Race, Gender and Environmentalism: The Atypical Values and Beliefs of White Men[END_REF]. In contrast, it has been contended that self-interest or neighborhood concerns may spur people into civic engagement more than altruism [START_REF] Greenberg | Elements and Test of a Theory of Neighborhood Civic Participation[END_REF]). Yet, given that certain groups have historically been subjects of discrimination and disadvantage (e.g., on the basis of gender, race, or ethnicity), it could be posited that their empowerment may facilitate altruistic dialogue [START_REF] Dietz | Ecological Democracy and Sustainable Development[END_REF]. Nevertheless, altruistic dialogue among disempowered groups may only apply to certain circumstances or certain groups. It is also likely that some repressed groups, such as marginalized minority groups in large urban centers fighting for clean neighborhoods, would prefer retributive and compensatory justice for past wrongs rather than democratic dialogue with power holders.

Second, ecological democracy could be facilitated by discursive modes of communication that invigorate citizenship to deal with environmental problems. Deliberation, or deliberative democracy as elucidated by sociologist Jürgen Habermas, among others, is open discussion and debate that attempts to produce reasonable, well-informed opinion within a representative body of citizens, or stakeholders. Yet, few examples exist where the public has been adequately considered in environmental planning or policy setting exercises; by "adequate," this should mean inclusiveness, openness, trust-building, and informed, among other values or conditions [START_REF] Brechin | Objective Problems, Subjective Values, and Global Environmentalism[END_REF][START_REF] Hull | The Language of Nature Matters: We Need a More Public Ecology[END_REF][START_REF] Parkins | Public Participation as Public Debate: A Deliberative Turn in Natural Resource Management[END_REF][START_REF] Warren | Democracy and Trust[END_REF][START_REF] Williams | Voice, Trust and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failure of Liberal Representation[END_REF][START_REF] Young | Inclusion and Democracy[END_REF]. Public input is often sacrificed by administrative operations of environmental agencies in the name of efficiency [START_REF] Torgerson | The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere[END_REF]. In contrast, deliberative democracy insists on citizens as active players in decisionmaking rather than simply offering them the opportunity to become involved, with green spaces that are "inherently committed to [public] debate-not just to tolerate but to cultivate and provoke disagreements" (Torgerson, 1999: 161), particularly among societal actors with heterogeneous views. Focused attention to expanded sources of "facts" and opinions from diverse sources to inform environmental decision-making could invoke discursive modes of democracy [START_REF] Dryzek | Ecology and Discursive Democracy: Beyond Liberal Capitalism and the Administrative State[END_REF]. The development of a green public sphere would be premised upon an ecologically motivated citizenship, whereby citizens assume a strong sense of civic responsibility for developing local solutions to environmental problems [START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF]. Participating in environmental issues may also instill greater confidence in government and industry. Hence, discursive democracy may counter the failure of market and state decisionmakers to facilitate citizenship in forestry and watershed management.

Third, studies of environmental justice imply that perceptions of environmental crisis re-stimulate the pursuit of democratic principles, and ultimately improve mediating structures through the mobilization of concerned citizens [START_REF] Capek | The Environmental Justice Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application[END_REF][START_REF] Shrader-Frechette | Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy[END_REF]. 5 This literature also suggests that those suffering from environmental injustices should be afforded greater influence in decision-making. Moreover, many citizens are more likely to become involved in issues involving neighborhood and family health, which describes many ecological dilemmas (see, e.g., [START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF][START_REF] Torgerson | The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere[END_REF]. Where citizens have suffered ecological and social injustices, they may feel intrinsically motivated to become environmental advocates, possibly leading to formalize environmental management mechanisms. Examples in the United States include the late Judi Bari of EarthFirst! and Lois Marie Gibbs of the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste. Environmental advocates often remain politically active long after their initial activism, extending their democratic experiences into other arenas of benefit to society [START_REF] Krauss | Community Struggles and the Shaping of Democratic Consciousness[END_REF].

Fourth, certain cultures supportive of participatory democracy may be more amenable to ecological democracy. In some societal circles where exceptionally formalized, technocratic decision-making predominates, and as discussed above in the fourth hindering factor, participation in environmental planning and management may be restricted. Impediments for public participation may also arise due to cultural factors (for example, language difficulties or traditional protocol may prevent certain individuals from speaking out), procedural impediments (such as when allotted time for discussion and debate is limited), or strategic motives (inadequate communication and information sharing may be used to group advantage). In contrast, some cultures have a shared tradition of strong cooperative relationships and organizational practices, collective land ownership and management, and well-engrained cultural patterns that reinforce long-held local decision-making mechanisms [START_REF] Cohen | Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca[END_REF]. Together with the deference for generational benefits (i.e., long term) exhibited by certain cultures, these socio-cultural strengths may actually favor ecological democracy under the right set of circumstances. 6 Fifth, the rise and spread of local-global social networks may facilitate ecological democracy. Such networks include anti-globalization social movements (e.g., anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protests and the Chiapas rebellion), as well as localized struggles such as NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard). While this seems to refute arguments made earlier about ineffective mediating structures, social networks have helped to advance international awareness on socio-ecological challenges, recent or not [START_REF] Dreiling | Environmental Movement Organizations and Political Strategy: Tactical Conflicts over NAFTA[END_REF][START_REF] Gills | Globalization and the Politics of Resistance[END_REF][START_REF] Lipschutz | Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet[END_REF][START_REF] Princen | Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global[END_REF]. The rapid rise in communication technologies has reached even the remotest corners of the globe, and brought the plights of isolated people to the media forefront. For example, during the 1990s, the case of the Ogoni of Nigeria and Shell Oil made international headlines as local and global NGOs worked together [START_REF] Obi | Globalization and Local Resistance: The Case of Shell versus the Ogoni[END_REF]. Still, while NGOs may represent an important option for citizens to address environmental injustice (Shrader-Frechette, 2002), they may be most applicable to citizens of those nations with unsupportive or authoritarian governments. Under such circumstances, local-global networks could foster solidarity or shared citizenship across racial, gender, class, and North-South lines. This occurred to some extent during the 1992 Rio Summit on the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

With ecological democracy defined and described, we can now turn our attention to two empirical examples from Mexico. These illustrate a form of ecological democracy at the neighborhood or community level, and both entail transnational aspects to some extent, especially the first example. While it would have been useful to examine several cases indicative of each of the aforementioned four scenarios of ecological democracy, limitations of space restrict a thorough analysis of all idealized types here. Instead, two examples indicative of the two extremes were selected: the first to represent "Scenario D" and the second case to represent "Scenario A." This analysis also employs the hindering and facilitating factors of ecological democracy mentioned above.

Democracy and environmental justice in Mexico

In recent decades, left populism in Mexico and movements for environmental justice in the United States have broadened the call for ecological democracy (Faber, 1998: 11). Yet, whereas social justice and resistance movements have been analyzed from a Zapatista standpoint (e.g., [START_REF] Barry | Zapata's Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico[END_REF][START_REF] Harvey | The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Harvey | Resisting Neoliberalism, Constructing Citizenship: Indigenous Movements in Chiapas[END_REF][START_REF] Morton | Mexico, Neoliberal Restructuring and the EZLN: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis[END_REF], and Mexican environmentalism to some extent [START_REF] Simon | Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge[END_REF][START_REF] Simonian | Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico[END_REF], environmental justice in Mexico has not been adequately considered. 7 The notion of justice has been deeply ingrained in the Mexican psyche ever since the Spanish conquest. Resistance movements in Mexico over land access and social justice occurred throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries [START_REF] Barry | Zapata's Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico[END_REF]. Widespread corruption, cronyism, authoritarianism, and violence have long tainted national and regional politics throughout Mexico [START_REF] Krauze | Mexico: Biography of Power-A History of Modern Mexico 1810-1996[END_REF]. Commercial and illegal logging [START_REF] Guerrero | The Timber Industry in Northern Mexico: Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts[END_REF][START_REF] O'brien | Sacrificing the Forest: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas[END_REF], industrial pollution along the Mexican-United States border [START_REF] Hill | The Environmental Divide: Neoliberal Incommensurability at the U.S.-Mexico Border[END_REF][START_REF] Roberts | Pollution Havens on the United States-Mexico Border? NAFTA, Free Trade, and the Environment[END_REF], land conflicts [START_REF] Harvey | The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy[END_REF], and dam projects [START_REF] Hindley | Indigenous Mobilization, Development, and Democratization in Guerrero: The Nahua People vs. the Tetelcingo Dam[END_REF] have all served as significant stimuli for local mobilization since the 1960s. Marginalized Mexicans have at times retaliated against expansive capitalism, a tendency embodied most recently in the 1994 Zapatista rebellion at the launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [START_REF] Barry | Zapata's Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico[END_REF]. The Zapatista dispute also involves issues of environment (e.g., proprietary rights for agricultural and forestry purposes) and democratic principles (e.g., liberty, citizenship, and other freedoms). More recently, some environmental defenders have been imprisoned or killed for organizing against powerful logging barons and drug lords [START_REF] Smith | Mexico's Forests at a Watershed[END_REF]. 8 Also, with the massive restructuring of the Mexican economy since the late 1980s that has favored commercial agriculture and urbanto-rural colonization, many peasants have been left with little choice but to cut down forests and convert "marginal" land for agricultural purposes [START_REF] Torres-Rojo | Deforestation and Land Use Change in Mexico[END_REF].

Environmental consciousness has been gaining strength among many Mexicans [START_REF] Hindley | Indigenous Mobilization, Development, and Democratization in Guerrero: The Nahua People vs. the Tetelcingo Dam[END_REF][START_REF] Simonian | Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico[END_REF], perhaps recognizing that equality of conditions has been largely working against them. Nonetheless, theirs is not the mainstream environmentalism typical of many Northern environmental groups. 9 Mexican environmental activists are often the rural poor who link their public claims for justice to sustainable development [START_REF] Bray | Peasant Organizations and the Permanent Reconstruction of Nature: Grassroots Sustainable Development in Rural Mexico[END_REF][START_REF] Smith | Mexico's Forests at a Watershed[END_REF]. In one study based in the state of Campeche, a clear distinction was made between environmentally concerned urban dwellers (ecolocos, or crazy ecologists) and rural inhabitants: "Many rural people [of Campeche's tropical lowlands] . . . seem to have a more acute and holistic sense of the threshold of ecological damage that has been reached and the implications for their way of life in the future" (Gates, 1998: 169). Has this emergent consciousness been a factor in one of the most severely contaminated areas in Mexico-its northern border? This case, representing "Scenario D" (status quo), is discussed in detail below.

Border pollution: Scenario D

Few dispute that pollution affects much of Mexico's northern border region [START_REF] Hill | The Environmental Divide: Neoliberal Incommensurability at the U.S.-Mexico Border[END_REF][START_REF] Roberts | Pollution Havens on the United States-Mexico Border? NAFTA, Free Trade, and the Environment[END_REF][START_REF] Frey | The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern Mexico[END_REF]. For instance, Scott [START_REF] Frey | The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern Mexico[END_REF] cites significant evidence of environmental pollution caused by the maquiladora sector, arguing that transferring hazardous industries from core nations has unacceptably increased health, safety, and environmental risks. These risks have included increased respiratory diseases, cancer, birth defects, and severe environmental pressures (e.g., inadequate drinking water, poor sewage services, improper waste disposal, air and water pollution).

These problems have not been handled well, partly because bureaucratic responses to environmental dilemmas differ markedly between Mexico and the United States. To take only one indicator, government expenditures on environmental services per capita in 1996 were US$3,900 in the United States and just US$500 in Mexico (OECD, 1998). Even if the regulations were adequate, their implementation suffers from insufficient enforcement capacity (Davidson and Mitchell, 2002: 280). Moreover, little recourse is available for Mexican citizens who wish to pressure government and industry to clean up or reduce environmental contamination. Citizens who believe Mexico is failing to enforce its environmental laws have the option to submit a complaint to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of NAFTA. However, this is a costly and lengthy process, which often requires considerable legal and political experience. As such, it can be argued that "Scenario D," the status quo in Figure 1, accurately depicts the border region: a "lose-lose" scenario for ecology and democracy alike.

One specific case of contamination along the northern border region involves the American-owned company Metales y Derivados in Tijuana, which took in thousands of car and boat batteries from the United States, extracted their lead, and then melted them into bricks to be shipped across the border. In 1994, Metales abandoned their smelter and left behind an estimated 8,500 tons of lead and cadmium toxins [START_REF] Sullivan | Mexicans Trapped by Foreign-made Messes[END_REF]. Wind and rain constantly dump toxins in Colonia Chilpancingo, a workers' village of 1,000 people directly below the plant. This case was submitted to NAFTA's CEC, which released its factual record in 2003. A factual record is merely an evaluation and description of matters asserted by the Submitter and the Party.

No guarantee exists that anything will be done to change this "Scenario D" into something more positive, even though this factual record has been made public. Although it is hard to prove if the Metales site is directly responsible, people continue to get sick. Twenty Chilpancingo children under the age of six were tested for lead in December 2002, and the results showed significant and potentially dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstreams [START_REF] Sullivan | Mexicans Trapped by Foreign-made Messes[END_REF]. It is unclear if scientific solutions will address these environmental and health challenges, but on the other hand both government and industry have been quick to dismiss public claims of ill effects [START_REF] Roberts | Pollution Havens on the United States-Mexico Border? NAFTA, Free Trade, and the Environment[END_REF].

Despite these odds, one local group has managed to make some headway. As already noted, in certain regions, some environmental NGOs have begun to facilitate the emergence of ecological democracy. They may represent a viable means for curbing the adverse consequences associated with hazardous facilities [START_REF] Frey | The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern Mexico[END_REF]. One such NGO is the Tijuana-based, non-profit organization Comité Ciudadano Pro-Restauración del Cañón del Padre (Pro-Restoration Citizen Committee of the El Padre Canyon). 10 The Comité Ciudadano organizes local people to fight against pollution and worker exploitation, and advocates for increased public participation in local political processes. The group has achieved several significant accomplishments: the permanent closure of two lead smelters that posed serious environmental and health risks (including Metales y Derivados), the removal of unresponsive elected officials, and the enforcement of environmental laws that resulted in the issuance of penalties and citations.

In sum, at least four hindering factors previously noted have prevented the emergence of ecological democracy in the Mexican-United States border region. These include international capital, closed democratic systems, unfavorable equality of conditions, and ineffective mediating structures. International neo-liberal arrangements have encouraged heavy (pollution intensive) industry and lax enforcement of environmental regulatory mechanisms. Concessions to northern transnational corporations (TNCs) wishing to establish factories on the Mexican side of the border include tax holidays, labor and environmental exemptions, provision of infrastructure, duty-free export and import, and free reparation of profits [START_REF] Frey | The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern Mexico[END_REF]. Equality of current relations of production favors industry, not labor. The maquiladora sector has been structured to encourage low-wage female labor with limited opportunities for unionization [START_REF] Barndt | Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization[END_REF]. Since the establishment of the maquiladoras starting in the 1960s, the Mexican government has stifled debate or dissension from ordinary citizens on social and health hazards. Pollution is often ignored or denied by state and industry officials, and few opportunities provided for citizens who question scientific results that absolve border industries from blame. Hence, a transnational political economy has negatively affected the emergence of ecological democracy.

On the other hand, a few facilitating factors suggest that change is possible, even in poor, polluted neighborhoods of Tijuana: perceptions of environmental crisis (evidence of contaminants and perceived linkages to increased health problems), environmental altruism (some structurally disadvantaged residents beginning to advocate for a cleaner environment), the presence of a strong local culture that supports participatory action (selforganization and local protests), and local-global networks (Comité Ciudadano and CEC). However, genuine willingness on the part of industry and state entities is needed to change the "Scenario D" status of the border region. Such a situation seems unlikely in the near future given the deep-seated hindering factors already mentioned.

Community forests: moving toward Scenario A

A more positive version of ecological democracy is illustrated by the Mexican community forest sector. Since the 1917 Mexican Constitution was passed after the Revolution (1910-17), various forestry and environmental acts have been proposed, implemented, and reformed [START_REF] Simonian | Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico[END_REF]. Yet, except for the extensive land reforms directed by Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas , accompanied by the creation of a national peasant federation, these policy changes have favored large-scale corporate use of forest and agricultural land. The trend to commercialization, however, reached its peak during President Carlos Salinas de Gotari's (1988-94) administration of market-friendly neoliberalism [START_REF] Beaucage | The Third Wave of Modernization: Liberalism, Salinismo, and Indigenous Peasants in Mexico[END_REF].

The first stirrings of community protest against private and parastatal forest concessions emerged in 1968 when 14 communities in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca led a five-year boycott of a parastatal paper factory, protesting against mistreatment of their people and forests [START_REF] Bray | The Struggle for the Forest: Conservation and Development in the Sierra Juárez[END_REF]. In 1979, 26 indigenous communities in Oaxaca created an organization to "defend together our natural resources, principally our forests, to develop our people and defend our organization from the political and educational apparatus of the state" (SEDUE, 1986: 89). By the early 1980s, Mexican communities had successfully wrested forestland control from the forest companies, and many have successfully established forest enterprises [START_REF] Bray | Mexico's Community-Managed Forests as a Global Model for Sustainable Landscapes[END_REF]. Years of protests, blockades, letter writing, marches to Mexico City, meetings with government officials, and legal actions had finally paid off. With an estimated 80 percent of its forestlands now directly in the hands of communities and ejidos, Mexico is unique in the world for communal forest management (Bray et al., 2003). 11 Community forest successes obscure the fact that many hurdles remain. Only about 12 percent of the approximately 8,000 communities with forests are legally engaged in forest commercialization (J.M. Torres-Rojo, 2002, personal communication). Increasing deforestation from agriculture conversion, illegal logging, forest fires, marginalization of rural people by state agencies, and land conflicts are some of the main challenges currently facing forestbased communities in Mexico [START_REF] Cairns | Forests of Mexico: A Diminishing Resource?[END_REF][START_REF] Gates | Eco-Imperialism? Environmental Policy versus Everyday Practice in Mexico[END_REF][START_REF] Klooster | Conflict in the Commons: Commercial Forestry and Conservation in Mexican Indigenous Communities[END_REF]. Moreover, old entrenched patterns of caciquismo (regional bossism), manipulation, and corruption still exist through much of Mexico [START_REF] Camp | Politics in Mexico: The Decline of Authoritarianism, 3rd edn[END_REF][START_REF] Beaucage | The Third Wave of Modernization: Liberalism, Salinismo, and Indigenous Peasants in Mexico[END_REF][START_REF] Fox | The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico[END_REF][START_REF] Krauze | Mexico: Biography of Power-A History of Modern Mexico 1810-1996[END_REF]. Forest-based advocacy has not always achieved solutions to these ongoing political and environmental challenges, but it has certainly helped. In the past few years, for example, indigenous leaders, ejido residents, NGOs, and others of the Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua have filed hundreds of citizen complaints about illegal cutting and other unsustainable forestry practices [START_REF] Guerrero | The Timber Industry in Northern Mexico: Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts[END_REF]. They question whether forestry operations in the Sierra Tarahumara are complying with their forest management plans and identify protected areas that would help sustain the Sierra's biodiversity and indigenous communities [START_REF] Guerrero | The Timber Industry in Northern Mexico: Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts[END_REF].

In Mexico, like in most countries, few opportunities exist for regional or national natural resource policy setting and management. This hindering factor has led to a "paradox of public involvement" since citizens expect cutting-edge scientific and technical knowledge to guide them [START_REF] Walker | Natural Resource Policy and the Paradox of Public Involvement: Bringing Scientists and Citizens Together[END_REF], but they remain skeptical about science's abilities to solve problems exclusive of civic input [START_REF] Nowotny | Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty[END_REF].

On the other hand, examples of socially and environmentally responsible forest management can be found in Mexico. Recent research by the author in the Sierra Norte of the southern state of Oaxaca indicates that forest-based communities characterized by a long tradition of healthy cooperative relationships (internally and externally), strong communal decisionmaking practices, and sufficient forested lands are less likely to engage in destructive practices. Common pool resources are being managed in such a way to avoid Garret [START_REF] Hardin | The Tragedy of the Commons[END_REF] "tragedy of the commons," precisely because they are embedded in a communal set of internal regulations that prevents resource over-use and degradation. Indeed, communal forestry management offers new hopes for environmental and democratic sustainability in Mexico thanks to these innovative shared resource arrangements (Mitchell, 2005b).

Several forest communities in the Sierra Norte recognize the importance of their forests in providing clean water, checking soil erosion, and sustaining life. Forest management is carried out through internally regulated decision-making rules and norms (with sanctions), but with the cooperation and monitoring of state agencies, including the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). The World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Oaxaca program and SEMARNAT have helped finance forest certification for several communities. Many local NGOs and government agencies (mediating structures) are training forest workers and administrators in techniques such as the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), pest control, and modern accounting methods. Several Sierra Norte communities now harvest and process pine trees themselves into diverse wood products. 12 Non-timber uses also provide supplementary incomes for some forest-based communities. These uses include the collection of ornamental plants and mushrooms, pine resin tapping, and provision of ecotourism services. Depending upon the community, profits from forest operations are shared among residents, spent on community social services, and/or reinvested in forest equipment (replacements, additions, and maintenance) and silviculture.

Additionally, sharing of social-economic benefits is common among Oaxacan indigenous groups who often consider both present and future generations in their activities [START_REF] Cohen | Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca[END_REF]. This rhetoric of sharing, equality, and generational benefits (i.e., leaving enough for one's children) is expressed by many residents in Oaxacan forest communities such as the ones studied for this research. Furthermore, the decision-making mechanisms for managing and enjoying these immediate and future benefits are arguably participatory and deliberatory by intent, if not in practice. Community assemblies are the main venue where majority voting is conducted on crucial agrarian and forestry issues.

However, I qualify these sharing mechanisms since there are obvious abuses of privilege or exclusion by gender, residency status, and other crucial demographic aspects. For instance, while some women are involved in some forestry activities such as tree nursery management, for the most part, local women are expected to fulfill domestic and reproductive duties in Oaxacan rural communities [START_REF] Dalton | Las Presidentas Municipales en Oaxaca y los Usos y Costumbres[END_REF][START_REF] Vázquez García | Taking Gender into Account: Women and Sustainable Development Projects in Rural Mexico[END_REF]. To be considered democratic by most definitions, management processes should accommodate greater input from local women and other current non-participants (e.g., youth, non-native residents). Yet, there is recognition of such deficiencies among several community authorities interviewed for this research, and new democratic opportunities are starting to appear, albeit slowly (e.g., [START_REF] Dalton | Las Presidentas Municipales en Oaxaca y los Usos y Costumbres[END_REF].

Summing up, community forestry in the Sierra Norte has been aided by five facilitating factors of ecological democracy: perceptions of environmental crisis, environmental altruism, deliberative forms of democracy, local-global networks, and the presence of a strong local culture that supports participatory action for some. Perhaps a key reason for the success of community-based forestry is that it favors communal principles of production over capitalist ones, and prioritizes social over economic benefits. Upon realizing that the former forest companies were degrading their environment, Sierra Norte communities acted collectively to make far-reaching, institutional changes, not all of which have been profitoriented. Community actions shifted from early protests to complex procedural and regulatory changes. These have profited (formerly) structurally disadvantaged residents who advocated for healthier forests and direct economic benefits. Several community interviewees suggested that they were altruistically motivated to favor community and forest well-being over individual gains. Local-global networks have been established that favor community forest planning, management, and monitoring. In Oaxaca, these linkages have been mainly pushed by the WWF and FSC, and have helped position several communities as showcases to national and global agencies, generating new expressions of collaboration and support. Alternative forms of revenues are being incorporated by the collection and sales of forest botanicals, which would have been deemed unprofitable during the forest concession years. Lastly, none of the above would have been possible without strong local cultures that, on the face of it, encourage citizen participation in forest management. An important caveat, however, is the notable absence of women in key positions and meetings.

Primary hindering and facilitating features of both examples are described in Table 1. In short, ecological resistance seems to emerge from within cultures that express (or are capable and willing of expressing) strong participatory action at the local level, and are best equipped through mutual cooperation and shared networks to deal with a political economy positioned largely against their interests. While ecological democracy has not been realized in the first case, and suffers from certain deficiencies in the second case, these examples highlight various factors: to name a few, the premise of equality of conditions, especially in the first case; citizen competence, with local residents questioning government and industry agencies about the "facts" of health hazards or industrial logging; and the need for mediating structures, such as diverse participatory fora that enhance citizenship. Such opportunities mainly include local governance structures, but may also be extended to regional, national, or even international government agencies and NGOs. Improving these supportive and effective mediating structures, for instance, would serve as a conduit for democracy by facilitating open and inclusive participation and enhancing sense of ownership in environmental decision-making. A more equitable and civic-oriented focus on green politics that considers multiple scales and actors may lessen the impact of any environmental blues.

Conclusion

Unlike previous efforts that have often discussed ecological forms of democracy in vague or esoteric terms, this article has empirically elucidated what may affect the realization of ecological democracy. After providing an explicit definition for the term, four idealized scenarios were examined that illustrate various transitional states of ecological democracy. Empirical characteristics of ecological democracy, focusing on five hindering and five facilitating factors, were then discussed. The former include international capital, closed democratic systems, the premise of equality of conditions, scientific prioritization, and ineffective or nonexistent mediating structures that serve as a conduit for democracy; the latter include environmental altruism, discursive democracy, perceptions of environmental crisis, local-global networks, and cultures supportive of participatory democracy. Two examples in support of this discussion were then provided; in the first case, border contamination due to heavy industrial use along the US-Mexican border, and in the second case, community forestry in the southeastern state of Oaxaca.

As shown by the community forest example, both ecological and democratic principles can be integrated through concerted civic actions, with fair, inclusive policy and practices directed toward positive environmental and social well-being. Local reactions to perceived environmental "bads" can establish new arenas for political participation, particularly among those cultures supportive of participatory mechanisms [START_REF] Davidson | Gender and Environmental Risk Concerns: A Review and Analysis of Available Research[END_REF][START_REF] Mccay | The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources[END_REF]. While such instances of "Scenario A" will likely continue to be the exception in the near future, definite progress has been made for environmental citizenship in Mexico, and may be evidenced in other regions characterized by similar facilitating factors. This analysis has also shown that political economy is a central factor affecting the emergence or hindering of ecological democracy, and suggests that perhaps only non-capitalist or regulated capitalist economic relations can be compatible with ecological democracy and "genuine" sustainable development.

Lastly, this article provides a working definition and analytical framework of ecological democracy more conducive to empirical accounts than some previous works (e.g., [START_REF] Faber | The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States[END_REF][START_REF] Morrison | Ecological Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Shutkin | The Land that Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century[END_REF]. The insight herein can be treated as an evaluative tool for policymakers, practitioners, activists, educators, and researchers. In addition, the framework laid out in this article concedes that hindering and facilitating factors of ecological democracy may vary, and ways to assess them may also differ. Continued research on ecological democracy will provide greater understanding on where we are headed and how we might get there.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Scenarios of ecological democracy.

Table 1 .

 1 Hindering and facilitating factors of ecological democracy in case examples

		Factor involved in case study
		Border	Community
	Ecological democracy	pollution	forestry
	Hindering factors
	1. International capital	Yes	Yes
	2. Closed democratic systems	Yes	No
	3. Unfavorable equality of conditions	Yes	No
	4. Scientific prioritization	Unclear	No
	5. Ineffective mediating structures	Yes	No
	Facilitating factors
	1. Environmental altruism	Likely	Yes
	2. Deliberative democracy	No	Yes
	3. Perceptions of environmental crisis	Yes	Yes
	4. Cultures supportive of participatory democracy	Likely	Yes
	5. Local-global networks	Yes	Yes

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, 15-19 August 2002, and modified from the author's dissertation "Ecological Democracy and Forest-dependent Communities of Oaxaca, Mexico" at the University of Alberta (Mitchell, 2005a). I would particularly like to express my gratitude to Debra Davidson, Naomi Krogman, Maureen Reed, Fred Judson, Nancy Gibson, and Ellen Goddard for their invaluable commentary. I also thank the two reviewers for their excellent suggestions to strengthen the original manuscript. However, I take full responsibility for all views, conclusions, limitations, errors, or omissions.

Notes

1 According to Chantal [START_REF] Mouffe | The Democratic Paradox[END_REF], two paradoxes are the liberal tradition (rule of law, defense of human rights, respect for individual liberty) and the democratic tradition (equality, identity between governed and governing, popular sovereignty, or direct forms). 2 For good examples of the ecological benefits of democracy, see [START_REF] De-Shalit | The Environment: Between Theory and Practice[END_REF], [START_REF] Menegat | Participatory Democracy and Sustainable Development: Integrated Urban Environmental Management in Porto Alegre, Brazil[END_REF][START_REF] Winslow | Is Democracy Good for the Environment?[END_REF]. 3 For example, a significant and robust negative linear relationship has been found between certain pollutant concentrations and the level of democracy: the higher the level of democracy, the lower the ambient pollution level [START_REF] Winslow | Is Democracy Good for the Environment?[END_REF]. 4 The authors measured political repression by political and civil freedom, the organized proportion of the labor force, and per capita spending on the military. 5 By "perceptions," I mean that environmental crises are socially constructed. This does not deny the existence of physical/material properties or "real" problems but questions singular, empirical versions of "truth" or reality. 6 A caveat is necessary here. Although these cultures may include indigenous groups, many of these may be authoritarian, misogynistic, and based on spiritual or religious principles that are dogmatically resistant to democratic change. 7 For their conception of "environmentalism of the poor" and interesting comparisons of Northern environmentalism with other countries, see [START_REF] Martinez-Alier | Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South[END_REF]. See also [START_REF] Martinez-Alier | The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation[END_REF]. 8 For example, Mexican farmer Rodolfo Montiel was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to six years in jail after organizing a campaign to halt Boise Cascade's commercial logging in the state of Guerrero. President Vicente Fox had him released on 8 November 2001. 9 For a British example of reform versus radical environmentalism, see [START_REF] Rüdig | Between Moderation and Marginalization: Environmental Radicalism in Britain[END_REF]