Dr Amy Burnett (Middlesex University, Centre for the Understanding of Societal Prosperity and founder of Valuing Community) is a Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Place Fellow. Amy is testing a definition of Ecological Citizenship to scaffold her research on regenerative innovation as a framework for inclusive, place-based sustainability transitions. In this blog, she introduces this definition as an empowering and transformative act that supports shared stewardship towards each other and the natural world. Her LPIP research reflects on how different elements of this definition might be used to embed ecological and social values into planning, finance and governance systems and incentivise positive change and creativity.
Her research converges with urgent questions about how we measure and support place-based innovation across the UK amid a backdrop of a decisive shift in electoral preferences that saw Reform make significant gains in the recent May 2026 local elections, which will see the devolution unfold in this new political territory. Her research builds on a recent British Academy Policy Innovation Fellowship and related Fellowship Activities Fund, where she took a deep-dive into the question of what value means in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and how different values are understood and measured. The LPIP research takes this further by exploring how values that promote Ecological Citizenship surface and what can and should be done to scale up approaches that genuinely work with different places and communities.
Introduction – Why Focus on Ecological Citizenship?
In the May 2026 local elections last week, we saw a decisive shift towards Reform and away from the longstanding political preferences towards mainstream political parties. Reform has an explicit focus to end net-zero and nature-friendly policies. This is an opportune time to reflect on how action towards environmental issues can be carried through, whatever group may be in power. In particular, how might we frame environmental action so it is not seen as something that is a left-wing preserve of the ‘woke’ middle-class and where supporting the economy is not a trade-off with people and planet.
So the question is this: how can the roles and functions that support sustainable action be better integrated into our planning, finance and governance systems to encourage restoration of nature and the flourishing of community? This sits at the heart of my LPIP Place Fellowship research, which examines critical gaps and opportunities in how we measure and support place-based innovation to curate shared stewardship for the future in our communities.
Growth is often considered a key objective for economic progress, and the challenge to produce more often has a negative impact on the environment. Circular and regenerative approaches are becoming more mainstream, but conventional approaches to measuring ‘progress’ can fall short. Existing frameworks can tend to focus on reducing negative impacts rather than creating positive ecological change (such as positive feedback loops) and rarely capture the full spectrum of value that communities generate. Traditional innovation policy measures may prioritise jobs created, businesses supported, or patents filed. Yet this approach may overlook transformations that make innovation truly sustainable and regenerative. With Reform’s commitment to end much of the UK’s policy evolution to support environmental action, we need to think about how we can create frameworks for action that can be used across different stakeholders to ensure a reversal of environmental decline can still persist with or without national government policy to that effect.
Even better if these can also support positively reinforcing place-based outcomes when they support social and environmental prosperity understands the natural systems upon which we all depend. Amid rising cost-of-living pressures and indications of increasing social and political polarisation in our online and offline spaces requires understanding of how and why people’s views converge and diverge (Bruns et al., 2024).
My LPIP Hub research takes a deep dive into what it means to curate, enact and shift the conditions that make inclusive, creative and sustainable action take root. Informed by interviews and workshops with place-based, creative custodians and innovators and an in-depth assessment of existing frameworks and measures of sustainable systems. I am particularly interested in how Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), VCSEs and creative industries encourage innovation in the ‘in-between’ spaces of business-as-usual and the potential to dream alternatives. I’m interested in what governance and financing mechanisms are available – or can be imagined – that embed social and environmental value within entrepreneurial ecosystems, including in rural and (former) industrial settings.
To do this, I suggest a lens of Ecological Citizenship that sees ‘citizenship’ not only as an empowering and transformative act but one of attunement: where we can choose to adopt a spirit of shared stewardship towards each other and the natural world in the roles we perform, at home, work and society. Informed by the studies of Carl Jung, I see these roles as archetypes (which I will unpack in my LPIP outputs) since they intersect personal, place-based and working characteristics that can surface and awaken our reason for being in the world.
What is Ecological Citizenship?
Ecological citizenship is awakening responsibility to connect to the beauty of the earth and its intricate systems. It’s about recognising your value and those around you by adopting a spirit of shared stewardship of each other. It’s showing care for the unheard, the unseen and the unborn. Ecological citizenship is having the tools to define and express the value of nature so our actions protect and amplify her power to regenerate, restore and catalyse new forms of life, action and innovation. It’s designing, through ecological laws and social insights, systems that defend and support all life on earth. It is the joy of celebrating our presence on this earth and our place in time in the universe. It’s about finding the flow and rhythm that drives what wakes every creature and plant every day and why the planets spin. Ecological citizenship transcends political parties, social status, or the size of one’s house or car. It’s a universal leveller that must be rescued from the challenges faced by those who accuse this spirit of being “woke”. It is the life force of possibility that provides therapeutic energy to satisfy our reason for being in the world.
Dr Amy Burnett
Ecological Citizenship is not a new concept (see Dobson, 2003) nor a ‘left-wing’ one. It is, arguably, a conservative principle — stewardship, responsibility, husbanding what has been inherited so that it can be passed on. The difficulty is that the language through which it is usually expressed — inclusion, justice, rights — has become politically freighted in ways that obscure what a very old and cross-cutting idea.
As someone who has been living and breathing research in this area and as a practitioner, I wanted to define Ecological Citizenship in a way that resonated with the various things I have read, reflected on and experienced on this journey. As such, I define it in the following way:
A definition of Ecological Citizenship: Amy Burnett (2026)
This definition is different from traditional conceptions of citizenship, which can home in on human-to-human social contracts: when citizens address environmental issues, nature is framed as something humans manage – maintaining an extractive (instrumental) relationship where nature exists for human purposes. This lack of a ‘levelling function’ between human and nature can perpetuate siloed policy approaches in tackling both social and ecological issues and opportunities in a more integrated way.
My Ecological Citizenship definition fundamentally repositions humans within ecological systems, treating nature as having intrinsic value (emphasised brilliantly by the UK Green Building Council’s infographics). This extends the key pillars of ecosystem services (as having provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services): ecological citizenship emerges from recognising reciprocal relationships with non-human entities, where humans are participants in regenerative cycles, not seeking to manage or control nature for their own ends.
It is underpinned by an understanding of humanity’s position within ecosystems. How this might occur in different contexts and the lessons for scaling such an approach are a key focus of my planned engagement with different stakeholders, which will seek to uncover and prototype what ‘regenerative governance’ (i.e. ways of working that unlock the power to simultaneously restore and renew conditions for thriving places) might look like using this lens of understanding.
In my LPIP Place Fellowship, I want to understand the relevance of this lens on Ecological Citizenship for different stakeholder groups by developing practical tools and frameworks to help communities define and express the value of what they do, whilst fostering regenerative place pathways. The research investigates several key questions that have immediate relevance for many different stakeholders working on place-based issues and reflect the goals of the Sustainability, Innovation and Governance LPIP Themes I am contributing to:
Ecological Citizenship and Entrepreneurship: How can and should our understanding of place-based innovation and ‘enterprise’ encompass Ecological Citizenship?
Delivering Regenerative Solutions: How can different actors—Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), local authorities—deliver localised, regenerative solutions that meet the concerns of all citizens, not just a concentrated few?
Methodology and Policy Implications: What conditions — cultural, financial, and digital — enable communities and organisations to recognise, express and act on the full range of values they hold in ways that support understanding of each other?
Using place-based tools including asset mapping, GIS analysis and creative expression methods, the research will identify where eco-cultural values intersect with existing planning and financing systems and opportunities to further embed regenerative opportunities with an ecological citizenship lens.
Expected benefits of this research
The LPIP Fellowship provides a valuable opportunity to develop these ideas in partnership with communities, policy-makers and practitioners working at the frontiers of place-based sustainable development and place stewardship. The research aims to be a tool to help navigate and unlock new possibilities for financing and supporting regenerative development. Doing so can articulate and cultivate the many forms of value that scaffold our personal, collective and place-based identities to support stewardship and renewal, now and in the future.
This blog was written by Dr Amy Burnett, LPIP Place Fellow and Research Fellow at Middlesex University’s Centre for Enterprise, Environment and Development Research (CEEDR).
