Compensações ecológicas na República Popular da China: rumo a uma civilização ecológica?

Author(s)

Niklas Werner Weins

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2023-06-14

Examining board members

Leila da Costa Ferreira; Roberto Pereira Guimarães; Annah Lake Zhu; Mateus Batistella; Ramon Felipe Bicudo da Silva

• Advisor: Leila da Costa Ferreira; Simone Aparecida Vieira

Abstract

Global environmental changes resulting from human activities affect societies in the Global North and the South unequally which makes it necessary to analyze opportunities and threats of adaptation strategies accordingly. The rapid economic and cultural changes that China, the world’s most populous country, underwent in the twentieth century have led to many environmental problems to which its political leadership responded in 2007 by adapting the "Construction of an Ecological Civilization" as a utopian vision to be achieved until 2049. Since president Xi Jinping took office in 2013, the policy framework has also been guiding the country’s approach to the integration of urban development and ecological management, in a new stage of implementing advanced environmental priority policies and, since 2017, their internationalization in global environmental governance. Ecological compensations are among these tools for risk mitigation and climate finance which offer an innovative approach to the integration of conservation and modernization, particularly in China's rapidly growing cities. In this thesis, I argue that China’s Eco-Civilization offers a (non-Western) parallel with Beck’s concept of metamorphosis, as the logic of social interaction is fundamentally changed in the face of global environmental risks. Exploring eco-compensation and international trade from a multi-level perspective, this thesis provides some evidence for the metamorphosis under Eco-Civilization. Challenging some of the dominant Western conceptions of nature conservation, China’s approach domestically advocated a strong coordinating role to the central state to build this ecological utopia of harmony between humans and nature. In an empirical exploration of Chinese scientific, news and policy documents, the conflict between different land uses is highlighted in the local case study of the Southwestern city of Chongqing. Following Beck’s theoretical assumptions, this is followed by an analysis of China’s environmental governance structures and a discussion on the roles of cities as political actors in the process of metamorphosis in Chongqing. The consequences beyond China’s borders are discussed in chapters five and six, suggesting that Eco-Civilization represents an excellent base for the implementation of transnational eco-compensations in South-South cooperation among biodiverse countries. I conclude by highlighting some of the theoretical contributions that a more pluralized approach to China’s environmental rise could bring to environmental sociology and environmental policies in Brazil (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/03581-0 - Ecological compensations in the People's Republic of China: toward an ecological civilization?
• Grantee: Niklas Werner Weins
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate