Mariana Delgado Barbieri (Phd candidate - UNICAMP) - marianabarb@yahoo.comLeila da Costa Ferreira (Full Professor in Environmental Sociology – UNICAMP)

STATE, CIVIL SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT IN CHINA

CHINA IS THE GREATEST ANUAL EMITTER OF CO₂ IN THE WORLD

55% OF CHINESES BELIEVED THAT CHANGES IN WEATHER PATTERNS WERE DUE TO HUMAN ACTIVITY

THERE ARE MORE THAN 4.000 ENVIRONMENTAL NGOs IN CHINA

(ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images)

Environmental protest in Beijing (Reuters/Greenpeace/Lu Guang/Divulgação)

AUTHORITARIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM

ENVIRONMENT CIVIL SOCIETY

STATE

At a time when China surprises the world invirtue of its economic rates, it is easy to identifythe environmental consequences of the politicaland economic choices adopted in that country.In the context of the risk society, a globalgovernance is primordial to take action againstthe scenario of environmental changes thatindistinctly strike the whole world. Understandhow the environmental movements werehistorically formed in China, their action, limitsand fundamental role played in the globalsociety that we are in, are the main goals of thisstudy, which aims to identify how the non-governmental environmental organizations areproceeding within China and how they standbetween the State and the civil society. As afundamental social actor in the 21st century, theChinese environmental movement has globalimportance in identifying the risks and proposingnew mitigation forms, that will impact the entireglobal society, aiming to lessen theconsequences of environmental changes.

Recovering the notion of authoritarian environmentalism, we can propose the ideathat in the absence of space for political action of the Chinese environmentalmovement, it is shaped according to the authoritarian environmentalism of theState and distances itself from the direct political action. What the movementspropose are not questionings of the politics adopted by the Chinese State or thedirect political confrontation, what we have in China is an environmentalismendowed with delicacy and softness, that escapes from the political conflicts and ispracticed distant from the political guidelines. Directly related to the structuring ofthe State and the constitution of the civil society, we identify that the environmentalmovements, throughout the 90’s and early 2000s, are characterized by a largeconcentration in Pekin and Shangai, but with limited diffusion in the rest of thecountry. Furthermore, there is a fragmentation in the movement and absence ofconstitution of a movement able to act throughout the country and representinterests of the Chinese society as a whole.