Eduardo Viola holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Sao Paulo (1982) and has Post-Doctoral training in international political economy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has been full professor at the Institute of International Relations, University of Brasilia, since 1993 and senior researcher of the Brazilian Council for Scientific Research (CNPQ) since 1986. He is the coordinator of the Brazilian Research Network on International Relations and Climate Change (Redeclim) since 2009. Prof. Viola has been visiting professor in several first rank international universities, among them: Stanford, Colorado at Boulder, Notre Dame, Texas at Austin, Amsterdam, Campinas, San Martin and Buenos Aires. He has also taught for some years at the Rio Branco Institute, the Brazilian school for diplomatic training.

Prof. Viola has published five books, more than seventy articles in journals and more than forty book chapters on issues of globalization and governance, democracy and democratization in South America, Brazilian foreign policy, international environmental policy and politics and international political economy of climate change. He has published in Portuguese, English, Spanish, French and Italian in thirteen countries. He has more than 2,700 citations in Google Scholar.

Some of his most recent publications are:

• “Climate Policy in Brazil. Public awareness, social transformations and emission reductions”, in: Ian Bailey and Hugh Compston (eds.), Feeling the Heat: The Politics of Climate Policy in Rapidly Industrializing Countries, Hampshire, Palgrave, 2012 (with Matias Franchini).
• Sistema Internacional de Hegemonia Conservadora: Democracia e Governança Global na era da Crise Climática (International system under conservative hegemony), São Paulo, Annablume, 2013 (with Matias Franchini and Thaís Ribeiro).
• “Brazil and the politics of climate change: beyond the global commons”, in: Environmental Politics, v. 21, n. 5, 2012, p. 753-771 (with Kathy Hochstetler).
• “Transformations in Brazilian deforestation and climate policy since 2005”, in: Theoretical Inquiries in Law, v. 14, n. 1, 2013, p. 109-124.

Larissa Basso holds Bachelor of Laws (2003) and Master in International Law (2008) degrees from the University of Sao Paulo, and an MPhil in Environmental Policy (2010) from University of Cambridge. She is an attorney at law since 2004 (legal consulting and litigation), currently a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of Brasilia and a member of the Brazilian Research Network on International Relations and Climate Change (Redeclim).

Larissa has researched extensively on international trade and development; since 2009, her main research interests are sustainable development, environmental governance, climate change and global energy governance in the transition to low carbon development.

Some of her most recent publications are:

• “O comércio internacional como ferramenta regulatória de política ambiental” (International trade as an environmental policy regulatory tool), in: Umberto Celli Jr., Maristela Basso and Alberto do Amaral Jr. (orgs.), Arbitragem e Comércio Internacional: estudos em homenagem a Luiz Olavo Baptista, São Paulo, Quartier Latin, 2013, p. 431-453.
• “A ascensão do BASIC e seu conservadorismo no regime internacional das mudanças climáticas” (The rise of the BASIC and its conservatism in the international regime of climate change), in: Camilla Capucio et al (orgs.), Direito Internacional no nosso tempo, v.1, Belo Horizonte, Arraes, 2013, p. 197-211.

The paper now published in the Special Edition of RBPI is entitled “Chinese energy policy progress and challenges in the transition to low carbon development, 2006 - 2013”.

Larissa Basso conceded an interview about his article to André Vicente Pintor.

Interview about “Chinese energy policy progress and challenges in the transition to low carbon development, 2006 - 2013”, with Larissa Basso

André Vicente Pintor

1) Some IR scholars – like Adam Watson (1992) – talk about the role of innovation in changing international order’s status quo and building and consolidating new hegemonies. Do you believe that China is pacing towards global leadership in the development and production of low carbon technologies or do you think that the investments it makes are not properly in the sense of technological innovation, but just of an energetic matrix substitution based on technologies that already exist? Does the country have enough intellectual capital to make a technological revolution in the sustainable development area?

Due to the dynamics of global governance in the XXI Century, China is heading to global leadership, but this leadership will always be shared with other countries – in case of low carbon technologies, with USA, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. So far, China’s contribution to low carbon development has been its ability to substantially decrease the prices of Western low carbon technologies due to gains of scale on production, but the Chinese are investing in innovation and could play an important role in the future. A revolution in low carbon technologies will be a shared one, undertaken by some countries simultaneously, with and without cooperation.

2) In the case of China becoming a leader in low carbon technology innovation, is it probable that this will put the country in the centre of an international order restructuring? If this leadership does not come from China, is it possible that the leading country will assume a hegemonic role?

Chinese role in the international order will be of a co-leader. In our view, the international order is being restructured around the triad USA, European Union and China.

3) Your article make considerations on the Chinese positioning in multilateral negotiations over climate and sustainable development issues, and how it is essential in these negotiations, since China is a “climate superpower”. Talking about the reverse relation, however, in which manner have UN and INGOs been interacting directly with, and reaching, Chinese civil society – even though the regime is an authoritarian one, I suppose it does not inhibit this relation completely?

Other countries developments (led by governments, corporations, NGOs and the scientific community) in the area of climate change and decarbonisation have greater influence on the Chinese civil society than the UN or INGOs, and this is likely to be intensified in the future. The strong interdependence between the Chinese economy and global markets is the greatest driver of the interchange between China and the world, and the Chinese regime, despite authoritarian, is not capable of blocking it and the influence that follows.

4) Is it important that an alternate view on China - other than Northern countries’ - is being published in southern countries like Brazil? Why?

Firstly, in our opinion the division of the world in North and South is an obsolete one, because the world is extremely complex nowadays. China, for example, is, in many dimensions (military power, technological development, space program and complex industrial base) closer to developed countries than to “developing” ones. In fact, the Chinese government restates China’s developing characteristics due to the political gains it aims to get from it – the claim has little sense from a scientific point of view.

Nevertheless, it is very important for us to study China and other emerging economies and to develop an alternate view on them, because this research (i) brings new insights to the debate, (ii) increases mutual knowledg” without the intermediation of American or European views, and (iii) enhances the interaction of scientific communities from both countries.

Read the article:

BASSO, Larissa; VIOLA, Eduardo. Chinese energy policy progress and challenges in the transition to low carbon development, 2006-2013. Rev. bras. polít. int., Brasília , v. 57, n. spe, 2014 . Available from <http://www.scielo.br/article_plus.php?pid=S0034-73292014000300174&tlng=en&lng=en&gt;. access on 18 Oct. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201400211.

André Vicente Pintor is a member of the Tutorial Education Program in International Relations - PET/REL and a member of the Laboratory of analysis in International Relations - LARI ([email protected] )

Entrevistas, spe/2014