Ecology on the horizon of China's project of national development: ecological civilization as a paradigm

• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Rui Miguel da Cunha
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/18385
• topic: Sustainability; Ecology; Ecological civilization; Development; China; Sustentabilidade; Ecologia; Desenvolvimento

Climate change, global warming or sustainability are buzzwords nowadays and have been for at least the last 10 to 15 years. Powerful images of smog, polluted rivers and heavy industry polluting are frequently utilized to demonstrate a certain point and often these images are taken from the People’s Republic of China. Western prejudice towards the country in most cases, reality however is clear. More importantly than pointing culprits, the question should be centred in understanding China’s historical context and from there to understand the more recent theoretical and practical development towards fighting certain unbalances. Ecological Civilization is the culmination of China’s path towards sustainability. Sustainability of its national development goals, but also of its political and economic system. With that in mind, we sought to help unravel a bit more of this country’s recent history and its relationship with the environment through different perspectives and with the research question, already mentioned, as a guiding principle. In the end, this is about understanding China’s recent ecological swing considering the national development project that is marked by a complex historical path.