Kathryn Hochstetler, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and expert on environmental politics and Latin America, will present “Climate Rights and Obligations for Emerging States: The Cases of Brazil and South Africa” on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum. Focused on the question of global warming and developing economies, Hochstetler’s presentation is free and open to the public.
The sharp distinction between developed and developing states has been a major feature of global climate talks ever since the Kyoto Protocols legally enshrined emissions caps for the former while excluding the latter. However, the explosive economic growth of countries such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa has unsettled this division, raising questions of at what point a country becomes sufficiently economically healthy to be responsible for its carbon emissions. This question of how to balance the need to fight poverty with the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions has become a central feature of global climate talks, and one of the major international political issues of the new century.
Hochstetler, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, is the CIGI Chair of Governance in the Americas at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She has also taught political science at the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University, and held research positions at the Centre for Brazilian Studies at Oxford University and the Instituto de Desarrollo Economico y Social in Buenos Aires. She has published widely on topics including social movements and environmental politics, with a focus on South America and United Nations conferences. She has published three books: Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society (Duke University Press, 2007, with Margaret E. Keck), Advances in International Environmental Politics (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006, co-edited with Michele Betsill and Dimitris Stevis), and Sovereignty, Democracy and Global Civil Society: State-Society Relations at UN World Conferences (SUNY University Press, 2005, with Ann Marie Clark and Elisabeth Jay Friedman).
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Latin American Studies. For further information and disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4252 or contact mtatge@carleton.edu. The Gould Library Athenaeum is accessible via Highway 19 in Northfield.