New working paper on “Changing Climate and Society: The Surprising Case of Brazil” now available

Why is Brazil unique when it comes to climate change? Brazil is a major emerging economy and it is the sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. However, its fossil fuel-based emissions are low by global standards. Brazil has been innovative in developing some relevant low carbon ways of generating energy and pioneered significant transport innovations. It has also played a major role in international debates on global warming and Brazilians’ degree of concern about global warming is higher than almost anywhere else. Brazil has the largest reserve of agricultural land in the world and it houses most of the Amazon forest and river basin.

climatechangeworkingThis working paper examines the interesting case of Brazil, offering a general overview of the centrality of Brazil within climate policy and politics.

Download and read the complimentary working paper now.

Update on Changing Climates

The Changing Climates project is a corpus-based investigation of discourses around climate change. It aims to examine how climate change has been framed in the media coverage across Britain and Brazil in the past decade. Here, we look at two different scenarios. Recent surveys have shown that climate change is currently considered a high priority concern within Brazil, with the country showing higher degree of concern than almost anywhere else. By contrast, climate changeĀ scepticism is increasingly prominent in the British public sphere.

We are pleased to announce that we have just finished collecting the data. The Brazilian corpus contains about 8 million words, comprising texts from 12 newspapers. The British corpus is much larger. It has nearly 80 million words and includes texts published by all major British broadsheet and tabloid papers.