Brazil, Foreign Policy and Climate Change (1992-2005)

Abstract

Abstract Since the emergence of the environmental agenda in the global arena, Brazil has maintained an active position in the debates around this topic. Although Brazil has always been a protagonist, its foreign policy has shown some changes in relation to addressing climate change in recent years. Likewise, the modalities under which this issue has been framed as a problem since 1992 are fundamentally important to interpreting the Brazilian position in international negotiations and the changes in them over the years. The objective of the following article is to understand the discursive framework on which the foreign policy of climate change in Brazil was structured from a constructivist standpoint on International Relations. Using this approach, this article studies both the international influences and the internal conditions of Brazilian climate policy in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The main sources of this research are semi-structured interviews with state and non-state actors in Brazil, complemented with a review of secondary sources such as official documents and academic papers.