Shaozeng Zhang's "Financial inclusion or developmental exclusion?"
Title of Project: "Financial inclusion or developmental exclusion? The carbon credit payment to forest inhabitants in Brazilian Amazon"
Region of Research: Juma Forest Reserve in the State of Amazonas, Brazil
Project Summary: This doctoral dissertation research aims to study the potentials of carbon credit payment as an emergent top-down international financial mechanism claimed to mitigate global climate change and to reduce rural poverty in developing countries. It intends to investigate the pilot project of REDD (Reduced Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation) in Juma Forest Reserve in the State of Amazonas, Brazil. This proposed study is to explore the potentials of the carbon credit payment mechanism in global financial inclusion of this poorest population, as well as in environmental political restriction to local development, in Brazil.
Researcher: Shaozeng Zhang received a B.A. in sociology and a M.A. in anthropology from Peking University, China. He was admitted to the PhD program of anthropology in University of California, Irvine, USA, in September 2009 and is currently working on his dissertation project about the ongoing process of making carbon credit payment policy in the Brazilian Amazon based on the new CO2 emission reduction scheme of REDD (Reduced Emission through Deforestation and Degradation), (to be) approved by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2009. Shaozeng's research looks at the coproduction of expert knowledge and politics in Brazil's REDD policymaking in the shifting context of global climate change politics.
