Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil)
How just are risk responses that worsen vulnerability in the long term? Should the urban poor be left with self-reliance when facing hazards in the Anthropocene? This research investigates urban development and vulnerability in the Anthropocene. While it is known that informal settlements face great...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2022-10-01
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| Series: | Urban Science |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/6/4/76 |
| _version_ | 1797455026409439232 |
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| author | Alexandre Pereira Santos Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Lopez Cleiton Chiarel Jürgen Scheffran |
| author_facet | Alexandre Pereira Santos Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Lopez Cleiton Chiarel Jürgen Scheffran |
| author_sort | Alexandre Pereira Santos |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | How just are risk responses that worsen vulnerability in the long term? Should the urban poor be left with self-reliance when facing hazards in the Anthropocene? This research investigates urban development and vulnerability in the Anthropocene. While it is known that informal settlements face greater hazards than most urbanized areas, there are different landscapes of risk. The analysis explores divergent risk-response strategies among households according to their residents’ risk perception and response capacity in two different landscapes of an urban delta using logit regression models. These models evaluate the associations between 14 response options to floods and control for factors of income, age, number of residents in the household, location, access to vehicles, and self-identified ethnicity. This study uses data from the Living with Floods Survey by the World Bank to investigate risk responses to the 2015 flood in the Jacuí River delta. The analysis considers a large sample of households (n = 1451) in informal settlements. The results show the intense influence of income on location choice and response capacity. We also found that income is a more robust social descriptor of response capacity than age or ethnicity. Risk perception proved limited in determining response strategies and can be associated with resignation to losses from floods. We argue that these results suggest trade-offs between short- and long-term responses to hazards in informal settlements in coastal and delta regions, which link adaptive behavior to environmental justice. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T15:46:34Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-401839c6a30d49229204382b9c405a55 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2413-8851 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T15:46:34Z |
| publishDate | 2022-10-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Urban Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-401839c6a30d49229204382b9c405a552023-11-24T18:30:01ZengMDPI AGUrban Science2413-88512022-10-01647610.3390/urbansci6040076Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil)Alexandre Pereira Santos0Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Lopez1Cleiton Chiarel2Jürgen Scheffran3Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC), Institute of Geography, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, GermanyResearch Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC), Institute of Geography, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, GermanySocial Sciences Graduate Program, Vale dos Sinos University (UNISINOS), São Leopoldo 93022-750, BrazilResearch Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC), Institute of Geography, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, GermanyHow just are risk responses that worsen vulnerability in the long term? Should the urban poor be left with self-reliance when facing hazards in the Anthropocene? This research investigates urban development and vulnerability in the Anthropocene. While it is known that informal settlements face greater hazards than most urbanized areas, there are different landscapes of risk. The analysis explores divergent risk-response strategies among households according to their residents’ risk perception and response capacity in two different landscapes of an urban delta using logit regression models. These models evaluate the associations between 14 response options to floods and control for factors of income, age, number of residents in the household, location, access to vehicles, and self-identified ethnicity. This study uses data from the Living with Floods Survey by the World Bank to investigate risk responses to the 2015 flood in the Jacuí River delta. The analysis considers a large sample of households (n = 1451) in informal settlements. The results show the intense influence of income on location choice and response capacity. We also found that income is a more robust social descriptor of response capacity than age or ethnicity. Risk perception proved limited in determining response strategies and can be associated with resignation to losses from floods. We argue that these results suggest trade-offs between short- and long-term responses to hazards in informal settlements in coastal and delta regions, which link adaptive behavior to environmental justice.https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/6/4/76risk responsefloodinginformal settlements |
| spellingShingle | Alexandre Pereira Santos Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Lopez Cleiton Chiarel Jürgen Scheffran Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) Urban Science risk response flooding informal settlements |
| title | Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) |
| title_full | Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) |
| title_fullStr | Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) |
| title_full_unstemmed | Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) |
| title_short | Unequal Landscapes: Vulnerability Traps in Informal Settlements of the Jacuí River Delta (Brazil) |
| title_sort | unequal landscapes vulnerability traps in informal settlements of the jacui river delta brazil |
| topic | risk response flooding informal settlements |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/6/4/76 |
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