Ciência Ambiental

Water is not only a valuable substance, but is also valued in different ways dependent on substantive social, ecological, and historical conditions. The concept of water value positionality is introduced to describe the dynamic ensemble of meanings forged from cooperation and competition in the allocation, use, and conservation of water. Positionality helps us to understand water conflicts as individuals and groups struggling to legitimise their valuation of water. The explanatory function of positionality is demonstrated with an empirical case study in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. Hegemonic positionality depicts water as an economic resource required for regional development and urban growth. This has been increasingly challenged by sectors of the state apparatus who call for the monetary valuation of water. Beyond these two perspectives, there exists a vast range of water values articulated by the local communities in their struggle for survival and political affirmation. The conclusion is that, in the process of constantly revaluing water, there are temporary 'positions of value' that last and change with sociocultural and politicoecological experiences.

Waste pickers all over the world work innovatively to reduce the environmental footprint of cities as they struggle to meet their critical livelihood obligations. Informed by the case of waste picker organizations (WPOs) this article examines how grassroots initiatives and extreme-niche innovations are created and sustained by mobilizing resources, rationales and relations. The study is informed by a cross-national survey and in-depth interviews with WPOs in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Kenya and Tanzania, and builds upon theories of grassroots innovation movements. The findings show how operating in contexts of extreme scarcity, these grassroots organisations tap into local resources, e.g. tacit knowledge, economies of affection and other socially embedded institutional resources. Blending material and environmental rationales, contributes to expanding their audiences and to gaining further support. In such deprived urban contexts, radical and cumulative crises and events hindering residents’ livelihoods can paradoxically also spark ingenuity out of necessity, and the transformation of these settings into extreme niches of innovation. Finally, the mobilization of relations through the formation of networks linking WPOs with supportive intermediaries and global circuits of solidarity becomes another fundamental resilience strategy by which WPOs can navigate contested environments and insert their extreme-niche innovations in governmental structures. By simultaneously adopting a broad repertoire of strategies of insertion, contention, and mobilization WPO and their innovations thrive in highly constrained environments. We conclude with reflecting on how ‘extreme’ niches of innovation − at the cracks of the formal city, economy and waste systems − can unleash the creative power of stigmatized, illiterate and neglected grassroots to experiment with new solutions in resource-poor environments.

In a number of cities around the world the adoption of climate policies has been driven by partnerships between multiple actors from the private sector, NGOs, and academia. With this paper we investigate the formulation and implementation processes of climate policy in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. We argue that the trend of multiactor and multilevel participation in climate policy making, detected in developed countries, can be observed in a major city from an emerging economy. We further argue that the ample engagement of actors driving the adoption of climate policies might not be reflected in policy implementation. Although São Paulo’s Municipal Climate Law was adopted after a participatory process, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the transport sector have been largely absent from its implementation. We propose four reasons for further involvement of SMEs and suggest that participation of relevant actors and sectors is necessary in both the formulation and the implementation of climate policies.

With the world becoming increasingly urban, housing poverty in the global south has made the metaphor ‘planet of slums’ a global reality. This paper revisits the dichotomy of enabler vs. provider debate in housing policy that preoccupied housing scholars in the last few decades. Drawing on the government intervention in Brazil and India, it is argued that the transformative and adaptive capacity of enabling strategy has now come of an age. Among other things, the paper makes a close reading of the historical and geographical (re)constitution of the process of housing delivery in these countries and argues that they have adopted enabling strategies along with closely intertwined strategies of crisis management and show a clear predisposition towards earlier provider approach of state administered, large-scale housing programmes to support the low-income households. Thus, as one policy approach follows another, the discursive space for the government policy doctrine acquires a layered structure, which contains elements of both provider and enabling approaches. Whilst these developments, still evolutionary, challenges remain in the form of conceptual contradictions that continue to obscure our approach towards low-income housing policies in the global South. Arguably on this basis, considerably more, attention should be given to providing housing to the poor in the global South.

As relações cidade/natureza a partir da abordagem sociopolítica da gestão ambiental são tema deste artigo. Tendo o Distrito Federal como recorte, e, em especial, a área compreendida pela sub-bacia do Riacho Fundo, a partir de uma abordagem sócio-histórica do processo de urbanização de Brasília, enfatizam-se os impasses gerados pelo impacto urbano sobre os recursos hídricos locais e o papel desempenhado pela sociedade civil e poder público, na regulação da dinâmica socioambiental urbana. É apontada a necessidade de se construir um saber ambiental que integre e ultrapasse a racionalidade instrumental e disjuntiva da visão moderna e acione as possibilidades de emergência de novas formas de construção de conhecimento e estratégias de ação. Nessa perspectiva, a integração da dimensão educativa no espaço político é condição de um efetivo surgimento de alternativas viáveis às questões ambientais concretas. A experiência de formação de redes solidárias é discutida como possibilidade de emergência de novos sujeitos coletivos e como prática de articulação entre saberes locais e científicos orientados a uma práxis responsável.

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to the debate on how the ecologies of urbanization help us understand the socio-spatial changes we confront in the climate emergency. The intervention is constructed in four steps. First, it speaks to what kind of Urban Political Ecology (UPE)—or generally what I call a “spatialized political ecology”—may be appropriate for urban society. In a second step, it historicizes and spatializes the narrative by introducing an urban political ecology of landscapes. For that, the paper mobilizes the concepts of boundaries, belts, and in-betweens. The third part illustrates the transformation of postsuburban political ecologies in three rather different world regions. The last part of this paper examines what the potential is and what need for action exists in an urban society threatened and conditioned by the climate emergency and the Capitalocene. Ultimately, the paper aspires to move the debate on UPE more into the direction of making it relevant for the urban affairs of a suburban planet.

Esse artigo enfoca as relações recipro­cas entre estas mudanças populacionais e a qualidade ambiental no Interior Paulista. O Interior sofre a deterioração ambiental por desmatamentos desde o século XVI (Dean, 1995; Victor, 1975). Os processos de urbanização e industrialização, aumen­tando os desmatamentos, trouxeram tam­bém a degradação do ar, água e solos da região. O projeto maior, do qual este artigo foi elaborado, examina as possibilidades de conciliar o intenso crescimento econô­mico regional com a conservação dos re­cursos naturais. Pensando-se na popula­ção, a questão que se coloca relaciona-se aos limites existentes do continuado cres­cimento econômico, segundo o estilo de desenvolvimento corrente e a disponibili­dade dos recursos. Nós temos examinado anteriormente (Hogan, 1993) as vocações ecológicas e econômicas de países e distin­tas sub-regiões, apontando os trade-offsrequeridos para o desenvolvimento sus­tentável.

Nesse artigo nós enfocaremos a bacia hidrográfica que comporta a mais dinâmi­ca das regiões do Interior. Em um contexto de agricultura de alta tecnologia, junto com a intensa urbanização, as Bacias dos Rios Piracicaba e Capivari agora apresen­tam sérias ameaças ambientais relaciona­das com os resíduos sólidos da indústria e domésticos, erosão do solo, poluição do ar, escassez da água e deterioração da quali­dade da água. Abordaremos aqui a questão da água, no contexto dos padrões de mobi­lidade regional. Embora o crescimento populacional atenuado traga uma oportu­nidade para amenizar alguns dos danos ambientais que têm se acumulado nas dé­cadas recentes, ainda é crucial examinar onde esse crescimento lento está ocorren­do. Mesmo depois da transição demográfica e mesmo com uma abundância de recursos hídricos, será necessário considerar o as­pecto espacial da mudança populacional, vis a vis a quantidade e qualidade da água. Sem concordar que o crescimento populacional per se é uma ameaça para abase dos recursos naturais, a distribuição territorial da população relativa ao recurso hídrico coloca limites que devem ser con­siderados.