Definition of environmental and climate risk is in dispute – 12/26/2023 – Latinoamérica21

The climate and environmental crises are not experienced in just one way. For each person, reality is what is familiar, something that is collectively constructed based on beliefs, everyday knowledge, social norms and established routines.

This means that the actions and strategies to face the challenges that climate and environmental change pose do not have a single social definition, as the responses to these challenges are also diverse.

Far from being true that the heterogeneity of perceptions regarding environmental risks is a consequence of the lack of availability or ability to understand information, social sciences have demonstrated that these differences are mainly due to issues linked to material and sociocultural inequalities.

The evidence tells us that the amount of information about environmental health risks is not related to the way in which identified problems are addressed. Since the 1980s, there has been an interest in understanding how the perception of risks is constructed in different audiences (academics, technicians, policy makers, the general public) linked to environmental dangers generated by technological and industrial development and cultural consumption patterns.

Several authors have demonstrated that the perception of environmental and health risks is constructed, to a large extent, based on sociopolitically imposed risk definitions, that is, based on who has the power to define problems in the context of political and technical decisions. .

The multiverses that coexist around the definition of the climate and environmental crisis occur in different areas. Scientists and politicians perpetuate divergences in the ways of defining the problem and proposing possible solutions. As Argentine political scientist and environmental activist Flavia Broffoni mentions, “whoever defines the concept controls the debate.”

For example, in Uruguay, in mid-2023, the government declared a water crisis defined by social and academic movements and various self-convoked demonstrations as a consequence of the “looting” of water by hegemonic production models. This water crisis came to light due to the lack of drinking water, especially for small producers in the metropolitan area, as had never happened before in the country. However, this problem has been reported for years.

Heterogeneity of environmental risk definitions

Reality is loaded with meanings based on socially validated knowledge and is built under power structures. The definition of environmental and climate risks is a field of dispute in which technical and popular knowledge intersects with interests, power relations and the legitimization of knowledge by societies themselves. It all depends on how we define progress, development, technology, well-being, nature and participation, among other issues.

Problematizing the climate and environmental crises implies socially defining the risks associated with them in competition with the risks linked to economic growth and technical-scientific progress.

As we decide to address the consequences of increasingly extreme climate events, the lack of access to quality environmental services for life (water, air) or the availability of space for growing food are part of the risk selection processes defined by science or politics. It’s not just what we know, but what we can do with what we know, individually and collectively.

The answers to what the risks and problems are and how they should be dealt with are diverse and often contradictory. There are debates about what the criteria for assessing environmental risks should be, according to the groups or social references being analyzed.

The imposition of narratives regarding these risk definitions and their consequences has significant economic, social and environmental impacts. These impositions occur both within countries, between socioeconomically hegemonic groups, and between more developed countries or regions in relation to others that also receive the weight of the development model in its consequences.

The causes and consequences of global threats, such as the proliferation of diseases and climate events, are unevenly distributed across the planet, as are the resources to face them.

Inequality and alternatives

There is a debt that is rarely mentioned in technical and political areas that has to do with the responsibilities and causes linked to the multiple inequalities generated and deepened in this context of climate crisis.

Despite the seriousness of the socio-environmental situation that the planet is going through, many countries have not yet ratified the Escazú Agreement (which establishes broad social participation, justice and access to information on environmental matters as an international standard) and there are few who consider the debt socioecological.

On the contrary, the climate of violence against activists and environmental movements has intensified in the region in recent years, and the conditions of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged populations continue to deteriorate.

Some academics have moved beyond the purely scientific mode of generating knowledge to propose and seek concrete transformations that address multiple inequalities.

Those who defend the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South, for example, argue that the energy, social and digital transition must be designed from the territories that support material, cultural and environmental sacrifice to save the planet.

In a context in which the definitions of environmental crisis are not unique, in which excess information does not solve problems and in which there are different geopolitical responsibilities in relation to planetary risks, it is necessary to discuss the mechanisms that could reverse the social inequalities that are reproduced and go deeper into the planet.

This presupposes the acceptance of the multiple realities that coexist around the topic, taking academic and political narratives as constructions full of meaning, making visible the structures that perpetuate the mechanisms of inequality and giving space to alternative solutions with social license.

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