Calvillo, N., Garde-Hansen, J., Lima-Silva, F., Trajber, R., & Albuquerque, J. P. de. (2022). From Extreme Weather Events to ‘Cascading Vulnerabilities’: Participatory Flood Research Methodologies in Brazil During COVID-19. Journal of Extreme Events. https://doi.org/10.1142/S2345737622410020.

Abstract

Extreme weather events are entangled with each other and with other extreme events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-racist protests, drought, a housing crisis, strikes, or climate emergencies, as well as with more general inadequacies due to national, economic, and political upheavals and accreted vulnerabilities from long-term policies or inactions. Effects of extreme weather events are intensified by ongoing social injustices like poverty and structural racism, a housing deficit, and the consequent informal and unplanned occupation of hazardous areas, such as riverbanks, and areas of previous social-environmental disasters. In the context of Brazil, the ongoing deforestation in the Amazon (agribusiness, mining and illegal wood) provoking droughts and energy shortages in the region creates further vulnerabilities that are felt globally.

In this paper, our primary contribution to these inter-connected scenarios is to describe methodological interventions that were made in response to COVID-19, and to show how those changes provided new insights into vulnerability processes of both subjects and researchers. During a larger project (Waterproofing Data), focused on the case study research areas of São Paulo and Acre (Brazil) wherein our wider team conducted flood-risk community research, we were forced to rethink our approach. We moved away from the singularity of the flood event and its impacts toward acknowledging the cascading conditions of social vulnerability (caused by weather, health, social and political conditions).

In this paper, we directly address the ‘cascade of vulnerabilities’ that the flood-prone communities already encounter when researchers seek to engage with them. We open new avenues to reconsider citizenship, space, and innovation in terms of the key challenges that our methods encountered when conducting participatory flood research methodologies, particularly during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to November 2021. Through flood research in Brazil, we articulate methodological contributions from the arts, humanities, and social sciences for more realistic, just, and caring research practices within and about weather in the context of ‘slow violence’ [Nixon, R (2013). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP].

 

Marchezini, V., Porto de Albuquerque, J., Pitidis, V., Rudorff, C. D. M., Lima-Silva, F., Klonner, C., & Martins, M. H. da M. (2022). Flood risk governance in Brazil and the UK: facilitating knowledge exchange through research gaps and the potential of citizen-generated data. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 31(6), 30–44. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-01-2022-0016

Abstract

Purpose
The study aims to identify the gaps and the potentialities of citizen-generated data in four axes of warning system: (1) risk knowledge, (2) flood forecasting and monitoring, (3) risk communication and (4) flood risk governance.

Design/methodology/approach
Research inputs for this work were gathered during an international virtual dialogue that engaged 40 public servants, practitioners, academics and policymakers from Brazilian and British hazard and risk monitoring agencies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Findings
The common challenges identified were lack of local data, data integration systems, data visualisation tools and lack of communication between flood agencies.

Originality/value
This work instigates an interdisciplinary cross-country collaboration and knowledge exchange, focused on tools, methods and policies used in the Brazil and the UK in an attempt to develop trans-disciplinary innovative ideas and initiatives for informing and enhancing flood risk governance.

Keywords
Cooperation, disaster risk, capacity-building, science-policy interface.

This article is available open access here.

Pajarito-Grajales, D., Degrossi, L. C., Barros, D. D. R., Khan, M. R., Lima-Silva, F., Cunha, M. A., Trajber, R., & Porto de Albuquerque, J. (2022). Enabling Participatory Flood Monitoring Through Cloud Services. Proceedings of the 19th ISCRAM Conference – Tarbes, France May 2022, 1–11 (in press).

Abstract

Flooding events are more impactful due to climate change, while traditional top-down approaches to flood management give way to new initiatives that consider citizens and communities as active strategic actors. Researchers and practitioners have started to place communities in the centre of creation processes or invite them to co-design digital platforms. However, many citizen science projects re-use well-known technological components without reflecting about how the technology is able to effectively support citizen participation in data generation, including the provision of flexible data storage and exchange. This paper describes a novel digital platform design which adopts cloud services to integrate official and citizen-generated data about urban flooding. It summarises the results of a participatory design process of a digital platform to collect, store and exchange flood-related data, which includes components such as data lakes, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and web and mobile interfaces. This work in progress paper presents insights and lessons learned from using cloud services to enable citizen participation and engage communities with flood monitoring.

 

Chakraborty, Shreya. (2021). Periurban Water: Recognizing the Margins for Sustainable Urban Water Futures. In book: Clean Water and Sanitation (pp.1-13). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-70061-8_174-2.

Supporting positive economic, social, and environmental links between urban, periurban, and rural areas is identified as one of the targets of SDG 11 for Sustainable Cities. However, in a neoliberal urban-growth centric economic paradigm where cities form the heart of global and national capital, and policy, the urban-rural linkages can distribute flows and resources in favor of urban centers often at the cost of rural areas and their resources. Water ecologies at the peripheries of cities are characterized by rapid transformations in the face of urban expansion and consequent changes in land use and water demands. This chapter concisely encapsulates the key transformations in periurban water.

Luft S and Butsch C. 2022. Planning for Livelihoods Under Hydrosocial Uncertainty in Periurban Pune. Front. Water 4:831464. doi: 10.3389/frwa.2022.831464

Periurban farmers in India are operating in fast-paced transformative environments of uncertain, quickly changing hydrosocial landscapes while simultaneously responding to different urban, rural and periurban demands. The urge is growing toward a more sustainable, integrative agricultural transformation, in which local stakeholders have more agency to control their own development. Yet, farmers are mostly passive in the process of shaping periurban futures as they face challenges in dealing with growing uncertainties in their hydrosocial environments. From a political ecology perspective, the concept of the hydrosocial cycle helps in understanding these uncertainties and their impacts on farmers’ livelihoods and in classifying water-society dynamics. We adopted this concept to critically assess different perceptions of uncertainties based on the effects of uneven hydrosocial development. Extending beyond this analysis, we then followed a multi-perspective, scenario-based planning approach to show a methodology to support farmers in adapting and planning accordingly. We applied a modified Delphi method that combines local knowledge of actors from the village Paud in periurban Pune (India) with the expertise of Indian and international experts. We used the method to determine actions and institutions for different future scenarios and to understand which drivers and signals interfere and affirm each scenario’s feasibility. From both bodies of knowledge, we could identify one realistic preferred/business-as-usual scenario and two alternatives with eight different drivers that cause complex, hydrosocial uncertainties. Both bodies of knowledge suggest that farming will continue to be an important water-based livelihood in Paud in the future. Yet, we were able to contrast different mechanisms involved in the future thinking of actors and experts. This research contributes to understanding possible processes of adaptation through co-creation of knowledge. The applied methodology can enable farmers to reflect on possible futures, activate their available capabilities, and may facilitate more sustainable and adaptive decision-making. After further refinements, the method employed could in future be useful for policy making and planning.

Butsch, C.; Chakraborty, S.; Gomes, S.L.; Kumar, S.; Hermans, L.M. Changing Hydrosocial Cycles in Periurban India. Land 2021, 10, 263. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10030263.

India’s urbanisation results in the physical and societal transformation of the areas surrounding cities. These periurban interfaces are spaces of flows, shaped by an exchange of matter, people and ideas between urban and rural spaces—and currently they are zones in transition. Periurbanisation processes result inter alia in changing water demands and changing relations between water and society. In this paper the concept of the hydrosocial cycle is applied to interpret the transformation of the waterscapes of six periurban villages in the fringe areas of Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata. In doing so, three specific aspects will be investigated: (1) the institutions shaping the hydro-social cycle, (2) the interplay between water as a livelihood-base and the waterscape, (3) the interplay between the waterscape and water as a consumption good. This approach opens new views Citation: Butsch, C.; Chakraborty, S.; Gomes, S.L.; Kumar, S.; Hermans, L.M. Changing Hydrosocial Cycles in Periurban India. Land 2021, 10, 263. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10030263 Academic Editor: Richard Smardon Received: 30 January 2021 Accepted: 24 February 2021 Published: 5 March 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). on periurban interfaces as emerging mosaic of unique waterscapes. The meaning of water, the rights to access water and the water related infrastructure are constantly renegotiated, as permanently new water demands emerge and new actors enter the scene. Especially this process-based understanding links the theoretical lens of the hydrosocial cycle with the object of investigation, the periurban space.

Sucharita Sen, Anshika John, Shreya Chakraborty, Manoj Jatav. 2019. Geographies of Drinking Water (In)securities in Peri-urban Hyderabad. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 54, Issue No. 39, 28 Sep.

A political ecology framework has been employed to analyse patterns of drinking water (in)securities peculiar to peri-urban geographies. Primary field data have been used in the analysis. The many institutional arrangements that have emerged in peri-urban Hyderabad and how such arrangements have shaped the water ecology in the region and outcomes with respect to access to drinking water are described here. It argues that the water environment, both in terms of scarcity and pollution, and the social relations around water, co-produce each other, in sometimes unexpected ways. A primary finding is that the varying degrees and forms of private sector engagement in the drinking water sector produce different kinds of sub-geographies of distress in peri-urban spaces.

Mehta Lyla, Parthasarathy D., Pickard Justin, Srivastava Shilpi. 2022. The Political Ecology of COVID-19 and Compounded Uncertainties in Marginal Environments, Frontiers in Human Dynamics, Vol. 4. DOI:10.3389/fhumd.2022.840942

This paper uses a political ecology lens to look at how COVID-19 adds to a set of existing uncertainties and challenges faced by vulnerable people in the marginal environments of coastal India.  Over the last few decades, local people have been systematically dispossessed from resource commons in the name of industrial, urban and infrastructure development or conservation efforts, leading to livelihood loss. The paper builds on current research in the TAPESTRY project in coastal Kutch and Mumbai to demonstrate how the pandemic has laid bare structural inequalities and unequal access to public goods and natural resources.

Read the full paper open access here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2022.840942