Risks and uncertainties in vulnerable contexts: the Brazilian experience

1
Risks and uncertainties in vulnerable contexts
the Brazilian experience

• Marcelo Firpo Porto
• Study Center of WorkersHealth and Human Ecology
• National School of Public Health
• Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2
The concept of vulnerability

• Origins study of disasters. The concept of
  vulnerability is usually understood as opposite
  to the concepts of resilience (Eng. Approach),
  integrity or health (Environm. or Public Health
  Approaches).
• It concerns in understanding how theoretically
  similar natural or technological systems can
  produce differentials in risk events that affect
  certain social groups, territories and
  ecosystems.
• Unifying concept based on the systems theory.
  Risks under vulnerable contexts cannot be
  understood or solved by a normal scientific
  analysis. It reinforces the need of
  transdisciplinary/integrated approaches and the
  inclusion of social and institutional contexts
  within Risk Analysis in understanding complex
  socio-technical systems and their impacts.
• Using as references the contributions from the
  studies of disasters and political ecology, we
  understand vulnerable contexts related not only
  to different sorts of restrictions (economic,
  technological, human and legal), but
  fundamentally to the concentration of political
  and economic power.
• The extra vulnerability of industrializing
  countries to environmental problems and
  industrial accidents specially in regions like
  Latin America, Asia and Africa.
• LA combines mechanisms of patrimonialism
  (private appropriation of public goods by the
  elite), populism (exchange of privileges by means
  of workers co-optation by the governments) and
  exclusion (the process of denying the citizenship
  status and social rights to the
  poorest/discriminated people). As a consequence,
  the region presents a strongly authoritarian
  political culture and the worst income
  distribution in the world.

3
Vulnerable Contexts

• Socio-political, economic, cultural and
  institutional processes constitute a field of
  mutual influence in producing vulnerabilities
  that
• (i) reproduce socially vulnerable groups which
  are discriminated and often invisible for
  decision-making processes (marginalized workers
  and their families, poor communities around
  hazardous plants, other discriminated groups
  according ethnic, race or gender)
• (ii) make worse the cycles of risks and
  associated uncertainties
• generation (regulation of new hazardous STS's)
• exposure (preventioncontrol of existent risk
  situations)
• effects (mitigation of consequences after risk
  events)
• (iii) enable high conflictive forums between
  stakeholders in discussing and regulating risks
  (e.g. violent disputes and institutional
  vulnerabilities)
• (iv) block the mechanisms of collective learning
  (e.g. through authoritarian organizations).
• The outcome is a systemic production of risk
  events as contaminations, illness and deaths,
  even in more simple systems, which would not,
  or at least not so intensively, occur in the
  absence of vulnerabilities.

4

TYPES OF UNCERTAINTY (Funtowics Ravetz) EXAMPLES OF INTENSIFICATION IN VULNERABLE CONTEXTS
Technical Uncertainties (Inexactness) Several risks have no specific legislation Limited infrastructure for risk measurement Inexistence of Data Bases, especially for groups with less economicpolitical power No recognition of some exposed areas and (vulnerable) groups, which remain invisible and sometimes appear with epidemic cases of contamination or major disasters/accidents No/Poor/Inadequated information about risks (e.g. use of pesticides for illiterate rural workers)
Metodological Uncertainties (Unreliability) Limited qualified human resources Fragmented action of different institutions and stakeholders Difficulties of affected groups in order to participate, understand and reply official or private assessments or accident investigations No clear presentation of levels of confidence Political / economical use of optimisticestimations
Epistemological Uncertainties (Ignorance) Inexistence of (indepent) experts for complex technological hazards difficults recognition of epistemological uncertainties Attempts in assuming (irreducible or reducible) ignorance as more simple methodological problems that will be solved by technical-scientific expertise Two possibilities no public discussions (reduced to closed expert/institutional circles) or high conflictive/polarized discussions between risk creators and institutions with no reliable assessments and affected groups and NGOs oft without technical analysis but with situated/local knowledge
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VULNERABLE CONTEXTS AND THE CYCLE OF HAZARDS

• GENERATION
• Social (Re)production of Vulnerable Groups
• Restricted Regulation
• Multiplication of Dangerous Socio-Technical
  Systems
• Unequal Spatial Distribution of Hazards (in the
  Peripheries)
• EXPOSURE
• Inadequate prevention of risks
• Propagation of failures and dysfunctions
• Enlargement of exposure to risk situation
• OUTCOMES
• Limited mitigation (e.g. emergency planning
  and health care) Systemic production of
  accidents, diseases and contaminations
• Blockade of mechanisms of collective learning
• (organizations and society)

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VULNERABILITY, INDUSTRIAL HAZARDS AND
SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
7
MODEL OF VULNERABILITY FOR INDUSTRIAL MAJOR
HAZARDS IN INDUSTRIALISING COUNTRIES (adap.
Horlick-Jones, 1993)
8
A Brazilian experience with Industrial Major
Accidents

• Brazil no regulations such as the Seveso
  Directive in European Communities and the
  Emergency Planning and Right-to-Know in the USA
• Weakness of regulatory institutional
  strategies location of hazardous facilities and
  land-use planning, risk analysis, emergency
  planning and the dissemination of information
  among community members and workers and
  populations on risks.
• Vulnerability and social relations of labor
  labor turnover and unqualified workers
  (subcontracted) under authoritarian organizations
  increase failures, no participative risk
  assessments or accident investigations.
• Vulnerable population living in the peripheries
  highly populated in chaotically urbanized areas
  around hazardous industries is the most important
  factor in increasing the number of deaths (1984
  Bhopal with 2500 Mexico with 550 and Vila
  Socó/Cubatão with 508)
• No existence or feasibleness of emercency
  preparedness plann in areas with slums.
• Economic vulnerability increase of equipments
  process degradation and failures

9
A case of chemical accident in Brazil

• PVC/Chorine Factory in Northeast Brazil (the most
  important of the city)
• Leakage of caustic soda (150o C) through the
  breaking of a valve provoked one death and one
  serious injured worker
• High conflictive and violent local/institutional
  culture, with continuous threats (including
  murder)
• Industry changed the local and possible proofs
  after the accident before the first official
  inspection, and published a report concluding
  that human errors were the main causes.
• Oficcial of Ministry of Labor was under pressure
  and the Union asked Public Prosecutors Office
  and our Institution for helping. Workers pled
  that only a worker who wanted consciously to
  suicide could make this kind of error, and
  probably it was not the case.
• Testimonies of workers in the police station was
  assisted by the industrys director, who was a
  closely friend of the police chief
• Parallel accident investigation showed important
  organizational underlying causes (maintenance,
  protection equipments, trainning, intense
  personal downsizing) and indicated a possible
  rupture of the valve without human error.
• The second worker, who was expected to die,
  survived and confirmed the suspicions of the
  parallell report
• Two years after the director who was the
  reponsible for the accident investigation was
  fired and structural changes in risk management
  were improved, although limited and with relative
  high conflictive relationships (with institutions
  and union)

10
Some Conclusions

• The points bellow is suggestions from the point
  of view of integrated assessment to research
  teams and institutional policies in
  industrializing countries under vulnerable
  contexts
• To organize different levels of possible
  interventions in a systemic way, linking global
  and local strategies from structural policies to
  institutional practices and actions of local
  social actors - e.g. regulatory agencies,
  industries, workers, populations in hazardous
  areas
• A better understanding of the limits and
  uncertainties of local and normal scientific
  diagnosis and proposals
• Mapping of vulnerable groups, economic sectors
  and territories in order also to make them more
  visible to society and institutions
• Empowerment of vulnerable groups as an important
  strategy for research teams and institutions in a
  dialectic way of changing society, science and
  institutions together
• Use of participative methodologies are
  fundamental in order to improve democracry and
  empowerment of vulnerable, oft invisible
  groups
• To contextualize the understanding of industrial
  hazards within the needs and priorities of
  vulnerable populations, developing new forms of
  dialogues and risk communication with poor and
  low formal educated people, creating
  possibilities of reciprocal exchanges between lay
  and scientific knowledge
• Supporting environmental justice issues as a
  political/institutional strategy in order to
  reduce social vulnerabilities.