Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Reproduction of Vulnerability in Santa Fe, Argentina

本博士论文研究项目探讨城市人口对灾害的脆弱性。作为近三十年来气候变化社会科学研究中最重要的补充之一，脆弱性研究丰富了人们对易受气候相关风险影响因素的理解。然而，早期基于工程的危害分析仍然指导着当代的政策和实践，而社会原因却一直被忽视。本项目以阿根廷圣达菲为例进行研究，该城市在过去十年中遭受了连续的洪水袭击，旨在分析社会、政治和经济因素如何在多个尺度上相互作用，从而重现脆弱性。由于水利工程的遗留问题，政府官员和居民无法质疑基于工程的应对洪水和洪水风险的措施（即技术修复），从而使他们深深植根于当地政治格局，而不是独立于当地政治格局。与发展文献通常将政策描述为政府对当地人民的强加相比，本论文项目研究了政府计划如何与当地人民的实践和愿望相结合并通过这些实践和愿望发挥作用。通过将庇护主义概念化为城市穷人维持生计的适应性反应以及动态政治经济过程的结果，本研究将展示庇护主义如何缓解城市穷人的日常问题，同时加深其脆弱性的根本原因。项目研究的问题是：1)传统的危险框架是如何主导和塑造圣达菲的实践的？2)当地的政治行为者和居民是如何串通一气，批准从这个框架中产生的工程修复？除了调查和绘图技术外，对关键线人、政府官员和当地居民的深入访谈将提供有关不同行为者如何影响与洪水和洪水风险相关的政治决策的数据；谁会因为这些决定而变得不那么脆弱；以及这些决定如何影响城市贫民在政治和社会机构中获得资源的机会。该项目的研究结果将有助于阐明人类对气候相关变化的不同类型的适应性反应，特别是在持续面临灾害风险的地区。调查人员希望证明社会、政治和经济过程之间复杂的多尺度相互作用，这些过程塑造了危害如何影响人们，以及通过使风险技术化来促进适应不良的机构。在未来几十年里，各国政府和国际发展机构将投入数十亿美元支持应对气候变化的努力。到目前为止，气候变化谈判主要集中在减缓上。但是，正如2006年《斯特恩气候变化经济学评论》和2007年政府间气候变化专门委员会第四次评估报告的政治影响所表明的那样，设计有效政策保护弱势群体的挑战仍然存在。为响应对气候变化进行严格的社会科学研究的呼吁，该项目的成果将有助于填补对脆弱性的社会层面的理解以及对气候相关危害的适应性应对方面的理论和实践空白。此外，研究结果将有助于确定政府和国际发展机构制定更有力和政治上可行的政策来保护弱势群体的方法。这项对适应不良的研究旨在帮助政策制定者更好地了解产生气候相关脆弱性的日常过程，从而确定实现更可持续政策应对的途径。作为博士论文研究进步奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个独立的研究生涯。

This doctoral dissertation research project examines the vulnerability of urban populations to hazards. As one of the most important additions to social science research on climate change in the last three decades, vulnerability studies have enriched the understanding of the factors that predispose people to climate-related risk. Yet, earlier engineering-based analyses of hazards still guide contemporary policy and practice, while the social causes are consistently overlooked. This project is a case study of Santa Fe, Argentina, a city ravaged by consecutive floods over the last decade, to analyze how social, political, and economic factors at multiple scales interact to reproduce vulnerability. Due to a legacy of hydraulic works, government officials and residents fail to question engineering-based responses (i.e. technical fixes) to floods and flood risk, allowing them to become deeply embedded in, rather than autonomous from, the local political landscape. In contrast to the development literature that often characterizes policy as a government imposition on local people, this dissertation project examines how governmental schemes work in conjunction with and through the practices and desires of local populations. By conceptualizing clientelism as both an adaptive response of the urban poor to maintain their livelihoods as well as an outcome of dynamic political-economic processes, this research will show how clientelism placates the urban poor's everyday problems, while deepening the root causes of their vulnerability. The project research questions are: 1) How has the conventional framing of hazards come to dominate and shape practice in Santa Fe?; and 2) How do local political actors and residents become complicit in sanctioning engineering fixes that emerge from this framing? In addition to surveys and mapping techniques, in-depth interviews with key informants, government officials, and local residents will provide data on how different actors influence political decisions related to floods and flood risk; who is made less vulnerable by those decisions; and how those decisions affect the urban poor's access to resources in political and social institutions. The findings from this project will help illuminate different types of human adaptive responses to climate-related change, particularly in areas persistently at risk of hazards. The investigators expect to demonstrate the complex and multiscalar interplay between the social, political and economic processes that shape how hazards affect people and the institutions that facilitate maladaptation by rendering risk technical. Over the coming decades, national governments and international development agencies will invest billions of dollars to support climate change efforts. Thus far, climate change negotiations have mostly focused on mitigation. But as the political repercussions of the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report demonstrated, the challenge of designing effective policies to protect vulnerable people remain. Responding to the call for rigorous social science research on climate change, the results of this project will serve to fill theoretical and practical gaps in the understanding of the social dimensions of vulnerability as well as adaptive responses to climate-related hazards. In addition, research results will help identify ways that governments and international development agencies can develop more robust and politically feasible policies to protect vulnerable groups. This study of maladaptation aims to help policy makers better understand the everyday processes that produce climate-related vulnerabilities in order to identify pathways towards more sustainable policy responses. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.