Chair:
Niklas Harring (University of Gothenburg)
Presenters:
Emily Gregory: On Uneven Ground: The Contested Politics of Environmental Risk, Rights, and Removal in Rio de Janeiro
On the margins of the world’s cities, the one billion people residing in informal urban settlements are among the most vulnerable populations to the effects of climate change. Municipal governments have historically responded to the risk of climate-related disasters with a range of policy interventions, including removing and resettling residents in areas deemed to be of high environmental risk. These resettlements are often justified by political officials as promoting sustainable climate action and keeping residents safe. However, residents have increasingly resisted these displacement-based policies, citing inequalities in which communities are targeted for resettlement and which receive infrastructural improvements. Why do residents of informal settlements facing similar levels of environmental risk receive different policy outcomes? In this paper, I develop and test a theory of political behavior surrounding land designated as “high risk” in the favela communities of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, evaluating variation in policy outcomes in response to the threat of landslides and floods. I utilize a mixed-methods approach to trace patterns in collective resettlements justified by “environmental risk” to understand risk as not merely a geotechnical designation of the landscape, but a deeply political outcome co-produced between state and non-state actors with conflicting notions of risk. By centering the legibility of risk as a key dimension of environmental governance, this research provides a novel account of how marginalized communities contest the state’s definitions of environmental risk and negotiate their right to the city in the face of growing climate threats.
Shiran Victoria Shen (Stanford University): The 2021 Henan Flood Increased Citizen Demand for Government-Led Climate Change Adaptation in China
Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, raising urgent questions about how citizens engage with such crises, especially in authoritarian and developing countries. We analyze citizen engagement on China’s Local Leaders’Message Board, a government-run petition platform, to examine how residents communicate demands for public safety and infrastructure. Using a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative analysis and topic modeling of petition data, we demonstrate that the 2021 Henan flood, one of the deadliest in China’s recent history, led to a sharp increase in petitions concerning drainage, neighborhood safety, and flood prevention. These demands, although not framed in climate-specific language, reflect calls for state-led adaptation that is concrete and localized. We also find that concern about the disaster and preparedness extended beyond Henan, prompting appeals in unaffected provinces. These findings suggest that climate risk can catalyze political engagement in non-democratic settings, highlighting the value of citizen input in adaptation planning.
