SRA-E Lisbon 2017

The spectacular development of environmental risks in the contemporary societies was analysed by Ulrich Beck, who proposed the notion of risk society underlining that contemporary risks are not coming only from outside (natural disasters) but generated by the society itself. A Brazilian example, focus on a relevant illustration of theses by Ulrich Beck that can be presented in São Paulo and its Metropolitan Region. For example, how the legacy of a past industrial activity contributed today to about 2000 contaminated sited in São Paulo city and 5400 in São Paulo state. Another example refers to the reality of urbanization contoured by an uneven development planning, producing the multiplication of slums and irregular settlements and in consequence, environmental degradation. Therefore, without proper house policy, more than 2 million inhabitants in the metropolitan region live in these irregular settlements, exposed to an unprecedented combination of many risks. To address this scenario, a São Paulo State Agency was created to deal with environmental issues (CETESB) that constitutes in an observatory of risky society. Analysing CETESB’s track over almost 50 years, we observe that it has met the “demands” of a risk society (critical episodes related to pollution and environmental accidents), factor that has boosted its own development: environmental monitoring network, control actions and environmental preservation, academic research and setting of standards. Thus, CETESB has improved its actions by developing tools, methods and techniques, but in terms of biophysical aspect neglecting anthropic aspect, it has resulted in situations of inability and mismatch in dealing with the population, especially those involving emergency and environmental risk, creating, most of the time, conflicts among the actors involved. This underlines the urgent need of an ample conception of the environment that integrates the human being, meaning quitting the purely objective conception of the environment, reduced to a biophysical reality. In order to cope with this situation, we will present our propositions to develop complementary knowledge to that is set up by the responsible institutions concerning risk management, such as CETESB. This way, we have tested and developed methodologies to analyse, reveal and value the experience of the population exposed in order to improve a risk culture favouring the inclusion of human factors on action planning of risk management.