CONTESTED GROUNDS: EXAMINING THE CONTOURS OF FLOOD ADAPTATION

ALONG SÃO PAULO’S TIETÊ RIVER

Karen Paiva Henrique

Master of Architecture

Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

of The University of Western Australia UWA School of Agriculture and Environment

Geography and Planning

2020

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THESIS DECLARATION

I, Karen Paiva Henrique, certify that:

This thesis has been substantially accomplished during enrolment in this degree.

This thesis does not contain material which has been submitted for the award of any

other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution.

In the future, no part of this thesis will be used in a submission in my name, for any

other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior

approval of The University of Western Australia and where applicable, any partner

institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree.

This thesis does not contain any material previously published or written by another

person, except where due reference has been made in the text and, where relevant, in

the Authorship Declaration that follows.

This thesis does not violate or infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, or other rights

whatsoever of any person.

The research involving human data reported in this thesis was assessed and approved

by The University of Western Australia Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval

#: RA/4/1/8242).

The following approvals were obtained prior to commencing the relevant work

described in this thesis: Brazilian National Council for Research Ethics (Approval #:

60798116.6.0000.0062).

This research was supported by a University Postgraduate Award and Australian

Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

This thesis contains published work and/or work prepared for publication, some of

which has been co-authored.

Signatur

Date: 18

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ABSTRACT

As flood events become more intense and frequent, cities around the world are

directing concerted efforts to develop flood management and control strategies to

protect their populations and assets. A case in point, in 2009, the government of São

Paulo, Brazil, announced a multi-million dollar project that combines soft and hard

infrastructure to create a 75-km long linear park – Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or

Tietê Lowlands Park) – and safeguard the city as a whole against flooding. The

project’s execution, however, is contingent on the removal of thousands of low-income

floodplain dwellers, raising questions on the relationship between flood adaptation and

the exclusion of informal urban settlements as these become entwined.

Focusing on the PVT as a case study, this thesis draws on the complementary lenses

of political ecology, critical urban and media studies, and feminist scholarship to

examine how flood adaptation is unfolding in one of the world’s largest cities, and to

what effects. I build upon nine months of data collection conducted in São Paulo

between 2016-17 which entailed archival work, semi-structure interviews, participant

observation, and neighbourhood walks. For the analysis of these data, I focused on the

material, discursive, and embodied dimensions of flooding and adaptation as these are

(re)produced in governmental plans, media reports, and the spaces of everyday life.

My findings expose how institutional legacies and asymmetrical power relations shape

exclusionary state adaptation practices that selectively target informal floodplain

communities with serious adverse effects for those arguably most vulnerable. These

practices are legitimised by partial and prejudicial discourses that essentialise the

floodplain as a landscape of environmental degradation and risk while rendering the

voices, needs, and desires of its inhabitants invisible. Even so, the thesis demonstrates

how low-income floodplain residents contest, resist, and negotiate state interventions,

reshaping adaptation from the ground up. In the process, I reveal why the floodplain

matters to its subjects, arguing that their knowledge and experience as political agents

can inform a more hopeful and desirable future to which they actually belong.

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The thesis advances more nuanced theoretical and empirical understandings of how

adaptation to flooding, and climate change more broadly, becomes entangled with

uneven development trajectories that resist change. It also suggests alternative avenues

based on situated experiences, knowledges, and capacities to transform urban realities,

overcome structural inequalities, and pave more inclusive and sustainable pathways

despite an uncertain climate future, in São Paulo and beyond.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Thesis declaration iii

Abstract v

Table of contents vii

List of figures xi

List of Tables xii

Acknowledgements xiii

Authorship declaration xv

Chapter 1. Introduction 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Adaptation by whom, for whom, and at what cost? 3

1.3 Research Aims 8

1.4 Defining analytical contours: The political ecology of flood adaptation 9

Environmental narratives 11

Material practices 12

Lived experiences 13

1.5 Thesis structure 14

Chapter 2. Methodology 17

2.1 Research context 17

2.1 Data collection 24

Preliminary data collection 26

Archival research 26

Semi-structured interviews 28

Neighbourhood walks 29

Participant observation 30

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2.2 Data Analysis 30

Thematic and in-depth content analysis 30

Statistical analysis 31

Visual analysis 31

2.3 Positionality 32

Chapter 3. Dominant discourses 35

3.1 Introduction 35

3.2 Theoretical approach: Media, knowledge, and power 37

3.3 Methodology 39

3.3.1 Case study context 39

3.3.2 Data collection 40

3.3.3 Data analysis 41

3.4 Results 42

3.4.1 Causes 44

3.4.2 Consequences 46

3.4.3 Short-term responses 47

3.4.4 Long-term solutions 48

3.4.5 Subjectivities 51

3.4.6 Voices 53

3.4.7 Media reports and the Tietê Lowlands Park (PVT) 54

3.5 Discussion and conclusions 58

Chapter 4. Contested materialities 63

4.1 Introduction 63

4.2 Adaptation and the uneven landscapes of flooding, development, and power 66

4.3 Methodology 68

4.4 Tracing the history of the park in São Paulo’s eastern periphery 70

4.5 Classifying and mapping desirable floodplain uses and users 74

4.6 Forced removals, social rents, and the (bounded) negotiation of livelihoods 77

4.7 The adaptation machine and the politics of invisibility 80

4.8 Contestation, resistance, and the reshaping of invisibility 81

4.9 Opportunities for alternative urban adaptation futures 85

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4.10 Conclusions 88

Chapter 5. Embodied experiences 91

Chapter 6. Pathways towards just urban transformations 115

Chapter 7. Conclusions 141

Appendices 151

Appendix 1. Ethics approval - University of Western Australia 151

Appendix 2. Ethics approval - Brazilian National Council for Research Ethics 153

Appendix 3. Participant information form: City officials and specialists 159

Appendix 4. Participant information form: Floodplain dwellers 165

Appendix 5. Participant consent form: City officials and specialists 171

Appendix 6. Participant consent form: Floodplain dwellers 173

Appendix 7. Publication in Global Environmental Change [Chapter 3] 175

Appendix 8. Reference list for all newspaper articles analysed 187

Appendix 9. Statistical results 208

Appendix 10. Voices in media coverage 214

Appendix 11. Publication in Geoforum [Chapter 4] 216

Appendix 12. Interview questions 228

Appendix 13. Submission details: ACME [Chapter 5] 231

Appendix 14. Submission details: Progress in Human Geography [Chapter 6] 233

References 235

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Parque Vázeas do Tietê (PVT). ................................................................. 2

Figure 1.2 Conceptual framework for a political ecology of flood adaptation ......... 11

Figure 2.1 Social Vulnerability. ................................................................................ 18

Figure 2.2 Income distribution .................................................................................. 19

Figure 2.3 São Paulo’s development history ............................................................. 21

Figure 2.4 Rivers and urban development ................................................................ 23

Figure 2.5 Research design ....................................................................................... 25

Figure 2.6 Communities selected for data collection ................................................ 29

Figure 3.1 Media coverage of flooding ..................................................................... 43

Figure 3.2 Media framings of flooding ..................................................................... 44

Figure 3.3 Divergences in coverage .......................................................................... 46

Figure 3.4 Folha articles on green solutions versus permanent relocation ............... 50

Figure 3.5 Voices and themes ................................................................................... 54

Figure 3.6 PVT media reports ................................................................................... 55

Figure 3.7 Elite media versus government framings ................................................. 56

Figure 4.1 Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or Tietê Lowlands Park) ....................... 72

Figure 4.2 PVT’s Land use classification ................................................................. 74

Figure 4.3 Chácara Três Meninas............................................................................. 76

Figure 4.4 Informal expansion within the contours of the park ................................ 83

Figure 4.5 Expansion and consolidation of informal settlements within the limits of

the park ....................................................................................................................... 84

Figure 7.1 Empirical contribution ........................................................................... 146

Figure 7.2 Conceptual contribution ......................................................................... 147

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LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Core data collected through archival work ............................................................ 27

Table 3.1 Core themes ........................................................................................................... 42

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis has only been made possible because of the support of many.

My supervisor Petra Tschakert has been an endless source of inspiration. More than a

supervisor, Petra is a mentor and a friend. Since the beginning of my PhD, she has

consistently pushed me to be the best scholar I can possibly be while always offering

guidance with compassion and grace. We shared many laughs (and a few tears) over

the last few years and when the barriers of academia seemed truly insurmountable,

Petra was always there to listen and provide much needed encouragement. For that, I

will be forever grateful.

This thesis has also been greatly improved by insightful comments from my co-

supervisor Sarah Prout Quicke. Sarah is an incredibly generous scholar who has

challenged me to think deeply, write carefully, and be critical of my work. Together,

my supervisors helped me appreciate that, while the world certainly has ill-intentioned

people, there are also kind-hearted individuals who are doing the best they can with

the little resources available to them, and these are the ones who really make a

difference.

My postgraduate trajectory certainly would not have been the same without the many

friendships I have cultivated throughout the years, both within and outside academia.

I owe much of my intellectual and emotional growth over the course of my PhD to

Aparna Parikh and Nari Senanayake. Aparna and Nari are deeply committed

geographers, powerful women, and dedicated friends with whom I have had the

pleasure to share the many satisfactions and frustrations of being an academic. This

thesis has been much improved through their valuable feedback and unwavering

support. I am also grateful to my friends from Brazil, particularly Rodrigo, Juliano,

Lu, Pati, and Carlos, who welcomed me into their families during several months of

field-based research. Fieldwork can be a daunting experience but they have made it all

the more exciting by giving me a place to call home.

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I am incredibly lucky to have an amazing and caring family, especially my mother

Nara, my father Julio, and my sister (and best friend) Vaneska. They taught me to

follow my dreams and to never settle. Above all, I am thankful to my husband Gabriel

Ibias whose selflessness, kindness, and companionship never cease to amaze me.

Thank you for being such a wonderful partner in the roller coaster that is developing a

doctoral research.

This research has been generously supported by a University Postgraduate Award and

Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship at the

University of Western Australia. Fieldwork was also supported by the 2016 Geoffrey

Kennedy Postgraduate Research Travel Award from UWA Convocation, a

Postgraduate Student Award from the Graduate Research School, and a travel award

and stipend from the UWA School of Agriculture and Environment (SAgE).

This work would not have been possible without my research participants who

volunteered their time, knowledge, and experiences without ever asking for anything

in return. I do hope this thesis makes them justice and provides a vehicle to spread

their so often silenced voices to the world.

Thank you all!

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AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION

This thesis contains the following co-authored and sole-authored work that has been

published and prepared for publication:

Co-authored:

Details of the work: Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Taming São Paulo’s floods: Dominant discourses, exclusionary practices, and the complicity of the media’, Global Environmental Change, vol. 58, pp. 1–12.

Location in thesis: Chapter 3, in its entirety

Student contribution to work: All of the data collection, analysis, and drafting of the paper. Co-author contribution included guidance on research design, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript review and proofing.

Co-author signatures and dates:

10/09/2019

Details of the work: Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Contested grounds: Adaptation to flooding and the politics of (in)visibility in São Paulo’s eastern periphery’, Geoforum, vol. 104, pp. 181–192.

Location in thesis: Chapter 4, in its entirety

Student contribution to work: All of the data collection, analysis, and drafting of the paper. Co-author contribution included guidance on research design, data analysis and interpretation, manuscript review and proofing.

Co-author signatures and dates:

10/09/2019

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Details of the work: Henrique, KP, Tschakert, P, & Prout Quicke, S. ‘Pathways to Urban Transformation: From Dispossession to Climate Justice.’ Reviewed by Progress in Human Geography, with requests for revisions.

Location in thesis: Chapter 6, in its entirety

Student contribution to work: Conceptualisation, literature review, and drafting of 85% of the manuscript. Co-author contribution included guidance on conceptualising the manuscript, partial drafting of Introduction and Section 5(c) (15% of the manuscript), manuscript review and proofing.

Co-author signatures and dates:

18/03/2020

18/03/2020

Sole-authored:

Details of the work: Henrique, KP, ‘“I am of Pantanal”: Marginal spaces, political subjects, and the transformational potential of belonging’. Reviewed by ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, with requests for revisions.

Location in thesis: Chapter 5, in its entirety

Student signature:

Date: 18 March 2020

I, Petra Tschakert, certify that the student’s statements regarding their contribution to each of the works listed above are correct.

Coordinating supervisor signature:

Date: 18/03/2020

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

In the city of São Paulo, Brazil, flooding has become a common sight. Almost every

year, the city suffers from the impacts of flood events associated with seasonal rainfall

and the overflow of its rivers and tributaries (Canholi 2015; CEPED UFSC 2013).

Flooding happens across the city, affecting all levels of urban life by repeatedly

bringing transportation to a halt and disrupting the distribution of basic services

(Santos 2014). The populations arguably most deeply and recurrently affected are the

urban poor, particularly those situated in the city’s eastern periphery, who informally

inhabit the floodplain along the Tietê River in low-quality housing and without proper

infrastructure (CEPED UFSC 2013; see also Egute 2016; Quinto 2017). During the

summer months, specifically the months from December to February, when daily

precipitation reaches its peak, the Tietê regularly overflows its boundaries. For that

period of time, the ground floor of houses situated in the floodplain and the riverbed

become one. As informal floodplain communities struggle to overcome the forces of

the river coupled with a seeming lack of government assistance, they unvaryingly need

to improvise, relying on community support and self-built structures to protect their

belongings from being engulfed by the Tietê’s polluted waters (Egute 2016; Quinto

2017). By the end of March, when the water finally recedes, damage and trauma are

left behind, marking their communities and bodies as they start to prepare for the next

flood.

Addressing the city’s recurrent flooding problem, accentuated by years of insufficient

and ineffective interventions, the state of São Paulo announced in July 2009 the

construction of the “world’s largest linear park” (Departamento de Águas e Energia

Elétrica 2015) – Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or Tietê Lowlands Park) – a multi-

million dollar initiative funded in partnership with the Inter-American Development

Bank to protect São Paulo and eight other municipalities against flooding from the

Tietê River (Figure 1.1). Reviving and repackaging a 1970s proposal now slated for

completion by 2020, the PVT will stretch over 75 km in length and 107 km2 in surface

area, creating a buffer zone to absorb the river’s ‘natural’ flow (Inter-American

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Development Bank 2010). Aiming to produce a robust flood management system, the

project combines large-scale floodplain restoration with traditional flood control

infrastructure and maintenance, including a 3.9 km-long flood relief channel, a 1.7 km-

long dyke, and 25 km of dredging work along the river’s upper catchment between the

cities of São Paulo and Guarulhos. To populate such a vast green landscape, the PVT

also proposes a series of activity spaces in and around 33 leisure centres spread across

its total area, which is encircled by a 230 km-long avenue (Via Parque, or Park Road)

and a system of bike paths (Departamento de Águas e Energia Elétrica 2016). The

construction of this mega infrastructure, however, is predicated upon the removal of

approximately 7,500 families who informally inhabit the Tietê River floodplain but

whose future remains therein uncertain.

Figure 1.1 Parque Vázeas do Tietê (PVT). Located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the PVT stretches along 75 km and over nine municipalities, following the Tietê River from the spring in

Salesópolis (East) to Barragem da Penha (or Penha Dam) in São Paulo (West).

Less than two months after the park was originally announced, São Paulo was struck

by record precipitation; September 8th, 2009 was the rainiest day recorded for that

month since measurements had begun in 1943 (Estado de São Paulo 2011). For the

first time in four years, the Tietê inundated the Marginal Tietê – São Paulo’s most

important highway for the transportation of goods and services (see Freitas et al. 2009;

Zanchetta 2009) – announcing what would quickly evolve into the city’s worst

flooding season in contemporary history. Between the months of December 2009 and

January 2010, extreme precipitation intersected with years of extensive and

unconstrained urban development (within and outside the floodplain), insufficient and

aging infrastructure, and overdue maintenance, resulting in a prolonged flooding crisis.

During that time, flooding from the Tietê River repeatedly stopped traffic and services,

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and relentlessly invaded floodplain communities who were left under water, some for

weeks on end.1

Amidst the chaos that ensued, the government of São Paulo was able to capitalise on

the floods and started to remove families for the construction of the park, which

suddenly became more urgent than ever.2 Thousands of families were either relocated

or displaced, the majority without a permanent housing solution (for details, see

Chapter 4). Since then, the park’s implementation lost momentum but continues to

progress slowly; it persists in the middle of bureaucratic hurdles, community

opposition, and São Paulo’s significant low-income housing deficit.3 The grand, yet

to-date unrealised vision of the PVT raises a series of questions that this thesis attempts

to answer, with respect to its underlying objectives (Why and how do particular flood

adaptation approaches become dominant?); long-term effects (How does top-down

adaptation affect the lives of vulnerable communities?); and alternative adaptation

options (What other processes and approaches emerge on the ground, and how can

they inform more just adaptation futures?).

1.2 Adaptation by whom, for whom, and at what cost?

Adapting cities to climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Even if countries are able to meet the targets set by international agreements, the

lingering effects of past and ongoing greenhouse gas emissions will continue to fuel

changes in the climate system over the next decades (IPCC 2018; O’Brien 2017). As

temperatures continue to rise, urban residents will experience more intense and

frequent climate-related risks, including sea-level rise and storm surges, inland and

coastal flooding, heat stress, and water scarcity (Roy et al. 2018; Solecki et al. 2018).

Among these, flooding is one of the most ubiquitous urban hazards (Jha et al. 2012),

urging planners and policy makers to implement timely and effective measures to

protect their populations, economic activities, and built assets against recurrent and

destructive contact with (often unprecedented) floodwaters.

1 Media coverage on the extensive impacts of the 2009/10 floods is presented in detail in Chapter 3. 2 Newspaper stories described government efforts to initiate removals and set the construction of the park in motion during this period. For example, see Bomfim (2009), Estado de São Paulo (2009), and Folha de São Paulo (2009; 2010). 3 For further details on São Paulo’s housing deficit, see CEPED UFSC (2013) and Rede Nossa São Paulo (2013).

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Adapting cities to flooding and climate change more broadly is not, however, an easy

task. Although far-reaching, the impacts of climate extremes are disproportionately

experienced by the urban poor and vulnerable who inhabit areas particularly exposed

to hazards, in poor quality housing, and who lack the proper resources to prepare to

and recover from climate extremes (Dodman et al. 2019; Huq et al. 2007; Rosenzweig

et al. 2010). This is particularly evident in cities of the Global South where climate

change entwines with rapid urbanisation and multi-dimensional inequalities to produce

highly vulnerable communities (Pelling et al. 2018; Revi et al. 2014; Satterthwaite et

al. 2018; Solecki et al. 2018). As such, there is a growing recognition that adaptation

efforts must go beyond technical adjustments that accommodate change within

existing systems to address the root causes of vulnerability and achieve climate justice

– a concept known as transformational adaptation (O’Brien 2017; Pelling 2010;

Robinson & Shine 2018; Ziervogel et al. 2016).

Approaching adaptation through a transformational lens calls attention to the deeply

seated values, preferences, and knowledge frameworks that underpin adaptation

choices (O’Brien 2012). Critical scholars contend that, thus far, adaptation has largely

failed to question “the assumptions, beliefs, values, commitments, loyalties… that

contribute to anthropogenic climate change, social vulnerability and other

environmental problems” (O’Brien 2012, p.668; see also Pelling 2010; Pelling &

Manuel-Navarrete 2011). As a result, programmes designed to lessen climate impacts

across societies may instead continue to protect the interests of powerful individuals

and groups. Adaptation scholars argue that in order to challenge these programmes

and their underlying systems of oppression, efforts enacted ‘from above’ must be

replaced with deliberative processes built upon transparency, recognition, and respect

for the rights and agency of all affected, particularly those acutely marginalised (Harris

et al. 2017; Robinson & Shine 2018; Ziervogel et al. 2017). Transformational

adaptation, they insist, is contingent on inclusive governance systems that rectify

existing power asymmetries by centring climate discussions around hitherto voiceless

actors so they can negotiate adaptation from the ground up.

Within the climate adaptation literature, the concept of adaptation pathways offers a

concrete avenue to produce such an inclusive approach toward transformational

adaptation and help overcome entrenched inequities and inequalities (Fazey et al.

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2016; Haasnoot et al. 2013; Wise et al. 2014). Adaptation pathways reconceive

adaptation from static, one-off measures as a series of “pathways of change and

response where the intent and outcome of adaptation are not risk reduction per se but

rather addressing the systemic drivers of vulnerability in dynamic systems” (Wise et

al. 2014, p.327). To this end, the pathways approach positions the negotiation of

adaptive choices within broader development trajectories, foregrounding contentious

decision making and facilitating participatory learning, dialogue, and action across

scale and knowledge frameworks to challenge the status quo and produce just and fair

climate action (Wise et al. 2014).

Yet, conceiving adaptation as part of forward-looking development trajectories does

not automatically guarantee just outcomes. In practice, just adaptation demands a

critical understanding of historical path dependencies that constrain options within

business-as-usual trajectories which, in turn, prevent the implementation of alternative

approaches (Fazey et al. 2016). Adaptation scholars argue that decisions made in the

past to adapt societies to external pressures, environmental or otherwise, have already

determined which solutions are available today and will continue to steer choices well

into the future (Câmpeanu & Fazey 2014; Gajjar et al. 2018). As such, understanding

the specific contours of ongoing adaptation trajectories, and how they have come into

being, is paramount to avoid lock-ins and trade-offs that disproportionately burden

groups with little or no decision making power. In other words, efforts to produce

adaptation approaches that are simultaneously inclusive and just require a “good dose

of historical sensitivity, by placing responses in the context of longer trajectories of

adaptation” shaped by legacies of social hierarchies, institutionalised power relations,

and differentiated levels of resource access and control (Fazey et al. 2016, p.41).

In the context of urban flooding, the literature demonstrates how state responses have

traditionally relied on techno-managerial solutions, which ignore and sometimes even

deepen the structural vulnerabilities of the urban poor (Anguelovski et al. 2016;

Fainstein 2015). These and other authors are generally adamant that such efforts persist

to date. Purportedly designed to simultaneously protect urban centres and improve the

lives of low-income residents acutely exposed to flood hazards, government initiatives

usually involve plans to remove the poor from the spaces they inhabit, typically to

create room for new infrastructure and flood control development (Alvarez &

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Cardenas 2019; Colven 2017; McFarlane 2009; Padawangi 2014). Proposed under the

guise of a larger ‘public good’ supposedly beneficial to everyone, such government

interventions have time and again failed to benefit the poor, who are often relocated to

distant sites without proper compensation or support networks, and are thus exposed

to new types of vulnerability (Anguelovski et al. 2016; Arabindoo 2016; Betteridge &

Webber 2019; Millington 2018; Mustafa 2005). In the process, these interventions

reveal the paradoxical outcomes of existing flood management efforts where

protecting the livelihoods (and interests) of some in their own place requires

repositioning the livelihoods of others, who ultimately become further marginalised.

The critical analysis of state responses to flooding and other climate-related hazards

also makes visible how adaptation measures, while packaged as technical and

apolitical, may in fact be deployed as a tool to reassert power over marginalised groups

(Eriksen et al. 2015; Nightingale 2017; Sovacool 2018). These studies demonstrate

how adaptation often aligns with the interests of those in positions of power

(Câmpeanu & Fazey 2014; Nagoda 2015), is utilised to strengthen existing and

develop new political alliances (Nightingale 2017), or, more perversely, redirects

hazards and financial burdens to disenfranchised communities in order to thwart revolt

(Mullenite 2019). In so doing, these studies reveal how adaptation can be

operationalised to render certain, ‘unruly’ populations amenable to government

intervention and control – a concept explored in the literature as the ‘biopolitics of

adaptation’ (see Grove 2014) – while diverting attention away and even quashing

grassroots struggles before they gain ground.

The studies reviewed above call attention to how government responses to weather

and climate-related hazards become entangled with ongoing and often unjust

development trajectories and their associated politics (see also Manuel-Navarrete &

Pelling 2015). Flood adaptation projects such as São Paulo’s linear park are not

conceived in a planning and development vacuum. Neither do they emerge in

politically neutral grounds (Sovacool 2018). They are rather highly contingent on the

development histories and socio-economic contexts within which they are developed

and, as other environmental interventions (see Li 2007), are often produced through

“habit, accretion, and bricolage” (p.6) – i.e. recycling and repackaging approaches

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used in the past that have since become normalised (see Nagoda 2015; Pelling &

Manuel-Navarrete 2011).

In other words, current flood adaptation efforts are being envisioned and enacted

within the same decision-making space – borrowing from the same technical tool-kit

and governance apparatus – that has historically created the conditions of vulnerability

experienced by poor urban communities today. At best, adaptation projects risk, even

if inadvertently, perpetuating uneven development trajectories by defaulting to one-

dimensional technocratic solutions that fit within (rather than challenge) existing

power relations and disregard (or even deepen) the structural drivers of local

vulnerability (Nagoda 2015; Pelling et al. 2018). At worst, adaptation can become yet

another tool to control the poor through discourses and programmes, which continue

to reduce them to victims that supposedly need intervention, thus rendering their

bodies and the spaces they inhabit governable (i.e. amenable to particular ends). In

fact, recent efforts to decode the nexus between power-knowledge-adaptation,

building on Foucault’s conception of governmentality and biopolitics, denounce the

inherent dangers posed by government interventions designed to protect the current

political and economic order in the face of climatic threats (see Anderson et al. 2019;

Grove 2014). Such dangers become manifest when adaptation deflates into a techno-

scientific consensus that ultimately depoliticises climate action so we as a civilisation

“change radically, but within the contours of the existing state of the situation… so

that nothing really has to change” (Swyngedouw 2013, p.4).

Hence, to address the call for just transformations in the context of climate hazards,

adaptation research must engage with the politics of adaptation, that is, “how

individuals, communities, governments and various other organisations interact in

adaptation problem framing, the response options considered and whose interests and

voices are able to influence such debates” (Eriksen et al. 2015, p.523). Politics is here

broadly defined to encompass both policies and programmes advanced by political

leaders in official settings as well as the informal relations embedded in everyday life

(Boudreau 2017). As Julie-Anne Boudreau (2017) sustains, politics is everywhere and

“urban life is political life” (p.10). Attention to the politics of adaptation directs the

analytical gaze to the role of power asymmetries and the intricate channels through

which power operates to guide, block, or distort adaptation options (Pelling et al. 2015)

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within ongoing development trajectories (Fazey et al. 2016). It invites adaptation

researchers to critically interrogate

“whether, when and how adaptation actions preserve the interests of urban elites or demonstrate a potential to address long-standing development needs of marginalized communities, prevent maladaptive responses, and tackle the drivers of socio-economic vulnerability.” (Shi et al. 2016, p.132)

Scholarship on the politics of adaptation has advanced considerably in recent years

(for example, see Eriksen et al. 2015; Nightingale 2017; Routledge et al. 2018),

shaping a new current of critical adaptation research (Mikulewicz 2019). Yet, very few

studies have examined the (un)just implications and actual distributive outcomes of

ongoing and proposed adaptation efforts as they unfold on the ground in a changing

urban climate, as pointed out by critical scholars (Anguelovski et al. 2016; Fainstein

2015; Shi et al. 2016), and even fewer in the context of Brazil. Moreover, further

research is urgently needed to understand how top-down adaptation efforts are

(re)shaped in-the-making, and to probe alternative and even radical avenues for more

equitable and enabling urban socio-ecological arrangements, both in theory and

practice (Ernstson & Swyngedouw 2018a; Routledge et al. 2018; Swyngedouw 2015).

1.3 Research Aims

To address this gap, this research uses São Paulo and the Parque Várzeas do Tietê

(PVT) as a case study to provide a comprehensive empirical account of how flood

adaptation is conceived, implemented, and contested by different stakeholders with

competing interests, in a context of uneven power relations. The thesis aims to:

Explain how the problem of flooding enters public debate: which solutions are

deliberated and legitimised, and who is invited to (or excluded from) the

discussion;

Demonstrate how approaches to adapt cities to flooding become intertwined

with ongoing (uneven) urban development trajectories, producing winners and

losers;

Expose how top-down interventions affect informal floodplain communities,

their expectations, and their ability to cope with future events;

Probe alternative adaptive processes and approaches produced ‘from below’

and identify strategic openings for their implementation.

9

Ultimately, the thesis aims to advance a critical understanding of the impasses and

opportunities to adapt cities to flooding, and climate change more broadly, and theorise

ways to produce adaptation trajectories that are simultaneously fair and sustainable in

São Paulo, and beyond.

1.4 Defining analytical contours: The political ecology of flood adaptation

This research employs political ecology as an overarching framework to investigate

the politics of flood adaptation in São Paulo. Informed by a longstanding

epistemological tradition that focuses on the politics governing the relationship

between humans and their natural environments, political ecology provides an

advantageous lens through which to examine how power operates to influence the way

cities experience and respond to climate-related hazards. Political ecology has

emerged in response to a prevailing ‘apolitical ecology’ and the associated techno-

scientific determinism that shaped environmental management efforts throughout the

1960s and 1970s (Robbins 2012), creating a research field that “combines the concerns

of ecology and a broadly defined political economy” (Blaikie & Brookfield 1987,

p.17).4 It focuses on site-specific human-environment interactions, with scholars

arguing that any effort to manage the environment cannot be disassociated from the

historical social, economic, and political context within which they emerge (Bridge et

al. 2015; Neumann 2005).

Early political ecologists set out to shatter simplistic truths about nature-society

relations that attributed environmental degradation to the mismanagement of resources

by local societies (e.g. Blaikie 1985; Blaikie & Brookfield 1987; Watts 1983a; Watts

1983b). They demonstrated how environmental change and knowledge about it

becomes entangled with global market relations that shape environmental outcomes to

achieve economic growth (Bridge et al. 2015; Peluso & Watts 2001). Seen through a

Political Ecology lens, ‘nature’ (broadly conceived) was no longer appreciated as a

pre-given context with transcendent qualities but rather as “an object that could be

construed in different ways by different communities and classes”, and which could

4 For a critical account of the origins of Political Ecology and how it relates to adaptation thinking, see Watts (2015).

10

be appropriated, privatised, commodified, and commercialised for profit (Watts 2015,

p.32).

Within this overarching context, political ecologists laid out the epistemological

foundation to “analyse the complex, social, and political relations in which

environmental change is embedded” (Neumann 2005, p.5), calling attention to the

ensuing uneven distribution of resources and exposing who ultimately bears the brunt

of environmental harm. In short, political ecologists aimed to explain how nature is

produced, by whom, and to what ends, drawing attention to the various processes

through which socio-economic marginalisation and environmental degradation

become closely aligned with patterns of accumulation among elite groups.

Since its inception in the 1980s, political ecology has expanded widely as a field of

research, lending itself to the examination of society’s relationship with nature in a

myriad of contexts across the Global North and South. Examples include, but are

certainly not limited to, the in-depth study of resource management and distribution in

low- and middle-income countries (e.g. rubber, mining, oil) (Peluso 2007; Peluso

2009; Tschakert 2016; Verbrugge 2015; Watts 2004); urban landscapes of hazards and

vulnerability (Mustafa 2005; Pelling 1999); the ‘metabolization’ of nature through

urban infrastructures (Heynen 2003; Kaika 2003; Swyngedouw 2004); and the

embodied experiences of environmental change (Nightingale 2011; Sultana 2009;

Truelove 2011).

Here, I draw on this rich theoretical and empirical contribution to derive three

analytical entry points that, combined, constitute the conceptual framework I use in

this thesis to approach the political ecology of flood adaptation in São Paulo, Brazil,

as illustrated in Figure 1.2.

11

Figure 1.2 Conceptual framework for a political ecology of flood adaptation.

Environmental narratives

First, political ecology calls attention to the central role of environmental narratives in

framing how societies understand nature and best approaches to manage it, exposing

how discourses often become tools to dispossess certain population groups (Bridge et

al. 2015, p.13). Hence, political ecologists scrutinise environmental narratives and

expose how discourses link environmental degradation to particular subjects through

their undifferentiated stereotyping. This stereotyping or branding then justifies efforts

to restrict their access and control over resources in the name of nature’s preservation

as a broader ‘public good’ (Neumann 2005; Tschakert 2016). As political ecologists

sustain, “symbolic struggles over the meaning, definition and categorization of rights,

responsibilities and benefits are at the core of material struggles over the environment”

(Neumann 2005, p.7). Any claim of expertise to improve the lives of others, including

those related to managing at risk environments, is a “claim over power, one that merits

careful scrutiny” (Li 2007, p.5).

In the context of climate change, the analysis of environmental narratives – advanced

by governments, the media, and even scientists – draws attention to how discursive

biases regarding global systems and local impacts are produced and disseminated

(Boykoff & Luedecke 2016); the new types of environmental subjectivities that these

biases create (Eriksen et al. 2015); and how particular discourses may inform (and

constrain) political possibilities for addressing new and unprecedented climatic

challenges (Fiskio 2012). Focusing on environmental narratives as an analytical entry

12

point in the context of flooding and adaptation raises the question: how does flood

adaptation enter public debate: how is the problem of flooding framed, which solutions

are considered and legitimised, and who is invited to (and excluded from) the

discussion?

Material practices

Second, political ecology makes visible the materialities of state interventions as

government authorities attempt to “identify, order, and frame nature spatially through

legal, technological, and scientific practices” (Neumann 2015, p.392). Political

ecologists hone in on the physical contours of environmental preservation,

demonstrating how fixed boundaries are carefully delineated to delimit areas from

which certain population groups become excluded (Elmhirst 2011a; Peluso 2009;

Vandergeest & Peluso 1995). In so doing, they address the entwined relationship

between boundary-making and ecologies, resource access and livelihoods, property

rights and patterns of capital accumulation, both local and global, identifying likely

winners and losers of environment conservation policies and programmes.

Such material considerations are equally central to the study of urban political ecology,

where boundary-making processes assume new spatial configurations as nature is

rearranged into socio-natural networks (Gabriel 2014; Heynen 2014; Swyngedouw &

Heynen 2003). Here, “physical matter such as water or cows is transformed into

useable, ownable and tradable commodities” (Coe et al. 2007, p.161; in Swyngedouw

2015). At its core, analytical attention to state material practices allows for identifying

“the material transfers, corporeal violence, displacements, and patterns of political

cooperation and resistance” (Neumann 2015, p.392) associated with nature

conservation and the highly uneven urbanisation of nature as “social actors strive to

create and defend socio-physical environments that serve their interests and satisfy

their desires” (Swyngedouw 2015, p.614).

In the context of climate change adaptation, a focus on material practices calls attention

to the ways in which the “boundaries of a system are demarcated: who is excluded and

how” (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling 2015, p.567). This provides a useful lens for

understanding how climate change and adaptation efforts (re)produce uneven patterns

of resource distribution, affecting people and places in tangible ways (see also

13

Liverman 2015). Adopting material practices as an analytical lens in the context of

flood adaptation and São Paulo’s plans for the linear park raises the following three

questions: first, how do state policies materialise into flood adaptation technologies;

second, how are the benefits and burdens of adaptation distributed among groups that

are socially and politically unevenly positioned; and third, how do local communities

reshape state interventions from below?

Lived experiences

Finally, (feminist) political ecology prompts a cross-scalar analysis of nature-society

relations, “navigating between the body, the household, and the city at large”

(Truelove 2011, p.144). This type of analysis allows for a more nuanced understanding

of how environmental change and state interventions affect vulnerable communities

within the spaces of the everyday (Rocheleau et al. 1996). Such a situated approach

humanises environmental narratives that ‘lump the poor together’ into an amorphous

mass. It does so by illustrating where, when and how destitute residents (re)arrange

themselves in multiple and (often) unpredictable ways to procure resources (Gabriel

2014) and “appropriate the city for their own ends” (Lawhon et al. 2014, p.507;

building on Pieterse 2008). In the process, attention to lived experiences also reveals

how and under what conditions power asymmetries emerge along multiple axes of

difference (e.g. gender, class, and race) that are (re)produced in daily micropolitics;

these then are likely to further disadvantage particular population groups (e.g. women,

people of colour, and the elderly) (Elmhirst 2015; Nightingale 2011; Truelove 2011).

Applied to the politics of climate change adaptation, a focus on lived experiences

complicates essentialised notions to which poor populations are usually reduced. It

functions as a critical reminder that “people may be poor, but they are also leaders,

networkers, and key sources of community knowledge” (Liverman 2015; see also

Ziervogel 2019). It also makes visible how people are connected to the spaces they

inhabit and thus committed to protecting them (Nightingale 2012). In my research, the

lens of lived experience raises the following two questions: first, how do marginalised

groups experience flooding and state-led adaptation in a visceral way?; and second,

how can their situated knowledges, experiences, and capacities inform more fair and

equitable adaptation trajectories?

14

Together, these three analytical entry points allow me to disentangle the multiple and

intersecting dimensions through which power operates to create particular urban socio-

natural assemblages as urban governments attempt to manage and control

environmental hazards. However, as the thesis will demonstrate, the operation of

power within each of these dimensions is never clear-cut. I argue that it is precisely in

the ‘messy’ space that emerges at the interstices of environmental narratives, material

practices, and lived experiences that structures of domination can be identified and

challenged, and possibilities for more egalitarian climate adaptation trajectories

uncovered.

1.5 Thesis structure

This thesis is organised as follows. In Chapter 2: Methodology, I present the case study

context in more detail, describing the historically contentious relationship between the

city of São Paulo and the Tietê River. I then present a brief overview of methods for

data collection and analysis, and explain how they come together to provide a holistic

and nuanced account of São Paulo’s flood adaptation landscape. I conclude the chapter

by reflecting on my positionality, and how my personal and embodied experiences

shaped the research project, on the one hand, by creating immediate rapport with

government officials and, on the other hand, by limiting access to floodplain

communities.

The main body of the thesis is divided into three empirical chapters and one theoretical

chapter. Chapter 3: Dominant Discourses focuses on how flooding enters public

debate through media and government accounts. In this chapter, I scrutinise more than

500 newspaper stories published around the 2009/10 floods, tracing accounts of

flooding and adaptation and the ways in which they compare and contrast with

government plans for the PVT. This analysis allows me to identify the emergence of a

dominant flooding narrative, demonstrating the advantages of (and need for) an

explicit engagement between climate adaptation scholarship and critical media studies.

Moving from discourse to practice, in Chapter 4: Contested Materialities, I examine

how government plans for flood management and control materialise, and to what

effects. I combine archival work with semi-structured interviews with government

15

officials, technical experts, and key community informants to provide an in-depth

analysis of the PVT, demonstrating how the cross-fertilisation of urban and feminist

political ecology allows for approaching the ‘messy’ politics of flood adaptation. I also

identify strategic openings for more just and inclusive adaptation efforts, derived from

the spaces of the everyday.

The empirical section concludes with Chapter 5: Embodied Experiences, directing the

analysis onto the floodplain and its residents. In this chapter, I trace the personal story

of one community leader as it entwines with the stories of his community and the

floodplain to examine the co-production of space, bodies, and political subjects. In so

doing, I shed light upon the various reasons why the floodplain matters to its

inhabitants and argue for the transformational potential of belonging. The chapter

animates scholarship on climate change adaptation with a feminist approach, locating

marginal voices at the centre of climate adaptation discussions.

Finally, Chapter 6: Pathways towards just transformations offers a theoretical

contribution, placing the thesis’ empirical findings in conversation with ongoing

scholarly debates on adaptation pathways, politics, and practice. Drawing on a rich

literature from human geography and cognate fields, the chapter advances a series of

conceptual steps to identify and nurture transformational adaptation trajectories

towards urban climate justice.

The thesis closes with Chapter 7: Conclusions, which summarises findings from the

research and examines cross-cutting themes to synthesise the thesis’ main contribution

to critical adaptation scholarship while also identifying avenues for future research.

This thesis has been organised as a series of papers (two published and two reviewed

with requests for revisions). As such, each chapter follows a slightly different writing

style in accordance with individual journal guidelines and their intended audiences.

Moreover, since each chapter was designed as a stand-alone piece, there is a certain

degree of repetition of contextual information on the case study, particularly between

the empirical chapters (Chapter 3-5). All figures have been created by the thesis author,

unless otherwise indicated.

16

17

CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research context

The history of São Paulo has been deeply entwined with that of the Tietê River. Unlike

other major riverine systems in Brazil, the Tietê does not flow towards the coast. On

the contrary, its spring is located in Salesópolis – more specifically in São Paulo’s

mountainous region Serra do Mar, 22 km from the Atlantic Ocean – and the river then

extends 1,500 km westward, inland. Such unique configuration provided early

colonisers a strategic geographic position to expand their domination over the territory.

Not only did the Tietê supply the region with freshwater and fertile land, but it also

offered a communication route with the yet unexplored country’s interior (Santos

2011). Occupied by the Portuguese in 1554, São Paulo has continued to grow

exponentially over the centuries and is now the largest city in Brazil. Extending over

1,521 km2 (42% of which has been urbanised) (Secretaria de Estado de Economia e

Planejamento 2006), the city is currently home to over 12 million inhabitants (Instituto

Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística 2017). Its widespread urban development,

however, has not been evenly distributed over the extensive territory (Caldeira 2017;

Holston 1991; Rolnik & Klink 2011). As of 2010, 10% of São Paulo’s population lived

in informal settlements, predominantly located in the city’s peripheries (Pasternak &

D’Ottaviano 2016) where social vulnerability is high, infrastructure sparse, income

low, and formal job opportunities elusive (Marques 2014). Figures 2.1 and 2.2

illustrate these patterns.

18

Figure 2.1 Social Vulnerability. Household distribution according to the Índice Paulista de Vulnerabilidade Social (IPVS, or São Paulo’s Social Vulnerability Index). The IPVS was measured

according to socioeconomic and demographic data collected in the 2010 national census. Source: Prefeitura da Cidade de São Paulo (2019), originally based on SEADE (2010).

19

Figure 2.2 Income distribution. Formal jobs and household earnings according to the 2010 national

census. Adapted from Prefeitura da Cidade de São Paulo (2019). *R$1.76 corresponded to approximately 1USD in 2010.

20

The perverse consequences of São Paulo’s uneven urban development are particularly

visible in the city’s eastern periphery (Rolnik & Frúgoli Jr. 2001), specifically in the

areas within and around the Tietê River floodplain. Unlike other regions of the city,

the eastern periphery presents a comparably recent development history (Figure 2.3).

It was only in the mid-1900s, after the first railway line5 and large-scale industries6

were established along the Tietê River, that its eastern floodplain flourished,

accommodating the rapid influx of low-wage workers who migrated to the city in

search for a better life (Zanirato 2011). Lacking the necessary financial resources to

find a home in the city centre, these workers settled along the river, without

infrastructure, services, or property titles, building their neighbourhoods from the

ground up (Barboza 2015; Egute 2016). Throughout the years, communities such as

Jardim Lapenna, Chácara Três Meninas, Jardim Pantanal, and Jardim Romano

(where qualitative data collection for this research was undertaken, see Section 2.1)

have consolidated into highly heterogeneous neighbourhoods at multiple levels of

development that continue to expand along the Tietê. Today, they are among the

populations most frequently and severely affected by its seasonal overflow (see

Barboza 2015; Egute 2016; Quinto 2017).

São Paulo’s strategic proximity to the Tietê River has evolved to become one of the

city’s most significant development challenges. For the past century, the government

of São Paulo, at both municipal and state levels, has directed concerted efforts to

domesticate the Tietê and control the city’s flooding problem (Santos 2014). These

have included a series of engineering solutions dating back to 1920, several of which

involved plans to rectify the river and construct highways along its margins.7 The latter

were finally completed in the 1960s with the construction of the highway Rodovia

Professor Simão Faiguenboim or Marginal Tietê. These early plans however, were

largely restricted to the Tietê’s lower catchment (west of Barragem da Penha, or Penha

Dam), close to São Paulo’s urban core (Santos 2014).

5 The first railway line was built along the Tietê River between 1867 and 1900 (Zanirato 2011). 6 The most important industry has arguably been the Companhia Nitroquímica, specialised in the manufacture of chemical by-products (e.g. sulfuric acid and nitrocellulose), which was established in the Tietê River floodplain in 1935. 7 For a detailed account of these and other proposed interventions see Santos (2014).

21

Figure 2.3 São Paulo’s development history. Urban expansion between 1881 and 2002. Source:

Prefeitura da Cidade de São Paulo (2019).

22

Later proposals envisioned similar engineering solutions for the river’s upper

catchment in São Paulo’s eastern periphery, but combining those with environmental

preservation goals (examined in detail in Chapter 4). Yet, as described in this thesis,

these solutions were never fully implemented. More recent flood management and

control efforts include the ongoing construction of piscinões (or containment basins)

(see Canholi 2015) and permanent dredging to remove solid waste that reaches the

riverbed every day, accumulating over its channel. Common across all these

interventions is the desire to manipulate ‘nature’ through the development of

infrastructure. This continues to resonate with government officials and flood control

experts to this day (as demonstrated at length in Chapter 3).

Despite these ongoing efforts, São Paulo’s administrations have been unable to thwart

its growing flooding problem as the city continues to expand over its rivers and

tributaries (Figure 2.4) along an aging and improperly kept infrastructure and

dwindling government funds. These conditions are expected to worsen in the years to

come as the city’s population is projected to increase by at least 1.5% over the next

two decades8 (SEADE n.d.), and its climate to become significantly warmer and wetter

before the end of the century. São Paulo’s temperature is projected to increase between

2 and 3°C while the number of heavy precipitation days in the city is expected to

double by 2100 (Marengo et al. 2013; Silva Dias et al. 2013). Nobre and colleagues

(2010) estimate that areas vulnerable to flooding will grow exponentially in São

Paulo’s Metro Area over the next ten years if current development patterns continue

unimpeded.

It is within this historical context, at the intersection of pervasive structural

inequalities, techno-managerial fixes, exacerbated flood risk, and continuous urban

growth that the Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or Tietê Lowlands Park) has emerged

and is examined in this thesis.

8 This number will be significantly higher considering São Paulo’s Metro Area, which is expected to grow by almost two million people until 2050 (SEADE n.d.), impacting the Tietê River basin.

23

Figure 2.4 Rivers and urban development. São Paulo's rivers and tributaries superimposed onto a 2019 aerial photograph showing the city’s built area. The Tietê River is highlighted in pink. Aerial

imagery: Google 2019.

24

2.1 Data collection

This thesis draws on data collected over nine months of field-based research conducted

in two phases between 2016 and 2017 in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Phase 1, from

April to July 2016, concentrated on archival work while waiting for human ethics

approval from the Brazilian research ethics council. Phase 2, from February to June

2017, focused predominantly on primary data collection. Both phases centred on the

PVT as a case study. As defined by Baxter (2010),

“case study research involves the study of a single instance or small number of instances of a phenomenon in order to explore in-depth nuances of the phenomenon and the contextual influences on and explanations of that phenomenon” (p.81).

Such a contextual focus and in-depth analysis renders case studies a powerful means

to both understand the concrete and practical aspects of the event under study and

produce “theoretical concepts and explanations that potentially resonate in other (as

yet unstudied) contexts” (Baxter 2010, p.95).

To examine the case of the PVT, this thesis employs a qualitative research approach.

Qualitative research encompasses a series of methods (often involving oral techniques,

textual analysis, and/or participant observation) designed to address the interconnected

production and reproduction of broader societal structures, and individual experiences

of places and events (Winchester & Rofe 2010). In line with this epistemological

tradition, this thesis combines archival work with a series of activities with research

participants – i.e. semi-structured interviews, neighbourhood walks, and participant

observation. This multi-pronged approach allows me to advance the work of

contemporary human and human-environment geographers who operate at the

interstices of “places, people, bodies, discourses, silenced voices, and fragmented

landscapes” (Winchester & Rofe 2010, p.3). I do so to achieve two goals, namely:

1. Produce a comprehensive and nuanced account of how flooding is understood

and experienced, and how adaptation plans are conceived and enacted in a

context of divided interests and entrenched power asymmetries;

2. Theorise how flood adaptation entwines with uneven development trajectories

in São Paulo and beyond, conceptualising strategic openings to produce

inclusive and just adaptation trajectories from below.

25

This research followed ethical guidelines for research with human participants set by

the Australian and Brazilian governments. It has approval from the University of

Western Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference: RA/4/1/8242,

Appendix 1) and the Conselho Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa (CONEP, or National

Council for Research Ethics; Reference: 60798116.6.0000.0062, Appendix 2).

Below, I provide an overview of the methods I employed for data collection and

summarise how I integrate them with different bodies of knowledge from media

studies, urban and feminist political ecology, and feminist scholarship to address this

thesis’ core research questions (Figure 2.5). Further details on data collection and

analysis are provided in each subsequent empirical chapter (Chapters 3-5).

Figure 2.5 Research design. Summary of theoretical and methodological approaches employed to address each research question, organised by thesis chapter.

26

Preliminary data collection

Before venturing into the field for the first time in 2016, I started to collect and

catalogue a range of documents and media reports pertaining to the Parque Várzeas

do Tietê (PVT) that were readily available online. This preliminary work allowed me

to accomplish three vital goals: first, identify the central actors, departments, and

institutions involved in the implementation of the park and other flood management

and control efforts in the city; second, assess the PVT’s proposal and ongoing progress;

and third, familiarise myself with my study site, particularly the geography of low-

income floodplain communities situated along the Tietê River.

Archival research

Archival research provides a window to different times. As Harris (2001, p.332; in

Roche 2010, p.174) argues, “archival scholarship… is an ongoing, evolving

interaction between the scholar and the voices of the past embedded in the documents”,

and it is particularly useful to draw linkages between past places and events and their

current counterparts (Roche 2010). Here, archival research is employed to produce a

quasi-longitudinal9 case study (see Baxter 2010); I trace the historical evolution of the

PVT – from its original inception in 1977 to its latest iteration in 2009 – while

examining its current positioning vis-à-vis worsening climatic conditions and broader

understandings of flooding (re)produced in media accounts.

To this end, the first four months of fieldwork (April – July 2016) included a series of

visits to government departments and public archives where I obtained various

documents pertinent to the thesis. These documents included: the official plans for the

PVT (historical and current); detailed precipitation data and flood records for the

period before and after the 2009/10 floods (2008-2012); and articles published by the

two highest circulation newspapers in the city of São Paulo – O Estado de São Paulo

(Estadão) and Folha de São Paulo (Folha). Table 2.1 presents a list of the core archival

data collected as part of this research.

9 Longitudinal case studies refer to field-based research wherein the researcher returns to the case after a period of time to access enduring concepts and theories (Baxter 2010). Here, a quasi-longitudinal case study refers to the collection and analysis of PVT documents to trace persistent versus ephemeral ideas, practices, and aims as these evolved through the project’s 30-year history.

27

Tab

le 2

.1 C

ore

data

col

lect

ed th

roug

h ar

chiv

al w

ork

28

As noted by Roche (2010), archival research can be overwhelming and extremely

time-consuming, and this was certainly the case when approaching media framings of

flooding in São Paulo. The city has multiple dailies operating simultaneously and

aimed at different audiences, ranging from city-wide broadsheet newspapers to local

publications distributed to communities at low or no cost. Besides printed media, city

dwellers have access to news stories aired on television and (increasingly) distributed

on social media. The breadth of archival sources and the time I had available for the

task had to be reconciled into a manageable dataset, which resulted in the selection of

two newspaper sources (Estadão and Folha) and a five-year window around the

2009/10 floods. The selection of newspaper sources is described in detail in Chapter

3. Here, it suffices to say that, although these two sources represent only a slice of

media discourses, they provide crucial insights into how flood events are framed and

presented to a wider audience, thereby informing public opinion.

Semi-structured interviews

During the second phase of field-based data collection (February – June 2017), I

conducted semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders involved in and/or

impacted by the implementation of the PVT. Interviews allow participants to “speak

in their own voice” about individual meanings and experiences while drawing

connections with broader societal patterns (Winchester & Rofe 2010, p.9). Semi-

structured interviews are designed to be flexible but generally follow an interview

schedule (i.e. a list of specific questions or issues to be addressed), which allows the

researcher to guide and redirect the conversation when it veers off topic (Dunn 2010).

This research involved semi-structured interviews with twenty six participants

representing three different groups:

Six government officials – recruited from city and state departments

overseeing flood management and control efforts in the city;

Ten technical experts – identified in academic studies and government reports.

These included academics and professionals in the areas of architecture, urban

planning, civil and hydrological engineering, some of whom had held

government positions prior to the beginning of this research;

Ten key floodplain informants – recruited from local NGOs and through

snowball sampling (Hesse-Biber 2012). These included long-term residents,

29

the majority occupying key leadership positions in the communities of Jardim

Pantanal, Jardim Romano, Jardim Lapenna, and Chácara Três Meninas

(Figure 2.6). I have identified Jardim Pantanal and Jardim Romano during

preliminary fieldwork; they had been featured prominently in media accounts

as the communities most extensively affected by the 2009/10 floods. I gained

access to Jardim Pantanal and Jardim Romano via direct contact with local

NGOs and community leaders. These community leaders and technical experts

then put me in contact with key informants from Chácara Três Meninas and

Jardim Lapenna, respectively, which have been equally affected by recurrent

flooding from the Tietê River and were also widely targeted for removal by the

PVT.

Figure 2.6 Communities selected for data collection. Location of all four communities in São Paulo's eastern periphery in relation to the PVT (dotted line) and the Tietê River (dark grey

meandering line). Aerial imagery: Maxar Technologies 2019, Google 2018, Europa Technologies 2018.

The interviews followed a predefined interview guide (see Chapter 4) designed to elicit

respondents’ personal experiences with flooding and adaptation in a casual setting,

described in their own words. I have conducted all interviews in Portuguese, my native

language. The interviews were 60-90 minutes long, were audio-recorded upon consent,

and transcribed. For participant information and consent forms see Appendices 3-6.

Neighbourhood walks

The semi-structured interviews were complemented with five neighbourhood walks;

one with government officials from the Departamento de Água e Energia Elétrica

(DAEE, or Department of Water and Energy), responsible for the implementation of

the PVT, and four with key floodplain informants from each of the communities

30

aforementioned. The course taken during each neighbourhood walk was entirely

decided by the participants so they could highlight details and places that mattered the

most to them. Each walk lasted between 60-120 minutes and was undertaken usually

on foot (only one also by car). The walks were either audio-recorded or documented

in a fieldwork diary, tracked with GPS, and photographed upon consent.

Participant observation

Finally, when I visited government departments and floodplain communities for

interviews, I also had the opportunity to observe my research contributors in their

places of work and/or residence. Such opportunities where particularly informative

when my respondents invited me to participate in community events, to join them for

coffee or lunch, or to walk together to the train station. These interactions were never

trivial; they generated valuable insights into how people relate to one another and their

surroundings. Hence, observing and recording them became a central part of the

research. I have carefully documented these various interactions in a fieldwork diary,

sometimes in real time, other times back home in São Paulo after having spent days in

the field. Findings from participant observation in floodplain communities are

presented in detail in Chapter 5.

2.2 Data Analysis

In order to examine the qualitative data (transcribed interviews, field notes, newspaper

stories, and planning documents) and quantitative data (georeferenced aerial imagery

and rainfall measurements) collected in the field, this thesis employed a number of

analytical methods, as summarised in Figure 2.5 and described below.

Thematic and in-depth content analysis

Interviews: All transcribed interviews and field notes were imported into the

qualitative data software Atlas.ti where I read them in detail to achieve immersion and

comprehension of the main issues raised by the participants and identify cross-cutting

themes (Hsieh & Shannon 2005). This analysis allowed me to probe: diverse

knowledges of flooding, both technical and situated; the rhetoric employed by different

actors in their accounts of flooding and adaptation; different adaptation practices and

31

governance arrangements within institutions and everyday spaces; perceptions of the

PVT within and outside the floodplain; and cross-scalar power dynamics.

Media reports and planning documents: All newspaper articles and planning

documents were also imported into Atlas.ti where they were systematically coded and

analysed (coding procedures are described in detail in Chapter 3). Coding refers to

“the process of identifying and organizing themes in qualitative analysis” (Cope 2010,

p.282). It is a form of ‘detective work’ that is partly data reduction, partly data

organisation, and partly data exploration, analysis, and theory-building (Cope 2010).

Here, coding and the subsequent in-depth content analysis of predominant codes were

employed to deconstruct dominant narratives of flooding and adaptation produced by

the two different media outlets selected (Estadão and Folha) as well as by the PVT

proponents in their official plans for the park. This process highlighted convergences

and divergences between the narratives advanced by these different sources as they:

framed flooding as a problem; ascribed responsibility to different actors, describing

them as villains, victims, and/or heroes in relation to flood events; deliberated and

legitimised solutions; and included some voices while excluding others.

Statistical analysis

In order to identify predominant codes and themes within Estadão and Folha, and

similarities in coverage between the two newspapers, I performed a 2-sample

proportion test comparing the incidence of all themes identified in the sample. Further

details and results from this statistical analysis are provided in Chapter 3.

Visual analysis

Finally, I conducted a visual analysis to compare the various iterations of the PVT and

the evolution of the floodplain in the ten years since the project’s announcement. I

superimposed the current contours of the park with 2008 and 2018 aerial imagery,

examining how the project’s rigid boundaries relate to a landscape that is continuously

in flux. This process allowed me to examine how the park relates to the different uses

of the floodplain (private and public) and ownership status (formal and informal), and

to quantify the expansion of informal areas within the park’s boundaries since 2008.

Further details and findings from this visual analysis are presented in Chapter 4.

32

2.3 Positionality

All research is shaped by the researcher’s position in the world. As Winchester and

Rofe (2010) argue, “[our] choice of what we study and how we study it reflects our

values and beliefs” (p.16). Who we are has significant impacts on the type of

information we seek, the power dynamics involved in the process of (and difficulties

in) acquiring data, and the ways through which we interpret it (Mullings 1999).

Reflecting on one’s own biases and limitations – also known as ‘critical reflexivity’ –

is thus of vital and abiding importance to the production of “good, sensitive, and ethical

research” (Dowling 2010, p.27). Critical reflexivity entails the

“self-conscious scrutiny of yourself and the social nature of the research … acknowledging rather than denying your own social position and asking how your research interactions and the information you collect are socially conditioned.” (Dowling 2010, p.37)

This research has been deeply shaped by my positionality in relation to the various

spaces that constituted my field site. At the beginning of this project, I entered the field

as a white, female, middle-class Brazilian architect, planner, and geographer who was

largely unfamiliar with the layout of São Paulo’s periphery. As I navigated the city’s

landscapes of development and marginalisation, my personal and professional

background positioned me simultaneously as an insider and outsider in relation to my

research site.10

Initially trained as an architect and urbanist in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, I gained

(almost) instant access to São Paulo’s planning landscape: I was familiar with the

intricacies of government planning mandates, knew how to locate and contact the

different departments relevant to my project, and quickly built rapport with the

different government officials involved with the implementation of the park (many of

whom were also architects and planners). Such an ‘insider’ position, however, also

had its shortcomings. Being critical of my own training, I am all too familiar with the

exclusionary basis upon which urban development is practiced in the country, and this

critical stance certainly influenced my research design. This is perhaps most visible in

the way I initially approached my different research participants – i.e. as government

10 For further insights on insider/outsider relationships in field-based research see Mullings (1999) and Parikh (2019).

33

officials versus floodplain communities. Such essentialised notions were inevitably

shattered in the process of doing research, particularly as I encountered state officers

personally invested in attempting to improve the lives of informal floodplain

communities.

In the space of the floodplain, I was fundamentally an outsider. I had not visited São

Paulo’s eastern periphery prior to this research project, and my southern accent

immediately positioned me outside of a space largely populated by migrants from the

northeast of Brazil. This ‘outsider’ position translated into real research constrains. I

was advised by my participants to refrain from visiting floodplain communities alone

for safety and security concerns, accentuated by gender dynamics. As such, my

research participants, particularly community leaders, acted in many ways as ‘gate-

keepers’ for their respective communities.

The use of ‘gate-keepers’, however, was often not enough to surmount some of the

challenges in data collection. For example, they had limited time available to

accompany me during fieldwork, which meant I could only visit the communities

during certain periods. This affected the types of activities I could undertake and the

(new) relationships I could nurture. This is not to say that building diverse relationships

that could elicit a larger participant sample or allow different methods of data

collection (e.g. focus groups and participatory mapping) is not possible in such an

environment but rather to highlight that this would require more experience with

alternative methods and more time for primary data collection within each of the four

communities.

These limitations notwithstanding, I have developed essential relationships with

community leaders who have helped me to access and navigate a highly contested and

volatile environment, providing entrance to some spaces (and not others) and

indicating who I should (and should not) speak to. As such, my understanding of the

floodplain was certainly filtered through the eyes of a few selected residents.

Recognising this bias in the data collected is by no means to say the insights I gained

during visits to my field sites were less significant. On the contrary, my interactions

with key floodplain informants made visible local power asymmetries as these are also

(re)produced in the politics of field-based research.

34

Reflecting upon my positionality in the research process thus offered a new and

important analytical lens through which to examine how power operates through the

production of knowledge. I became actually aware of the intricate ways all research

participants (including the researcher) constantly navigate inside-outside positons,

both within government institutions and the spaces of the everyday. As we negotiate

our positioning in spaces we are made part of or excluded from, we (re)produce and/or

challenge power relations and stereotypes that have real impacts on people’s lives. For

my participants, this negotiation included the desire to remain anonymous or to be

recognised as an informant, with all the political ramifications such decision entails,

which was acknowledged in each chapter (and associated publication) that is part of

this research.

For me, acknowledging this relational and fluid positioning translated into questions

that became central to the analytical process: (a) How can we challenge essentialised

participant roles while exposing structures of domination? and (b) How can we be

critical but fair? I do not offer answers to these questions but rather use them as

signposts to keep my own work in check. In this thesis, complicating preconceived

notions such as good/evil and oppressor/oppressed taught me how power operates and

is challenged at multiple scales. As the research shows, it is also in navigating the grey

space in between such deterministic conceptualisation of reality that we may see how

different people (sometimes) encounter one another as fellow humans, treating each

other with dignity and respect and, in the process, reshape structures of domination

from the ground up.

35

CHAPTER 3. DOMINANT DISCOURSES

This chapter has been published in Global Environmental Change as:

Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Taming São Paulo’s floods: Dominant discourses, exclusionary practices, and the complicity of the media’, Global Environmental Change, vol. 58, pp. 1–12. [See Appendix 7]

3.1 Introduction

“Reporter: How are you doing over there [in Jardim Pantanal]?

Miguel: It is the state, the state wants us to die in here.

Reporter: The state? But you know this is not a suitable place for you to live.

Miguel: You […] got the best places to live, [because] you have good salaries. […] This is what we can afford, it’s where we can live.

Reporter: But right at the edge of the [Tietê] River?

Miguel: Yes, but there is also the [bus] terminal, the newspaper… Estadão is at the margins of the Tietê. Carrefour, Souza Cruz, they are all at the margins of the Tietê. Why can’t we be here? Look, the state government opened the dam…

Reporter: Hello? The reception is really bad. I think we’ll have to talk at some other time.”

(Miguel’s rendering of radio interview, March 2017)

When Miguel (pseudonym) heard about this research project, he was eager to share

how his and other informal communities along São Paulo’s Tietê River were

devastated during the 2009-10 floods. São Paulo is no stranger to flood events, but

between December 2009 and January 2010 the city faced its most damaging floods in

contemporary history (Manso & Jelin 2010). Coincidently, the floods happened to

occur a few months after the announcement of the city’s most ambitious flood

adaptation project, Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or Tietê Lowlands Park), a multi-

million dollar initiative that combines new infrastructure with the mass relocation of

low-income dwellers to allegedly protect the city as a whole (Departamento de Águas

e Energia Elétrica 2015). Miguel, a community leader, argued the floods had been used

36

once again to justify the eviction of floodplain residents who were fighting desperately

for their right to stay in the floodplain. São Paulo’s mainstream media, he insisted,

were deaf to the communities’ pleas, with reporters sensationalising ‘sob stories’ while

refusing to listen to local explanations regarding the causes of flooding (as illustrated

above). Miguel’s account, echoed by other community members, not only conveys the

mistrust between underrepresented groups and mainstream media, which flooding

accentuates, but also raises an important question that this paper attempts to answer:

what is the role of the media in disaster coverage and management?

São Paulo’s flooding problem and adaptation strategies, epitomised by the PVT, are

not unique. As extreme climate- and weather-related events become more frequent and

severe, cities across the globe struggle to adapt and protect their populations and assets

(Revi et al. 2014). Despite unprecedented hazards, governments tend to resort to ‘tried-

and-true’ methods, recycling and reproducing approaches that have become

normalised, thereby reinforcing dominant adaptation trajectories (see Câmpeanu &

Fazey 2014; Fazey et al. 2016; Gajjar et al. 2018; Wise et al. 2014). In many cities of

the Global South, these dominant and often unjust trajectories become evident when,

for example, governments commit to flood-control infrastructure to protect affluent

neighbourhoods (Douglas et al. 2008) while forcing evictions upon poor residents. As

a consequence, adhering to such dominant pathways often mean producing riskier lives

for those already most vulnerable (see Desai 2012; Millington 2018; Mustafa 2005;

Rolnik 2017).

Such orthodox adaptation approaches, however, do not go unchallenged. Catastrophic

events, including São Paulo’s 2009-10 floods, put existing flood management and

control under the microscope, rendering them the “subject of intense public

interrogation” (Whatmore & Landström 2011, p.583). This interrogation may well

generate public debate about alternative flood management and adaptation (see

Arabindoo 2016; McFarlane 2009). We are interested in probing this debate and its

actors, with an explicit focus on the role of media coverage of flood disasters.

The media play an unequivocal role in featuring flood controversies in public

discussion. Through their daily reports, news outlets help raise public awareness and

disseminate information (McCombs 2014), providing a forum where existing practices

37

are scrutinised, alternative solutions deliberated, and choices legitimised (Escobar &

Demeritt 2014; Schmidt et al. 2013). However, not all weather- or climate-related

events are approached equally by the media; which events the media choose to portray,

for how long, and whose voices are recognised and included in news coverage all

influence, to some extent, whether and how these events will be incorporated in the

public policy agenda (McKinnon et al. 2017). Thus, investigating media coverage of

flooding has become an important avenue of research for understanding policy

development (Bohensky & Leitch 2014; Devitt & O’Neill 2017; Escobar & Demeritt

2014). Yet, most media research to date has focused on cities of the Global North, with

distinctly less emphasis on those in the Global South (Adekola & Lamond 2018).

Moreover, only limited scholarship has drawn connections between media disaster

coverage and governmental views and action (for a notable exception see Rinne &

Nygren 2016).

To address this gap, we examine elite media coverage of flood events in the period

surrounding São Paulo’s 2009-10 floods and analyse how their coverage correlates

with government’s plans for flood adaptation. We refer to elite media as quality press

striving for high journalistic standards, such as “accuracy, accountability, and fairness”

as well as “social and ethical responsibility” (Boykoff & Luedecke 2016, p.4). In the

next section, we draw on media studies to delineate our theoretical approach centred

on the relationship between media, knowledge, and power. We then present our

methods for data collection and analysis on two rival (and seemingly antithetic)

newspaper sources. Our results expose the role and effects of elite media coverage in

sustaining exclusionary adaptation trajectories. We conclude by probing for more

inclusive avenues for knowledge production and agenda setting in the context of

flooding and climate change.

3.2 Theoretical approach: Media, knowledge, and power

Adaptation to extreme climate- and weather-related events, and climate change more

broadly, is intimately connected to regimes of knowledge production (Eriksen et al.

2015; Gorddard et al. 2016). As citizens struggle to live with and prepare for extreme

yet uncertain climatic conditions, their knowledge about current and projected hazards

informs the way they choose to act (Leitch & Bohensky 2014) and the policies and

38

programmes they are willing to support to protect themselves and others (Adekola &

Lamond 2018; Miles & Morse 2007). In the absence of personal experience, the public

largely relies on the information the media propagate about climate change and

weather-related disasters (Boykoff & Luedecke 2016; Miles & Morse 2007; Painter et

al. 2018; Schmidt et al. 2013). Hence, news outlets constitute an essential public

pedagogy tool (Kelly 2011), ideally packaging complex information in a clear,

transparent, and objective form (Luedecke & Boykoff 2017).

In addition to disseminating knowledge, news outlets are enmeshed in knowledge

production through their framing of climate change and its effects (Devitt & O’Neill

2017; Dirikx & Gelders 2010). We use the term ‘frame’ to emphasise certain aspects

of reality: framing allows the public to “rapidly determine why an issue is important,

who is responsible, and what might be the consequences” (Dirikx & Gelders 2010,

p.732). It also suggests “a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral

evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993,

p.52). In other words, media frames offer not only a diagnosis of climate hazards but

also a prescription for lessening their impacts (Adekola & Lamond 2018; Luedecke &

Boykoff 2017).

The frames that the media employ, however, are neither balanced nor value-free (Kelly

2011). Scholarship in media studies demonstrates that media reporting of flood events

and other weather-related hazards overemphasises individual resilience as a rhetoric

device (Leitch & Bohensky 2014), legitimises contentious political agendas, such as

targeted evictions (Rinne & Nygren 2016), and renders the lived experiences of

marginalised groups invisible (McKinnon et al. 2017). News reports are often

complicit in reinforcing particular viewpoints and beliefs (Devitt & O’Neill 2017),

reproducing existing power relations (Rinne & Nygren 2016), and diminishing the

multiple experiences that could advance disaster risk management (McKinnon et al.

2017). Ultimately, media reports may inhibit the imagination of alternative political

possibilities and climate futures (Fiskio 2012), particularly when absences or blind

spots render other framings of hazards “invisible or precluded from public discussion”

(McKinnon et al. 2017, p.124).

39

Drawing on this literature, our analysis shows the relationship between news reporting,

knowledge production, and uneven relations of power in the context of flood risk and

control in São Paulo. We investigate: (1) how media reports employ text and select

sources to tell stories about flooding (Escobar & Demeritt 2014); (2) how particular

framings evolve over time, recognising the significance of elements and voices that

are obscured or omitted (Carvalho 2008); and (3) how media narratives compare with

government dominant ideologies, as represented in planning documents.

This article advances the theoretical understanding of media discourses about flooding

and its many subjects. It exposes political struggles over the causes, consequences, and

possible solutions for the problem while identifying how particular ideologies

promoted by media coverage materialise in flood management solutions. We aim to

draw attention to some of the “links between discourses and political practices […] for

a better understanding of how discourses seek to render certain subjects and certain

versions of reality governable” (Rinne & Nygren 2016, p.8; drawing on Li 2007). Our

ultimate aim is to make visible, and contest, the fragmented, oversimplified, and

partisan reality depicted by elite media and envision more inclusive and just flood

adaptation futures.

3.3 Methodology

3.3.1 Case study context

São Paulo has a long history of devastating flood events as extreme precipitation

intersects with extensive urban development and insufficient infrastructural networks

to produce widespread flooding. In response to recurrent floods, the government of

São Paulo has devised a series of interventions to protect its consolidated urban core,

including plans to channel the Tietê River (Santos 2014) and construct dozens of

containment basins (Canholi 2015), most of which have never been fully realised. In

lieu of government solutions, low-income communities along the Tietê River have

been forced to improvise and devise strategies to live with the floods. These include

the use of water-resistant materials and the elevation of homes (Egute 2016; Quinto

2017), having allowed these settlements to endure and expand over time.

40

To address the city’s outdated and inadequate flood management system, the state of

São Paulo launched an ambitious adaptation project in 2009. Reviving a 1970s

proposal, the PVT envisions a 75km-long linear park along the Tietê River to buffer

and slow down the water’s ‘natural’ flow (Governo do Estado de São Paulo 2010). At

an initial cost of US$200 million, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank

and São Paulo’s state government, the PVT combines floodplain restoration with

conventional hard-infrastructure to create a flood control system delimited by a 230

km-long avenue (Inter-American Development Bank 2010). This system, however, is

contingent on the removal of 7,500 low-income families who informally inhabit the

Tietê’s floodplain. In its current implementation state (Henrique & Tschakert 2019a;

Millington 2018), the PVT raises important questions about the adequacy of state-led

flood control projects and the concomitant eviction of the poor as both become

entwined with São Paulo’s uneven development history (see Nobre & Bomfim 2002).

3.3.2 Data collection

Our analysis is based on two broadsheet newspapers: O Estado de São Paulo (Estadão)

and Folha de São Paulo (Folha). We focus on broadsheet newspapers because, despite

the rise of other outlets, newspapers remain an important agenda-setting medium

(Leitch & Bohensky 2014) and represent the primary media space where public

debates on political issues are undertaken in Brazil (Matos 2008). Estadão, founded in

1875, is the second largest circulation newspaper in the São Paulo metro area and is

known as a conservative-leaning media outlet. Folha, founded in 1921 in direct

competition to Estadão, is currently the largest circulation newspaper in Brazil and is

known as a more centrist and pluralist news source.

By using the newspapers’ online databases (Folha de São Paulo 2018; O Estado de

São Paulo 2018), the first author conducted a comprehensive search for all articles

reporting flood events related to the Tietê River between 2008 and 2012. This period

corresponds to a five-year window around the 2009-10 floods, sufficient to trace the

salience of flood reports in both average and extreme precipitation years. In each

database, the search identified relevant newspaper pages by using combinations of the

term Tietê River (Rio Tietê) and at least one of the following: three Portuguese terms

for flooding (enchente(s), alagamento(s), and inundação(ões)); the term floodplain

(várzea); the names of four floodplain neighbourhoods historically affected by the

41

Tietê River (Jardim Romano, Jardim Helena, Vila Itaim, and Jardim Pantanal); and

Tietê Lowlands Park (Parque Várzeas do Tietê). This comprehensive search elicited

504 pages from Estadão and 810 from Folha. After dividing each page into individual

articles, and manually excluding duplicates and articles irrelevant to the analysis, we

proceeded with a final sample of 258 articles from Estadão and 321 from Folha,

including articles by journalists, opinion columns, and community responses. For a

complete list of all articles analysed and their corresponding R# codes see Appendix

8.

3.3.3 Data analysis

All articles were imported into Atlas.ti where their content was analysed and coded

both deductively and inductively. Deductive coding allowed us to analyse the sample

for six core themes identified as central to media framings of flood events: Causes;

Consequences; Short-term Responses; Long-term Solutions; Subjectivities; and

Voices (see Table 3.1). The first author then examined an initial sample of 30 articles,

deriving a series of codes in association with each theme. Both authors reviewed the

themes and codes in detail, eliminating overlaps and conflicting definitions. The first

author then proceeded to code all 579 articles, developing new codes whenever

warranted and devising a total of 124 codes. As in other media studies (e.g. Johns &

Jacquet 2018), several articles covered more than one theme and code. This explains

why the codes’ percentages do not add up to 100.

Next, we identified predominant codes and trends within each newspaper;

‘predominant codes’ correspond to issues discussed with significant higher frequency

than others while ‘trends’ indicate tendencies for some issues to be discussed more

frequently than others within the same thematic group. We then performed a 2-sample

proportions test to assess if the differences encountered between Estadão and Folha

were due to chance or indeed represented significant divergences between the two rival

outlets. As proposed by Escobar and Demeritt (2014; drawing on Fairclough 1992),

the frequency of particular codes is indicative of their salience, but a qualitative

analysis is still needed “to explore their framing and its relationship to underlying

discourses of power” (p.456). Hence, we performed a qualitative thematic analysis of

the content associated with dominant codes to demonstrate how each aspect of

flooding was described in isolation and in relation to the entire set. This analysis

42

allowed us to present media constructions of flooding and adaptation over time.

Finally, we compared media framings to those advanced by the government in the

plans for the PVT.

This article is part of a larger research project that involves a series of interviews with

key floodplain informants, technical experts, and government officers conducted in

2017. At times, we draw on these interviews to portray local accounts of flooding and

adaptation and contest incomplete framings produced by the media and the

government of São Paulo.

Table 3.1 Core themes

Themes Description

Causes Issues described as a cause of flooding.

Consequences Issues described as a consequence of flooding.

Short-term responses Actions taken as immediate responses to flooding to remedy its impacts.

Long-term solutions Actions described as long-term solutions to eradicate flooding or mitigate its future impacts.

Subjectivities Subjects described as victims, villains, or heroes in relation to flood events.

Voices Population groups interviewed and directly quoted in the articles.

3.4 Results

Our analysis reveals a strong correlation between news reports covering flood events

and São Paulo’s ‘wet’ season (high-precipitation summer months, particularly

December-February), as depicted in Figure 3.1, confirming the proposition that “when

it floods, it is news” (Escobar & Demeritt 2014, p.458). This concentration in coverage

signals that both newspapers debated flood events primarily during moments of crisis

(i.e. when flooding happened) with distinctly less coverage on early warning and

mitigation.

43

Figure 3.1 Media coverage of flooding. (a) Precipitation data. Data sources: Monthly precipitation data (Centro de Gerenciamento de Emergências 2016); January and December average (1961-1990) (Instituto Nacional de Metereologia 2018). Number of articles on flooding published by Estadão (b)

and Folha (c) per month between 2008 and 2012.

Figure 3.2 summarises predominant issues and trends identified in the articles that

were published by Estadão and Folha between 2008 and 2012, organised by themes.

We discuss these findings in detail in the subsequent sections. For a complete analysis

of themes and codes covered by each newspaper see Appendix 9.

44

Figure 3.2 Media framings of flooding. Predominant issues (solid) and trends (hatched) discussed per theme and by newspaper. Horizontal lines show confidence intervals.

3.4.1 Causes

Both Estadão and Folha tended to oversimplify the complexity of and

interconnectedness between factors that produce flooding, discussing only one or two

causes in any given article. Among these, the cause most frequently elicited in both

newspapers was extreme precipitation (Figure 3.2), said to have occurred in an

extremely “short period of time” (Folha, R348) and “changing [São Paulo’s] routine”

(Estadão, R113) by rendering the city’s inhabitants “hostages to the rain” (Folha,

R435).

At first glance, it seems reasonable that the media reported extensively on the intense

rainfall between December 2009 and January 2010, which was indeed well above

average. However, on closer inspection, such reports broad-brushed São Paulo’s high-

precipitation as an unforeseen anomaly, favouring what Arabindoo (2016) calls “an

environmental determinism that undermines a critical disaster discourse” (p.802). The

media espoused such deterministic framing by directing attention, and blame,

predominantly towards the vagaries of the weather rather than the socio-economic

45

drivers of flood risk, such as insufficient infrastructure and maintenance, and poor

quality housing (Huq et al. 2007; Revi et al. 2014; Satterthwaite et al. 2018). As one

report sustained:

“At the end of every afternoon, paulistanos from all regions of the city look up to the sky, in the hopes of being able to return to their homes safely and free from the floods caused by the rain that has afflicted the capital.” (Estadão, R124)

According to the headlines, rain kills (Estadão, R29), renders people homeless (Folha,

R414), and causes traffic jams (Folha, R309). Such portrayal of rain as an active agent

in the unfolding pandemonium provided government officials an easy scapegoat for

their slow and insufficient action against forces supposedly beyond their control (see

Section 3.4.6). Assertions such as the following ultimately eclipsed preventive action

and instead implored nature’s mercy: “with a storm of this magnitude, even if

everything was working perfectly, flooding would be inevitable” (Folha, R318) and “if

precipitation events are not intense, the river (Tietê) will stay within its boundaries”

(Estadão, R215). Surprisingly, although both newspapers alluded to an increase in the

frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation, an explicit reference to climate

change was virtually non-existent; it appeared in only six stories in the entire sample.

Extreme weather conditions were not, however, the only issue elicited as a cause of

flooding. Both newspapers also reported (albeit less frequently) on the lack of

government action, unconstrained urban development, inappropriate citizen

behaviour, and the Tietê River’s ‘natural’ propensity to overflow. These similarities in

coverage notwithstanding, we noted Estadão’s penchant to blame silting and irregular

settlements for the city’s persistent flooding problem, and to conflate the two

explanations, suggesting how floodplain dwellers negated government efforts to

control and prevent future floods. Reports on the lack of government action published

by both newspapers, but most frequently by Estadão, often implied generic authorities

who could hardly be held accountable for the floods. Such differences between

Estadão and Folha articles are represented in Figure 3.3, which also depicts

divergences in coverage for other themes, discussed in detail in the sections below.

46

Figure 3.3 Divergences in coverage. Issues raised with significant difference (i.e. more or less frequently) between both newspapers (p<0.05). Codes with small p-values and no overlap between

confidence lines denote most significant divergences in coverage.

3.4.2 Consequences

Between the two newspapers, the most often reported consequences of flooding were

traffic disruption and submerged neighbourhoods (Figure 3.2). São Paulo’s main

avenue for transportation of passengers and goods, the Marginal Tietê, runs alongside

the river and is repeatedly disrupted by its overflow. In the period examined, media

reports portrayed flood events as “paralys[ing] the capital” (Estadão, R5), which

became “isolated with the overflow of its main rivers” (Folha, R435). With all

transportation networks brought to a halt, the Marginal Tietê became “the ultimate

symbol of chaos” (Estadão, R180). Headlines proclaimed that, under such adverse

conditions, “going to work becomes an impossible mission” (Estadão, R26) and

“surrounded by water, paulistano gives up going to work” (Folha, R365). Such

submission is also apparent in the following quote:

47

“38 days with nonstop rain. 38 days for the paulistano to find ways to adapt. In face of obstructed streets, bridges, and tunnels, many citizens resort to a literally homelike solution – the chosen alternative, instead of facing the streets, either for work or leisure, is simply to stay at home.” (Estadão, R113)

Yet, staying at home further exposed low-income floodplain residents to the floods.

Informal floodplain communities located in São Paulo’s eastern periphery, such as

Jardim Helena, Jardim Romano, and Jardim Pantanal, were depicted as particularly

affected and indeed under water for extended periods of time. In these neighbourhoods,

river and residents were proclaimed to “fight over space” (Folha, R455), with residents

often losing this battle when their streets “turn[ed] into one-meter-deep water

streams” (Estadão, R61). Flooding in these areas lasted for so long that, in February

2010, one journalist wrote: “After 55 days, residents of Jardim Romano and four other

neighbourhoods in the capital’s far east don’t know what it means to live in streets

without flooding” (Estadão, R118).

Elite media coverage exposed how flood events affected low-income communities and

São Paulo’s general population alike. Flooding inundated the floodplain, injured and

displaced its residents (more frequently reported by Estadão), and also triggered chaos

and brought traffic to a halt (more often depicted by Folha) (Figure 3.3). Even so,

people’s misery differed according to their socio-economic position: government

agencies swiftly cleared the Marginal and other arterial roads, often within hours,

while informal neighbourhoods remained submerged for weeks on end. Even when the

floodwaters in informal communities eventually receded, residents were forced to live

with lingering material and non-material effects. Both newspapers provided sporadic

coverage of these unpleasant effects (e.g. the loss of personal belongings and the foul

odour from sewage contamination), but ultimately most remained unaddressed as the

government struggled to manage numerous other flooding impacts.

3.4.3 Short-term responses

Estadão and Folha alike tended to report amply on government assistance. The

primary short-term response conveyed to reduce immediate flood impacts was the

distribution of ‘social rent’ (aluguel social) to families with submerged homes.

Interestingly, the social rent has been closely connected to the PVT. It corresponds to

a monthly allowance of 300 Reais (~US$80) that the state government has offered to

48

families to entice them to leave their flooded homes and rent a new house elsewhere.

Following a family’s move, the state government intended to and sometimes

immediately demolished the vacated houses for the construction of the park. Reports

from December 2009 couched the social rent as a temporary measure, paid for six

months. However, articles published in 2010 presented the allowance as a longer-term

governmental policy, to be paid until a more definitive housing solution was instituted.

At the same time, only a few articles within our sample commented on the negative

effects of the policy; they portrayed families as misinformed or confused, apparently

believing that they would be able to return after six-months, and quoted residents who

found the social rent outright appalling:

“This is my house, it is everything I have, I don’t want to leave and exchange it for the uncertainty of the social rent. I don’t even know how Christmas is going to be, the only thing I want is to sleep on my own bed.” (Estadão, R70)

“The social rent offered by the government (300 Reais for a period of six months) is not enough, because I don’t have references and it is hard to rent a home with five children.” (Folha, R464)

Estadão and Folha also reported on other government responses to flooding, including

the distribution of food and blankets and the provision of emergency shelters, usually

in schools temporarily converted to this end. Once again, Estadão tended to zero in on

and often sensationalise the impacts of flooding on floodplain communities by

detailing, for example, the large number of houses condemned after the floods (Figure

3.3). Folha offered a more significant coverage of protests and criticism against

inadequate government responses to the floods. During protests, the newspaper

reported “residents from the region…set furniture, tires, and rubble on fire” (Folha,

R414), urging the mayor to “come put [his] feet in the mud!” (Folha, R428). Such

local protests were in part legitimised by statements from the opposition, who

proclaimed that “what we are seeing here are criminal omissions that aim to punish

and evict São Paulo’s poor populations” (Folha, R396).

3.4.4 Long-term solutions

Moments of crisis open up spaces for societies to not only react to flooding, but also

discuss alternatives to prevent future events. Between 2008 and 2012, the two

newspapers advanced more than two-dozen long-term solutions to flooding, mostly

49

involving infrastructure (both hard and soft) and its maintenance. Blame for the floods

was attributed varyingly to a menacing nature, lethargic government authorities,

extensive urban development, and the basin’s natural features. Yet, uneven power

relations between the multiple stakeholders, and their views and interests reflected in

the coverage (see Section 3.4.6), ultimately defined preferred flood control

interventions.

Both Folha and Estadão heavily promoted the construction of containment basins to

solve the problem of flooding (Figure 3.2). Containment basins occupy a pride of place

in the minds of flood management and control experts who advocate them as the most

cost-effective solution for São Paulo – a view reinforced by both newspapers. Media

reports portrayed containment basins as a “consensual solution” among experts

(Estadão, R235) to “eliminate flooding caused by São Paulo’s water streams” (Folha,

R270). The reported rationale saw the persistent problem of flooding not as a

consequence of inadequate containment basins (although occasional articles

highlighted their complicated and overdue maintenance) but rather as one of

insufficient numbers: “the Macro-drainage Plan envisioned […] 134 containment

basins […], but the government has built 45” (Estadão, R24). In other words, flooding

was said to persist because São Paulo did not have enough containment basins.

The indiscriminate reliance on containment basins as the ideal solution for recurrent

flooding prompted a rather unique rhetoric. On the one hand, containment basins

emerged as the engineered counterpart to the natural environment, conceived to

“function as artificial floodplains slowing down water runoff” (Folha, R451). On the

other hand, floodplain restoration was advertised as the natural companion of

engineered solutions, prompting the state governor to declare that the PVT “will

transform the Tietê into a large containment basin” (Estadão, R243). In the process,

hard- and green-infrastructure often became one and the same. Such rhetoric is critical

to São Paulo’s adaptation landscape because it underpins (and confounds) the

deployment of solutions in practice (see Section 3.4.7). It does so by allowing

government officials to alternate the PVT’s underlying tenets (from mega-

infrastructure to an avant-garde, sustainable solution) according to their audience.

50

Alternatives to hard-infrastructure were significantly more prominent in Folha articles

(Figure 3.3). Reports frequently advised green solutions to reduce the incidence and

extent of flooding, including permeable pavements, tree planting, green sidewalks,

rainwater collection systems, and small-scale linear parks along rivers. However, in

the summer of 2009-10, Folha articles evoking green solutions where quickly

exceeded by those demanding the permanent relocation of informal communities from

the floodplain (Figure 3.4), a solution also highly promoted in Estadão. The latter’s

reporting included claims such as “no other solution is viable to solve the problem”

(Estadão, R49) and “to remove the residents from risk areas is the definitive solution

for the region” (Estadão, R75).

Figure 3.4 Folha articles on green solutions versus permanent relocation.

Both newspapers provided substantial additional reporting to solidify the removal

rationale, suggesting that relocating informal settlements would act as a “preventive

measure” (Folha, R431) that, over time, could also “increase stormwater drainage”

(Estadão, R78) and “restore the floodplain” (Estadão, R41). Ultimately, such

removals would free up space for the development of desired flood control projects

such as the PVT. In one article, a government official even referred to scientific

evidence to justify the removals:

“Studies conducted in the area concluded that the transference of families is needed, since the houses were built in the Tietê River floodplain and it is impossible to prevent further flood events in the area.” (Folha, R397)

Even though several reports consistently (re)produced this particular framing

throughout the summer of 2009-10, only a few articles expressed concerns over state-

led removals. These isolated reports described coercive tactics employed by the state

to remove residents (Estadão, R86); debris from demolished houses exacerbating

51

flooding conditions (Estadão, R79); and vacated terrains quickly reoccupied by

informal communities (Estadão, R32). Despite such efforts to inject some critical

reporting, both newspapers by and large portrayed a flood-free São Paulo as associated

with, and contingent upon, the removal of low-income families from the floodplain,

and most acutely so during the 2009-10 floods.

3.4.5 Subjectivities

The framings of flooding discussed so far are intimately connected to how media

stories allocate roles to different populations, here represented as ‘flood subjectivities’.

Subjectivities are the outcome of discourses produced by dominant groups

(Nightingale 2012) who categorise people according to ‘systems of differentiation’ to

render them governable (Foucault 1982; Nightingale 2006; Tschakert 2016). In the

context of flooding, subjectivities are predominantly defined by how reports position

different population groups as one of the following: assisting others being affected by

floods (heroes); being adversely affected by floods (victims); or contributing to the

production of floods (villains). Our analysis revealed that Estadão and Folha articles

depicted social actors across these categories, resulting in four primary flooding

subjectivities (see Figure 3.2) that the newspapers then elicited to justify technical

interventions.

In Estadão reports, the victims were most often floodplain dwellers and (to a lesser

extent) São Paulo’s general population while Folha focused primarily on the latter.

Unsurprisingly, both newspapers generally depicted government officers as heroes,

particularly firefighters and workers from Civil Defence (Defesa Civil) who rescued

residents afflicted by flooding. The role of villains fell mostly on government officials,

especially those who failed to take appropriate preventive measures (generally city

officials and unspecified authorities), more so in Folha than in Estadão articles; the

opposite was the case for low-income residents who were portrayed frequently by the

latter as recklessly occupying the floodplain. Finally, both newspapers attempted to

evoke a fourth category, namely the image of a ‘resilient subject’, to encapsulate the

experiences of low-income dwellers able to overcome adversity and possibly even

benefit from the floods. Yet, this particular construction proved superficial and scarce,

appearing in only nine articles by Folha and six by Estadão.

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More significantly still is how each population group was framed in relation to one

another and the problem of flooding as a whole. Such framing can only be fully

grasped by analysing how newspaper stories described the landscapes where flooding

occurred, propagating an intricate and at times inconspicuous ‘blame-game’. Articles

by both newspapers characterised the floodplain as a landscape riddled with sewage

and, in the case of Folha, also by disease (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). These associations

were not only presented as a cause or consequence of flooding, but also (and

sometimes more often) to sketch informal communities for readers generally

unfamiliar with the realities of the floodplain.

Several media stories pictured the floodplain as a once ‘natural’ landscape periodically

seized by the Tietê’s fluctuating waters and densely occupied after low-income

families “started to invade the eastern margins of the river” to build their homes

(Folha, R402). These invaded spaces were often described as hovels, shacks, slums,

and other derogatory terms, discharging their effluents directly into the Tietê and

thereby turning the river into an “open air sewer” (Estadão, R36). Essentially absent

from this depiction are the industries, factories, and their distribution centres (e.g.

Nitroquímica and Bauducco) which have been part and parcel of the development of

these same neighbourhoods (Zanirato 2011). While several floodplain dwellers

interviewed for this research made explicit reference to these and other privately

owned companies that pollute the river and alter the basin’s geomorphology, only two

articles in our sample found it worth reporting on them.

Media stories describing floodplain communities’ disproportionate exposure to

sewage and disease should not be dismissed as derogatory. In fact, they draw attention

to the multifaceted and compounding vulnerabilities that informal residents often face

when exposed to extreme weather events. Yet, when lacking the necessary nuance,

these stories risk essentialising the role these residents play in the development of the

floodplain, one that is often reduced to being a victim and/or a villain of flooding, but

hardly ever a hero. Government authorities then use such ambivalent stigmatisation to

justify the prompt removal of these residents from the floodplain – a solution perceived

as reasonable and widely promoted by media reports during the floods of 2009-10.

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3.4.6 Voices

Media framings of flooding, and the subjectivities such framings create, are deeply

entwined with the voices that newspapers recognise as legitimate when debating the

problem. In order to trace such voices, we concentrate on direct quotes published by

Estadão and Folha. These quotes can be attributed to individuals belonging to four

main groups, distributed unevenly between the two media outlets. While Estadão

frequently quoted government officials and floodplain dwellers (although for different

reasons), Folha favoured comments from government officials, the general

population, and technical experts, and much less so from floodplain residents.

Figure 3.5 illustrates the frequency and distribution of topics on which individuals

from these four groups were asked to comment. Predominantly male government

officials and technical experts quoted in both newspapers spoke mainly about flood

causes and potential long-term solutions for management and control. In contrast, both

male and female floodplain dwellers and São Paulo’s general public typically shared

their stories on how flood events affected their daily lives. Yet, these citizens were less

vocal (or less often asked) about their insights into the underlying causes of flooding

and possible adaptive futures, with no significant differences between men’s and

women’s accounts.

Such skewed media representation of voices reinforces the discriminatory ways in

which subjectivities are constructed. Given ample space to comment on the causes of

flooding, government officials generally downplayed their lack of planning and

anticipatory action and instead invoked external causes beyond their control (see

Appendix 10). Most often asked to chronicle their misfortunes, floodplain dwellers

were not given space to discuss who or what else may be responsible for the floods

and thus could not refute their assigned role as active culprits or powerless victims.

Equally limited was the space both Estadão and Folha had reserved for them to

propose actual solutions, despite their lived experiences and multiple ways of coping

and preparing for floods.

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Figure 3.5 Voices and themes. Proportion of direct quotes per theme by population group.

3.4.7 Media reports and the Tietê Lowlands Park (PVT)

The PVT was featured in only 26 articles by Estadão and 17 by Folha, the majority of

which were published in the period shortly after its announcement and coinciding with

the 2009-10 floods (Figure 3.6). Nonetheless, the overlap between media coverage and

the proposal for the park is astounding. Estadão and Folha articles mostly praised the

park’s proposal as a “fantastic project…like no other in the city’s history” (Estadão,

R163). Stories highlighted that the PVT would simultaneously “regulate floods”

(Folha, R301) and “improve [the Tietê’s] environmental conditions” (Estadão, R84)

by attenuating the region’s “disorderly occupation” (Folha, R379) and stopping “the

waste produced by the irregular population established along the river from reaching

its channel” (Estadão, R10).

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Figure 3.6 PVT media reports. Articles featuring the PVT, by newspaper, against monthly precipitation values.

Figure 3.7 shows a comparison of the framings advanced by the newspapers and the

PVT documents, illustrating striking similarities and few noteworthy differences.

Besides significant agreement on the more tangible framings (extreme precipitation as

main cause, traffic disruption as main consequence, and sewage as key association

made with flooding), the most substantial overlap between elite media coverage and

government discourse concerns the construction of subjectivities and the proposal of

long-term solutions.

According to the PVT’s documents, São Paulo’s flooding problem can only be solved

with the development of new infrastructure (both hard and soft) and the concomitant

removal of floodplain dwellers, solutions equally espoused by Estadão and Folha.

However, while the PVT cites the removal of 7,500 families from the floodplain, the

number of families reported by both newspapers varied widely, ranging between 2,600

(Folha, R373) and 10,000 families (Folha, R424). Such discrepancies in reporting

symbolises the lack of transparency that has characterised the project and contributes

to residents’ anxiety, generated by the PVT’s failure to provide a clear and compelling

relocation strategy for those directly affected. Yet, and despite the exacerbation of

vulnerabilities and the poverty traps it has already left in its wake (Henrique &

Tschakert 2019a), the project continues to move forward. Married to its removal and

relocation rhetoric, it lacks any discernible effort to consider alternative approaches

and facilitate community adaptation in situ, including existing local adaptive actions

and other creative solutions proposed since its inception in 2009 (e.g. Barda & França

2011; ZL Vórtice 2017).

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Figure 3.7 Elite media versus government framings. Predominant codes discussed within and

between newspapers, and PVT documents (Governo do Estado de São Paulo 2010; Inter-American Development Bank 2010). Codes at the centre of the figure are shared between PVT documents and

one or both newspapers. Codes to the right and left denote issues discussed only in articles by Estadão or Folha. The size of the circles indicates the frequency of each code by newspaper.

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Mirroring several of the articles, particularly those published by Estadão, government

officials and technical experts behind the PVT legitimise the removal rhetoric by

rendering informal floodplain communities as culprits and victims of the floods, while

also evoking the extensive impacts of flooding on São Paulo’s general public. As

described in one of the park’s official reports:

“With a fast and disorderly urbanisation, the floodplain was improperly occupied, constituting one of the main factors adversely impacting the basins’ macro drainage system, destroying habitats that sustain the river’s environmental equilibrium and causing numerous problems for the public, including economic losses and health hazards.” (Inter-American Development Bank 2010, p.6)

At the same time, and in contrast with media reports, the PVT documents remain

notably quiet regarding the government’s own responsibility in exacerbating the

floods.

Finally, analogous to newspaper stories in both media platforms, the plan dismisses

additional flood-aggravating factors, such as the presence of industries and other

private companies in the floodplain, as well as projected changes in São Paulo’s

precipitation regime (Marengo et al. 2013; Silva Dias et al. 2013), both of which are

evaded in the project’s proposed interventions.

In sum, our findings illustrate that, despite sustaining some marked differences, São

Paulo’s elite media portrayed flooding largely as a natural phenomenon to be solved

singlehandedly by governments and technical experts, mainly through dominant

techno-managerial practices. In the process, the media aligned themselves with

government discourses favouring the permanent relocation of those citizens who

‘unduly’ occupy and arguably destroy floodplain environments. Through this analysis,

we observe a missed opportunity for the media to offer a democratic space for public

debate, citizen contestation, and the advancement of alternative approaches for

government action. As such, government officials and their allied experts continue to

enact exclusionary practices, which remain largely uncontested by São Paulo’s elite

media outlets.

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3.5 Discussion and conclusions

Extreme events impel cities to adapt and protect their populations and assets while

guaranteeing safe and just environments for communities to gather and thrive (Revi et

al. 2014). Such adaptation efforts require flexible decision-making processes that are

forward-looking and inclusive to simultaneously address the multi-scalar and

interrelated impacts of climate change, rapid population growth, and persistent social

inequalities (Fazey et al. 2016). In this context, the media play a vital role in providing

a deliberative space where knowledge about socio-environmental problems is assessed

and disseminated. This space can influence public opinion and the policy agenda by

advancing particular understandings that constrain or broaden possibilities for citizen

and government action.

In the case of São Paulo, our analysis shows that elite media’s constructions of flood

events are fragmented and incomplete, and hence don’t fulfil the expectation of

cultivating truly deliberative spaces for inclusive renderings of the problem. Moreover,

several of these media constructions entail denigrating portrayals of already exposed

marginalised citizens, particularly those living in informal floodplain settlements.

Coinciding with the city’s worst flooding season, the elite media framed flooding as a

problem predominantly engendered by nature, to be solved by government authorities

and experts through the development of infrastructure (mainly containment basins)

and the removal of informal communities from the floodplain.

Even so, the media coverage examined here was not entirely undifferentiated. While

the more conservative Estadão depicted floodplain communities as both victims and

villains of flooding to press their removal – a rhetoric echoed by the PVT’s proponents

–, centrist Folha occasionally published more critical reports on citizen protest and

political contestation. Yet, despite these potential openings for more inclusive and just

renderings of flooding, where multiple actors are invited to participate, such alternative

framings were quickly foreclosed. In other words, some of the more nuanced reporting

observed in Folha articles seemed to offer a vital window to foster emancipatory

subjectivities and portray those previously branded as villains and/or victims (e.g. low-

income floodplain dwellers) as new agents of change, or heroes. This potential,

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however, remained unfulfilled, perhaps due to the scant and short-lived coverage on

the topic, or entrenched practices that essentialise different population groups.

As environmental management scholarship has long sustained, the “forceful

disciplining” (Tschakert 2016, p.50), displacement and dispossession of marginalised

communities has been historically accompanied by narratives that render the needs and

aspirations of these communities invisible (Peluso 2009; Tschakert 2016). Our media

analysis reveals such an erasure in action, advancing stories of environmental harm

that disregard the historical production of the floodplain as a landscape of uneven

development and risk while conveniently (and dangerously) removing the

complexities of hydrological regimes and their multifaceted impacts on people’s lives.

As a result, the media provide a superficial account that supports the urgent need to

clear impoverished areas, arguably for their own protection and to safeguard the city

as a whole against future disasters. This selective and prejudicial portrayal bears a

strong resemblance with the narrative advanced by the state in the documents for the

PVT, where, similar to other contexts in the Global South (see Ajibade & McBean

2014; Amoako 2016; McFarlane 2009), government authorities champion ‘slum’

clearance as the preferred approach for flood prevention.

We do not claim that government interventions, such as the PVT, are a direct result of

an agenda driven by the local media or, conversely, that the local media is merely

reproducing the voices of those involved in the construction of the park. Instead, we

draw attention to the analogous and mutually reinforcing ways in which a dominant

discourse is produced and reproduced (see Carvalho 2007), supporting decision-

making trajectories that primarily react to extreme weather events, in highly uneven

and exclusionary ways, while sidelining more context-relevant and inclusive

adaptation pathways.

Partial and biased media reporting is certainly not news, especially in Brazil where

newspaper coverage has been historically associated with repressive governments

(Matos 2008). The persistent political and financial ties between government entities

and the few families that own Brazilian media (see Matos 2008; Waisbord 2000)

constitute a relationship of mutual dependence that likely provides little incentive for

overly critical reports. The resulting discriminatory and seemingly ‘apolitical’

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coverage of flooding is couched under the guise of objectivity while simultaneously

aiming to sensationalise and oversimplify the issue to satisfy readership. Further

research is thus needed to systematically assess the networks of political and economic

power and understand in “whose interest the news media operate” (Corbett 2015,

p.289) in amplifying or foreclosing debate on disaster response and adaptation

planning.

Recent scholarship underscores that effective climate change adaptation is contingent

on understanding and confronting dominant adaptation pathways that sustain uneven

power relations and reinforce the status quo, thereby (re)producing inequalities and

inhibiting transformational change. Such an effort requires untangling the complex and

dynamic interplay of knowledge, values, power, and agency (Fazey et al. 2016; Wise

et al. 2014), and “working with diverse resources and capacities” (Fazey et al. 2018,

p.31) by recognising multiple, unevenly positioned actors (Eriksen et al. 2015; Harris

et al. 2017; Pelling et al. 2016). This progressive body of knowledge, however,

overlooks the critical role the media play in public pedagogy (Kelly 2011) and in

shaping policy agendas (McCombs 2014). We argue that, without this critical

engagement, the general public will continue to be informed by an oversimplified and

partisan story of environmental hazards; one that inhibits genuine debate and support

for more inclusive, bold, and just adaptation trajectories.

How then can the media contribute to a democratic deliberative space to achieve more

inclusive and just climate action? We offer two suggestions for such agenda setting.

First, producing this space will require rigorous ethical debates and conscious efforts

by media scholars and producers alike to confront incomplete renderings of climate-

and weather- related events. Understanding the wilful omissions (see Mills 1999;

Proctor 1996) that media outlets cultivate in the construction of environmental hazards

will make it easier to pinpoint and challenge the narrow and prejudiced channels

through which such hazards enter the public agenda and sway government authorities.

Second, it will require an active undoing of currently denigrated and victimised

subjectivities to enable new actors to inspire meaningful adaptation. We believe that

digital media, and other alternative outlets, play a crucial role in mobilising multiple

and hitherto absent voices to expand and enrich knowledge production (Boykoff &

Luedecke 2016). One example is the small theatre company Coletivo Estopô Balaio,

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which combines an internet and social media presence, a magazine, and an in person

spectacle “A cidade dos rios invisíveis” (“The city of invisible rivers”) to present the

general public with the floodplain’s complex realities, narrated through the voices of

their own agents (Coletivo Estopô Balaio n.d.).

In a time of almost paralysing uncertainties, Miguel’s account, presented at the

beginning of this article, and its implicit question regarding the media’s role in

perpetuating exclusionary practices gains renewed gravity. The media carry both

opportunity and duty to uphold democratic and regulatory functions as countries and

communities prepare for exacerbated yet uncertain climate conditions. Ultimately,

changing current framings and adaptation approaches to living with floods, and climate

change more broadly, will require an appreciation for multiple stories narrated by a

myriad of voices. This can be realised by nurturing “spaces of listening, deliberation,

debate, respect, imagination, and trust” to envision and enact possible and desirable

climate futures (Veland et al. 2018, p.45). Further research is needed to examine the

role alternative news outlets and social media play in conveying these multiple stories

to the general public, to reconsider whose values and narratives matter, and to

negotiate a desirable and just future for all (Harris et al. 2017; Ziervogel et al. 2017).

Based on our findings, we posit that such a future will be attainable if deliberated and

imagined through stories that recognise diverse protagonists and the rich, albeit

sometimes uncomfortable, realities they embody.

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CHAPTER 4. CONTESTED MATERIALITIES

This chapter has been published in Geoforum as:

Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Contested grounds: Adaptation to flooding and the politics of (in)visibility in São Paulo’s eastern periphery’, Geoforum, vol. 104, pp. 181–192. [See Appendix 11]

4.1 Introduction

Flooding has become a recurrent climate phenomenon with often catastrophic

outcomes in cities around the world (Jha et al. 2012). Human populations have

historically settled near water bodies to guarantee strategic access to transportation and

freshwater (Hoornweg et al. 2010; Moore 1994), living with fluctuating water levels

that periodically overflowed and inundated the land (van Beek & van Alphen 2006).

As urban settlements continue to grow, however, floodplains of major cities – low-

lying areas adjacent to rivers and susceptible to periodic flooding – are increasingly

occupied, transforming existing flooding conditions into formidable society-disrupting

environmental hazards (van Beek & van Alphen 2006). Flood events currently account

for almost half of all weather-related disasters, having affected 2.3 billion people

worldwide between 1995 and 2015 (UNISDR & CRED 2015).11 This number will

likely continue to rise as climate change is projected to induce more extreme

precipitation, overloading already insufficient infrastructure networks (Satterthwaite

et al. 2018).

As flood events become more frequent and intense, they will increasingly affect human

populations and natural resources; damaging private property, reducing water security,

amplifying the risk of diseases, and threatening livelihoods (Revi et al. 2014). Such

adverse effects, however, will not be evenly distributed across societies, bearing

differential impacts according to people’s geographic and socio-economic position

11 Official accounts likely underestimate actual losses, injury, and displacement associated with extreme weather events due to narrow definitions of what counts as disasters and their effects (Osuteye et al. 2017) and inaccurate or inexistent information (Doocy et al. 2013).

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(O’Brien 2017; Winsemius et al. 2015; Wisner et al. 2003). Flooding is already

disproportionally felt by poor urban communities who inhabit low-quality housing in

areas that lack basic infrastructure and services, and are particularly susceptible to

weather extremes (Huq et al. 2007). These very populations have also been

systematically excluded from official flood protection schemes and lack financial

resources to either effectively safeguard their homes or move out of harm’s way (Revi

et al. 2014). Climate change is expected to interact with and exacerbate existing

inequalities, further diminishing people’s capacity to anticipate, cope with, and recover

from the impacts of extreme events (Olsson et al. 2014).

In order to address the uneven impacts of flooding, and climate change more broadly,

adaptation12 must move beyond technically feasible and cost-effective measures and

actively pursue fairness and justice (O’Brien & Selboe 2015; Paavola & Adger 2006).

Fair adaptation requires just institutions and processes (procedural justice) that

recognise and address uneven positions of power (recognitional justice) and strive for

the equal distribution of benefits and burdens (distributional justice) (Patterson et al.

2018), “putting the most vulnerable first” (Paavola & Adger 2006, p.594). It entails

engaging with diverse values, experiences, and capacities (Schlosberg et al. 2017;

Ziervogel et al. 2017), nourishing a deliberative space in which every individual is

treated with dignity and respect (Graham et al. 2015). Such a multidimensional

approach to justice is the cornerstone of transformational adaptation (Patterson et al.

2018), which strives to overturn the systemic causes of risk and vulnerability to

achieve more equitable climate futures (O’Brien 2017; Pelling et al. 2015).

As cities actively conceive development plans to cope with the risk of future flooding,

the design and implementation of adaptation efforts need to be carefully scrutinised to

ensure just and equitable outcomes, and prevent maladaptation – i.e. exacerbating old

risks and engendering new ones, further marginalising those already most vulnerable

(Barnett & O’Neill 2010; Robinson & Shine 2018). Such critical examination is

paramount for devising more robust and inclusive flood protection systems. Moreover,

it allows for exploring adaptation projects’ still untapped potential to transform

12 We use the term adaptation as the “process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects” (IPCC 2014, p.5).

65

institutional and spatial arrangements that currently sustain the uneven distribution of

risk (Adger et al. 2012; Pelling et al. 2015). Yet, there is limited research on the “actual

distributive outcomes of ongoing and proposed adaptation on the ground” (Shi et al.

2016, p.6) with further work needed to expose the multifaceted (in)justice

ramifications of ongoing adaptation projects (Anguelovski et al. 2016; Chu et al. 2016;

Fainstein 2015).

In this article, we aim to address this gap by examining how adaptation efforts for

flood management and control are being conducted in one of the world’s largest cities,

and to what effects. The city of São Paulo, Brazil, is currently planning for and

enacting adaptation to flooding through a series of technocratic interventions

conceived and implemented by the government. Among these, the most prominent and

ambitious is the Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT) – or Tietê Lowlands Park – a 75 km-

long, 1.7 billion Reais (~US$440 million) floodplain restoration scheme designed to

allegedly protect the city as a whole against flooding. To implement what has been

dubbed the “world’s largest linear park” (Departamento de Águas e Energia Elétrica

2015), the PVT calls for the removal of approximately 7,500 low-income families who

currently inhabit the margins of the Tietê River. Announced in 2009, the first phase of

the project (comprising the cities of São Paulo and Guarulhos) started in 2011, to be

completed in 2016. By mid-2017, when fieldwork for this research was concluded,

phase one was visibly behind schedule, but its construction continued to move forward,

albeit at a much slower pace than originally anticipated.

The PVT and its targeted removals raise a series of questions about the relationship

between adaptation to flood events, urban renewal and development, and social and

environmental justice that merit close investigation. Furthermore, the project’s slow

execution offers an ideal space to understand how adaptation unfolds on the ground as

the PVT moves from the pristine vision of a flood-free São Paulo to the dynamic,

messy, and contested reality of the floodplain. By focusing on this window between

plan and implementation, we set out to explore how adaptation is actually shaped and

reshaped in the making. As the analysis will show, São Paulo’s plans to adapt the city

to the recurrent presence of floodwaters, epitomised in the form of a linear park, are

unable to account for the multifaceted and dynamic sociomaterial production of the

floodplain, a fact that is exacerbated by and reiterates the exclusion of its most destitute

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communities. As a result, the piecemeal implementation of the park produces a series

of adverse effects, but also engenders new opportunities for contestation, negotiation,

and resistance that have the potential for a more just and inclusive adaptation project.

In the following sections, we build upon urban and feminist political ecology to argue

for a more nuanced and situated analysis of adaptation efforts (Section 4.2), and

present our methods focusing on state regulations and spaces of everyday life (Section

4.3). Locating the PVT front and centre, we trace the history of the project (Section

4.4), expose its exclusionary contours (Section 4.5) and perverse effects (Section 4.6),

revealing unsuspected engagements between the government and informal floodplain

communities. These engagements notwithstanding, we demonstrate how government

adaptation efforts are trapped within and reiterate a persistent ‘politics of invisibility’

(Section 4.7), and show the myriad ways floodplain dwellers contest the project from

the spaces they inhabit (Section 4.8). We conclude by exploring the role of everyday

resistance in the development of more just, inclusive, and equitable adaptation

pathways for more hopeful urban futures (Section 4.9).

4.2 Adaptation and the uneven landscapes of flooding, development, and power

This article is informed by and contributes to a growing body of literature striving to

shift adaptation to floods (and climate change) from the realm of the purely technical

to that of the inherently political (Eriksen et al. 2015; Swyngedouw 2013).

Following recent extreme flood events, particularly after Hurricane Katrina, numerous

urban planners criticised the widespread use of hard-infrastructure (e.g. walls and

embankments) as ineffective measures that could be easily “overtopped by events

outside their design capacity” (Jha et al. 2012, p.32). These “anti-barrier advocates”

(Marshall 2013, p.47) called for ‘softer’ solutions to accommodate the temporary

presence of floodwaters (Henrique 2015). As a result, North American and Western

European cities started to seek alternatives to traditional flood control measures,

proposing instead to restore floodplains and leverage their natural flood-attenuation

role (see Baca Architects 2010; Bergdoll 2011; Room for the River Programme 2013;

Wescott 2010). Although innovative from a techno-managerial standpoint, we argue

that, without deeper considerations of fairness and justice, such interventions risk

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obscuring and even reinforcing entrenched inequalities that result in uneven exposure

and harm among the poor. To pursue more robust and just adaptation efforts, a more

nuanced and situated analysis of flood risk, management, and control is needed. To

that end, we propose a combined urban and feminist political ecology approach.

Urban political ecology (UPE) sees resource access and control in urban environments

as fundamentally political, always mediated by socio-economic interests and uneven

power relations. Following this proposition, UPE employs a historical, multi-scalar

political-economy analysis to assess how capitalist interests produce

socioenvironmental outcomes that are enabling for some and disabling for others

(Heynen 2003; Swyngedouw & Heynen 2003). As a result, it exposes how nature is

urbanised into highly uneven socionatural networks (Heynen 2014) that shape “the

constitution and manipulation of urban society” (Gabriel 2014, p.41). Beyond its well-

known focus on unequal access to water (Kaika 2003; Ranganathan & Balazs 2015;

Swyngedouw 2004), UPE is increasingly employed to examine the uneven distribution

of flood hazards and its entanglements with the domination and dispossession of

destitute urban dwellers (see Colven 2017; Millington 2018).

Approaching the floodplain as an arena where political struggles over resources and

land rights play out, (urban) political ecologists demonstrate how flood risk has been

historically intertwined with the informal occupation of areas particularly susceptible

to flooding (see Ajibade & McBean 2014; Mustafa 2005). Governments often allowed

these informal settlements to flourish without proper infrastructure or clear land rights,

only to subsequently claim these very spaces for (re)development, marketization, and

capital (re)production (see Baviskar 2011; Desai 2012). It is within this uneven

landscape of risk and investments that flood management and control emerges and,

this literature contends, must be examined. As such, we draw on this body of work to

investigate the ongoing production of flood risk and adaptation in one of São Paulo’s

most vulnerable regions. An UPE lens directs our attention to the PVT’s history vis-à-

vis its evolving precarious landscape, the project’s inherent contradictions, and its

inequitable outcomes.

To enrich this analysis, we draw on feminist political ecology (FPE). Analogous to

UPE, FPE examines how cities are produced through circuits of power, however

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focusing on the spaces of the everyday. FPE strives to complicate simplistic vertical

hierarchies, demonstrating how power and politics operate at various scales and in

relation to multiple axes of difference (Elmhirst 2015). In doing so, FPE offers a “more

comprehensive analysis of urban nature” (Heynen 2018, p.446), exposing how

inequalities (and the lack of access to resources) are (re)produced through the

micropolitics of unequally positioned groups, and are compensated through daily

resource procurement strategies (Truelove 2011). A FPE lens directs our gaze to

floodplain subjects, making visible their agency and capacities as these materialise in

the relentless informal occupation of the floodplain. Focusing on everyday

micropolitics, we draw attention to the myriad ways floodplain dwellers contest,

negotiate, and resist government intervention, reshaping the PVT from the ground up.

The cross-fertilization of UPE and FPE allows us to address an important and recent

call to transcend purely technical adaptation efforts by showing what is “political all

the way through” (Eriksen et al. 2015, p.523), applied here to floodplain restoration

schemes. By making visible the politics in adaptation, we reveal how exclusionary

decision-making process lead to the uneven distribution of resources, wealth, and

power, producing distinct winners and losers (Paavola & Adger 2006). Our analysis

contributes to UPE’s situated theory of how “urban environments are shaped,

politicized, and contested” (Lawhon et al. 2014, p.498). At the same time, we advance

climate justice scholarship by revealing “alternative, radically emancipatory forms of

urbanism” (Brenner 2009, p.204), bringing to light political possibilities (Heynen

2018) to inform more socially just urban adaptation futures.

4.3 Methodology

Data in São Paulo were collected over nine months in 2016-17. Our goal was to

examine how adaptation to flood events is conceived, implemented, and contested by

multiple stakeholders in a context of uneven power relations. To this end, the first

author conducted archival work and semi-structured interviews13 with a total of 26

participants. Ten technical experts, including professionals and academics from the

fields of architecture, planning, civil and hydrological engineering, were recruited,

13 This research has approval from the Brazilian National Research Ethics Council (CONEP) and our institution.

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identified through academic and government reports. Ten key informants14 were

selected, mostly from local NGOs, identified through snowball sampling (Hesse-Biber

2012) and in conversations with technical experts. These key informants lived in

floodplain neighbourhoods affected by the project (Jardim Pantanal, Jardim Lapenna,

Chácara Três Meninas, and Jardim Romano), were actively involved in community

development, and intimately knowledgeable about diverse residents’ experiences.

Finally, six governmental officials were recruited from city and state departments

overseeing flood management and control, including the Departamento de Águas e

Energia Elétrica (DAEE, or Department of Water and Energy) responsible for the

PVT.

During the interviews, participants answered open-ended questions (see Appendix 12)

about their personal views and experiences with flood risk and adaptation initiatives,

including the PVT. The interviews were complemented with participant observation

and transect walks with government officials and key floodplain informants through

the four communities aforementioned. All interviews were conducted in Portuguese,

audio-recorded, and subsequently transcribed. To protect their identities and

livelihoods, the names of all informants have been replaced with randomly assigned

pseudonyms.

Two data sets emerged from the data collection. The first comprises historical and

contemporary plans for the PVT. The first author conducted a comparative content

analysis of written reports to examine how the project evolved over time. The PVT’s

most recent contours were then traced over aerial imagery from 2008 (when the

proposal was conceived) to 2018, to probe the relationship between the project and the

floodplain’s evolving occupation. The second data set consists of interview transcripts

and detailed notes from the participant observation and transect walks. The interviews

were imported in the software Atlas.ti where the first author analysed the sample for

cross-cutting themes after having achieved immersion and comprehension of the

issues raised by the participants (Hsieh & Shannon 2005). The two authors discussed

all steps of the analysis, ensuring consistency and rigour.

14 Due to safety concerns, the main researcher was strongly advised to work with and through these key informants who also acted as gate-keepers, and to only visit the communities and other field locations in their company.

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4.4 Tracing the history of the park in São Paulo’s eastern periphery

The idea to develop a linear park along the Tietê River dates back to 1977. The project

– then entitled Parque Ecológico do Tietê (PET), or Tietê Ecological Park – was

conceived as a 112 km-long structure15 to guide future urban development in São

Paulo’s eastern periphery. Although the city had been experiencing exponential

growth since the beginning of the twentieth century, technical barriers and economic

losses associated with the river’s periodic floods motivated developers to invest

elsewhere in the basin, leaving the Tietê’s floodplain largely underutilised. However,

believing the floodplain offered an untapped potential, state officials started to pursue

techno-managerial solutions to control the river’s fluctuating waters. Such solutions

centred on plans to channelize the river, bringing urban development closer to its

margins and regulating water levels to protect its surrounding landscape from recurrent

floods (Santos 2014). Based on the promise of flood protection through hydrological

engineering, the state government16 commissioned plans for the development of the

region, delivered by the PET in the form of a linear park.

The PET’s proponents drew on modernist planning principles (Santos 2014) to

envision a monumental urban park “as an element to structure the development of the

city, making clear and defined urban arrangements possible” (Ohtake 1977, p.6).

Using the channelization of the Tietê as a backdrop, the project proposed to move the

two adjacent avenues delineated in earlier proposals further away from the river,

creating an intermediate green space for recreational, cultural, and educational uses.

In doing so, the PET positioned São Paulo in relation to growing concerns over the

environmental damage caused by urbanisation processes, which dominated

international planning circles in the 1970s. In a distinctively progressive sense, it built

on a flexible interpretation of the concept ‘urban ecology’17 to promote a more

environmentally conscious urban growth.

15 The PET’ proposal spanned across twelve municipalities from Salesópolis (East of the city of São Paulo) to Santana do Parnaíba (West). 16 Urban development along the Tietê River is overseen by the government of São Paulo’s state, here referred to as ‘state government’ throughout. The use of the floodplain is also regulated by different municipal governments specified in the text (e.g. São Paulo’s municipal government). The word ‘state’ used by itself refers to all levels of government. 17 The project states: “The importance of the park goes beyond an environmental preoccupation, in the traditional sense of nature conservation… Because of its connection with the city, because of its east-

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The PET had strong social aspirations, aiming to serve the region’s growing influx of

underpaid workers, many of whom lacked access to proper living arrangements and

settled in the city’s still underdeveloped east zone. As the project’s design team stated,

“in our interactions with the local population we came to the conclusion that people

are resentful for not having much to do in the little time they have left and that they

know their leisure options are very poor” (Ohtake 1977, p.18). Thus, the PET set out

to “reintegrate the river into the city” (Ohtake 1977, p.16) while also providing its

inhabitants, particularly the city’s underserved communities, with a quality space to

relax, socialise, and learn about their ‘natural’ surroundings.

Following the proposal, the PET’s designers argued for its immediate implementation,

concerned that otherwise the city’s fast-paced development would eventually consume

the floodplain’s remaining natural landscape. However, due to bureaucratic hurdles

that allegedly prohibited the state from acquiring private land for the projects’

development (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1), only eight percent of its total area was

implemented between 1977 and 1982.18

In the early 2000s, after several failed interventions to control the river’s flooding

problem together with mounting public outcry following recurrent floods, the state

government revived the 1977 plans for a linear park. After almost three decades since

its inception, however, the project encountered a much different floodplain, now

largely occupied. São Paulo’s eastern periphery had experienced a development boom,

marked by the expansion of informal neighbourhoods to house the city’s ever growing

low-wage workforce. The floodplain lacked infrastructure, services, and explicit land

titles, yet provided low-income communities with valuable access to housing and job

opportunities unattainable otherwise. Faced with this new reality, the project had to be

modified. Following an initial diagnosis stage (2005) and the development of a

seemingly fully-fledged proposal (2008-09), the state government secured almost

west configuration coinciding with [São Paulo’s] urban development axis, we believe that its main value is in its commitment to the city, nowadays so large and chaotic. It is the possibility of the park to structure an area of the city. This is what we call urban ecology.” (Ohtake 1977, p.12) 18 Including the Centro de Lazer Ilha do Tamboré (1979) and Centro de Lazer Engenheiro Goulart (1982), which add up to 11.5 km2 out of the 140 km2 intervention planned by the PET.

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US$200 million dollars in funding,19 and the construction of the park immediately

ensued.

In its latest iteration, the project – now entitled Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT), or

Tietê Lowlands Park (Figure 4.1) – gained a heavy environmental preservation

undertone, setting out two main guiding principles to protect São Paulo from future

flooding. First, the PVT updated the original 1977 project,20 maintaining several of its

elements but also reframing others to address the “large urban and environmental

concerns” now faced by the city (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1, p.8) – namely the ‘irregular’

occupation of the floodplain. In this context, the PVT emerged as an

“[…] element to structure the surrounding landscape and urban growth with potential to reverse the chaotic and precarious occupation that continues to mark the expansion of São Paulo’s peripheries.” (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1, p.4, emphasis added)

Figure 4.1 Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT, or Tietê Lowlands Park). The PVT spans across nine municipalities from the spring in Salesópolis (right) to São Paulo (left). The project is divided into

three phases, starting with Phase 1 between the cities of São Paulo and Guarulhos.

As such, the PVT mobilised parts of the initial rhetoric to guide and “provoke desirable

transformations” in the floodplain (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1, p.4), in ways that are

reminiscent of large projects developed elsewhere in Brazil between the 1970-90s (e.g.

World Bank) (see Cernea 1985), by strategically and purposefully removing its

19 The first phase of the PVT was funded by a partnership between the state government (US$84 million) and the Inter-American Development Bank (US$115.7 million) (Departamento de Águas e Energia Elétrica 2016). 20 In this new iteration the park crossed nine municipalities from the Tietê River spring in Salesópolis (East of the city of São Paulo) to Barragem da Penha (or Penha Dam) in the city of São Paulo (West).

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‘undesirable’ users. These users were the residents of informal floodplain settlements

whom the PVT simultaneously identified as environmental villains, “indiscriminately

and inadequately” occupying the floodplain and polluting the river, and victims who

suffered from the frequent and unforgiven impacts of its floods (Inter-American

Development Bank 2010, p.7).

Second, rather than conceptualising the park along a channelized river, the PVT aimed

to restore the floodplain’s original function to slow down the water’s natural flow. This

allowed the PVT’s proponents to reposition the park in relation to emerging

international debates surrounding the limits of hard-infrastructure and its prohibitive

maintenance costs. It also allowed them to adopt a much stricter definition of

environmental preservation than their predecessors, explicitly targeting informal

housing and its alleged role in clogging the river. As a result, the PVT framed

adaptation as structural and institutional adjustments to floods (i.e. the removal of

informal settlements and the subsequent development of infrastructure, both soft and

hard21) while overlooking projected changes for São Paulo’s climate.22

By simultaneously advancing and fundamentally modifying the original project, the

PVT weaved together the different temporalities of the floodplain, connecting its

updated proposal with: (1) the floodplain’s past, and its unfulfilled promise of

environmental preservation and disciplined urban growth; (2) its present, positioning

the project as the only economically feasible solution to overturn the environmental

damage resulting from its chaotic development; and (3) its future, delineating and

justifying strategic, yet presumably insufficient, efforts to protect São Paulo against

the impacts of future flooding. In the process, the socially inclusive character of the

original proposal was replaced by an archetype of environmental preservation at the

expense of the poor. As the PVT states, “[t]he chance to bestow São Paulo with the

implementation of a park of a magnitude compatible with its own justifies without any

doubt all necessary efforts to make this venture possible” (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1, p.4,

emphasis added). And it is to these efforts that we now turn.

21 The proposed linear park is complemented by a flood-relief channel and dykes, enclosed by a 230 km-long avenue (Inter-American Development Bank 2010). 22 Extreme precipitation days are expected to double in the region by 2100 (Marengo et al. 2013; Silva Dias et al. 2013). Yet, climate change is not explicitly addressed in the PVT’s documents.

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4.5 Classifying and mapping desirable floodplain uses and users

The current implementation of the PVT relies on a series of interventions based upon

a narrow classification of existing uses in the floodplain. This classification supposedly

reflects the impact of different uses on the Tietê River and its surrounding ecosystem,

but interestingly also coincides with the floodplain’s uneven distribution of land

ownership and associated property rights. In the project, the floodplain’s uses were

classified as: (1) compatível (compatible); (2) incômodo (uncomfortable); and (3)

predatório e indesejável (predatory and undesirable)23 (Figure 4.2). This classification

is fundamental to the project because it swiftly earmarks certain activities to stay and

others to be removed.

Figure 4.2 PVT’s Land use classification. Section from PVT’s Phase 1 showing the project’s classification of floodplain uses as compatible, uncomfortable, and undesirable. Aerial imagery:

Google Earth 2008.

According to the PVT, ‘compatible uses’ are all activities that match the project’s

objectives, including open, green spaces destined for leisure and related uses

accommodated within or around the park’s preservation boundary. Among these are

public parks, the Federal University of São Paulo’s campus (USP Leste), and training

centres for three soccer clubs: Portuguesa, Palmeiras, and Corinthians.24

‘Uncomfortable uses’ denote all activities that are not ideal, but cannot be located

23 These three categories are delineated in different volumes of the project (Ohtake 2009, vols. 1-19). There is no single map showing all categories together. Categories (1) and (2) correspond to the exact names used in the project to describe them, while category (3) was derived from the main body of text following the same naming principle as the other two (i.e. the perceived impact of the activity on the floodplain ecosystem, as described in the plan). 24 The areas corresponding to the three training centres were conceded by the state of São Paulo to the clubs (Ohtake 2009, vol. 1), supposedly for environmental preservation.

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elsewhere or easily removed from the floodplain, and are thus allowed to stay in the

area. These include public facilities (e.g. prisons, hospitals, and schools); equipment

that needs to be situated near water (e.g. sewage treatment stations); and several

industries and their distribution centres. Finally, ‘predatory and undesirable’ are all

activities the project identifies as causing environmental damage and altering the

morphology of the floodplain, thus marked for removal. These match the homes (and

businesses) of approximately 7,500 low-income families who informally inhabit the

region.

With this classification, the PVT reinforces the hegemony of private property over

other forms of urban occupation (Rolnik 2017), namely one that produced an uneven

flood adaptation approach. On one side are the industries and private companies that

historically played a role in polluting the river (Zanirato 2011) and have been accused

of environmental degradation at different times (Bedinelli 2010; Zanchetta 2010). Yet

these private enterprises hold explicit land titles and sufficient economic and political

power to assure their permanence in the floodplain. On the other side are the residents

of informal settlements without clear land rights and whose living spaces are framed

by the project as “illegal, chaotic, and precarious,” exerting “a predatory and

undesirable effect on the floodplain” (Ohtake 2009, vol. 19, p.11) and hence require

immediate intervention. As Roy (2009) suggests, informality “is not a set of

unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning; rather it is planning that

inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized and others as

unauthorized” (p.10). In São Paulo’s eastern periphery, the PVT inscribed informality

into the landscape by employing a partial, albeit strategically pungent, understanding

of environmental harm.

Despite the state government’s authoritarian efforts to regulate urban development in

the floodplain, the PVT’s selective and prejudiced contours were not instituted without

contestation. Particularly during this research’s transect walks, community leaders

were adamant to expose the detrimental impact caused by the PVT’s so-called

‘desirable’ and ‘uncomfortable’ uses in the spaces of their everyday lives. This was

the case for Miguel who used pictures he had taken from the Corinthians’ construction

site to illustrate where the club had modified the floodplain’s topography by allegedly

placing contaminated fill to build its new training facilities. Similarly, Bruna evoked

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her surrounding landscape in the community Chácara Três Meninas (Figure 4.3) to

denounce the role of Bauducco (producer and distributer of baked goods) in modifying

the floodplain and exacerbating the risk of flooding:

“Can you see that wall? [Bruna points to a large structure further down the Tietê River]. That was all green forest, a dense forest like this one. [Bruna points to the other side of the bridge] Can you see? It was all dense like this. Over there is the distribution centre for Bauducco… This started in 2007…We [Bruna and other community leaders], went there, we argued [with the government]. Then the lady from the department said ‘no, Bauducco is a company, it is allowed, it was authorised.’ This construction, besides deforesting… nature, threw all its rubbish inside the river. That edge there… is the wall inside the river... there isn’t a single space... 10, 15 metres far away from the river. There isn’t. It is inside the river.” (Transect walk, 2017)

Figure 4.3 Chácara Três Meninas. Picture taken from the road crossing the Tietê River (centre) at the border between São Paulo (left) and Guarulhos (right). The image shows the informal occupation of the floodplain at the forefront and Bauducco’s distribution centre in the background. Source: Karen

Paiva Henrique, 2017.

Using the materiality of the floodplain as their evidence, community leaders have

repeatedly questioned the state’s exclusionary planning notions of compatible,

desirable, and predatory uses. They demanded that private companies take

responsibility for environmental degradation while insisting on the recognition of

local-income residents and their legitimate rights to occupy the floodplain, even if such

efforts were in vain most of the time. As Bruna argued, “Why can big companies cause

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destruction inside the river if there is no need? Why can’t the residents build out of the

need for a place to live?” (Transect walk, 2017).

4.6 Forced removals, social rents, and the (bounded) negotiation of livelihoods

The exclusionary classification and mapping of (un)desirable floodplain uses and users

not only enshrined the ‘illegal’ status of low-income families, justifying their

misrecognition,25 but also legitimised their prompt removal. The summer following

the PVT’s announcement, the state government capitalised on the worst flooding

season the city had ever experienced since records began in 1943 and removed 2,661

families from the floodplain (Departamento de Águas e Energia Elétrica 2016).

Without a clear plan for their relocation, however, the PVT’s most significant removal

effort to date has become associated with uncertainty, structural violence, and

insecurity, epitomised by the social rent scheme.

Out of the 2,661 families removed by the Department of Water and Energy (DAEE)

between December 2009 and January 2010, 543 families (20.4%) were relocated to

new apartments, which community leaders and residents often described as unfinished

‘matchboxes,’ located far away from the families’ original neighbourhoods and social

networks. The remaining 2,118 families (79.6%), received a social rent cheque instead

of a new place to live. DAEE officials justified monetary compensation in lieu of a

more definitive and secure housing policy, claiming insufficient governmental funds

and space to construct new houses. The social rent equated a monthly allowance of

300 Reais (~US$81) for families to rent a new house of their choice. It was designed

as a temporary instrument to allow families to leave their risky environments and

relocate to safer grounds, all the while staying close to friends and families and

maintaining community ties.

Community leaders, however, explained how the social rent scheme failed to achieve

these goals. According to them, the monthly government allowance was not enough to

rent a house in affected communities, primarily due to an increase in local rent prices

25 Misrecognition here is “not simply to be thought ill of, looked down on, or devalued in others’ conscious attitudes or mental beliefs. It is rather to be denied the status of a full partner in social interaction and prevented from participating as a peer in social life.” (Fraser 2009, p.78)

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resulting from a surge in demand after the floods (findings consistent with Millington

2018). They also complained that the social rent was unreliable and sometimes not

paid on time, forcing families to return to the floodplain. As one participant pointed

out, “the social rent was an emergency measure that became permanent” (Gustavo,

Interview, 2017), causing serious adverse effects and driving families back to risky

environments, sometimes riskier than those they inhabited before. As a result, the

social rent symbolised the uncertainty that has plagued the vast majority of families

removed by the project, influencing other families’ decision to stay put.

During the floods of 2009-10, the fear and anxiety surrounding relocation processes

was exacerbated by the way removals were undertaken by government officials. As

Miguel explained,

“…they demolished the houses with the furniture inside… they almost demolished the houses on top of the people. There were families that were threatened “if you don’t leave, we will demolish the house on top [of you], with you inside”. This was the dialogue. Then, there were a lot of people that left, and when they came back the house was already demolished. And other people came back and they didn’t leave anymore. They preferred to stay inside the water than to lose their homes.” (Interview, 2017)

The fear of forced removals pervaded even floodplain dwellers who claimed to have a

title for their houses. This was the case of Amanda, who recounted her experience

during the floods:

“On my street… the water was [20 cm-high] for almost two months… the Defesa Civil [Civil Defence] passed by, [they] tried to remove me, because I was inside the water. I didn’t. I didn’t leave my house. They wanted to put me in social rent. I would be in social rent until this day. I don’t even know where I would be, because I wouldn’t be able to afford rent, right?! Because no one rents a house for the amount of the [social] rent, the amount [of the social rent] is way inferior.” (Interview, 2017)

After the floods receded, the PVT’s removal effort lost momentum but eventually

regained some traction. As a DAEE official contended, “it is complicated to move

people” and

“to remove a factory, to decontaminate an area, it is only physical. It doesn’t cry. It is not the same with people. People have feelings, they have their own

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interests… an expropriation [process] can take from 1 to 100 years.” (Heitor, Interview, 2017)

Without the resources to build new houses, the PVT has only been able to continue its

removal efforts almost eight years after its announcement. In 2017, DAEE officials

finally concluded the relocation of 730 families from Vila Any, Guarulhos.

To portray DAEE officials as exclusive villains in the removal and relocation process,

however, would flatten their positioning and multifaceted roles. As Kull (2002)

suggests, the government is not a monolithic entity but is composed by various

departments and individuals often operating according to their own interests and

worldviews. Such diversity is not only found horizontally as different government

departments compete to protect or develop urban land,26 but also vertically, as agents

at different scales address and negotiate the enforcement of laws. The latter is

particularly relevant for the implementation of the PVT as some DAEE officials have

at times become personally involved in attempting to improve the lives of those

affected by the project.

During interviews with DAEE officers, different members of the PVT’s ‘social team’27

shared stories about their work with informal communities where they had offered

one-on-one assistance and provided an open communication channel with floodplain

residents. According to Pedro, during the relocation of families from Vila Any, DAEE

employees worked diligently to address the needs and preferences of local residents

and reduce negative impacts associated with their relocation,28 albeit always within

the scope of the project.

26 Government officials and technical experts explained that several government departments worked simultaneously, and often in disagreement, to decide the future of the Tietê River’s floodplain, each providing a separate project for the development of the region. At the same time, the enactment of projects such as the PVT depends on synergies between different departments (e.g. between the DAEE and the municipal housing department) that rarely materialise. 27 ‘Social team’ refers to a group of individuals from the DAEE who work directly with the communities to discuss and implement the PVT’s relocation plans. 28 According to Pedro, these impacts include loss of community ties and difficulties in adapting to life in a multi-apartment complex with shared spaces where one’s daily practices must be negotiated with others.

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According to Pedro and Isadora, while all relocation processes conducted by the

department were meant to abide by the policy “mundança no caminhão, casa no chão”

(“belongings on the moving truck, house torn down”), reality proved otherwise:

“Researcher: After the family is removed, the house is demolished?

Pedro: As soon as the family leaves, theoretically it should be ‘belongings on the moving truck, house torn down’, that is the theory. In practice you end up waiting…

Isadora: The houses that are still standing are all Pedro’s fault!

[Both Pedro and Isadora laugh]

Pedro: [Demolishing the houses after relocation] is the right approach, it is the ideal. But you end up respecting that [the resident] will remove a window, the aluminium door, because [the resident] has sold that to someone else… So you end up respecting that.”

(Interview, 2017)

4.7 The adaptation machine and the politics of invisibility

While our research has revealed that some DAEE officers could relate to floodplain

residents’ efforts to sustain their livelihoods and were willing to negotiate some of the

terms of their removal, these agents still work within a larger governing system that

constrains their sphere of action. As a technical expert and former municipal officer

described, independent of the aspirations of any individual, the government functions

as a “machine already in motion operating through its own set of procedures” (Felipe,

Interview, 2017). In the case of São Paulo, this ‘government machine’ has historically

been responsible for excluding marginalised communities from the spaces they inhabit

for urban development and economic growth. Even when São Paulo is faced with new

and exacerbated pressures, this modus operandi does not disappear, but rather persists

through institutional legacies and practices that constrain the imagination of

government agents and the implementation of new processes outside its predefined

professional tool-set. Thus, it is not surprising that, when asked about the possibility

of community participation in future PVT actions, Pedro answered:

“I don’t think it is very interesting to consult the population, because this is a floodplain, it is a risk zone, right?! Then if the person says ‘I want to continue living here’, but the house can collapse, then the government is held responsible because it allowed the person to continue living in a risk zone. So, I don’t think a consultation is called for… the answer will be that the

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person wants to stay where [s/he] is, but that is not possible.” (Interview, 2017)

This statement clearly illustrates the exclusionary mindset that dominates state-led

approaches to adapt São Paulo to flooding, here exemplified by the PVT, which

consistently frames adaptation as a technical problem to be solved by experts alone.

The project’s widespread lack of community participation was highlighted by

community leaders who contested the PVT’s rhetoric of ‘local participation’ arguing

that all meetings organised by the DAEE were informational at best (never inclusive

or democratic), that the PVT was developed neither with nor inside communities, and

that their voices had been completely silenced by the project.

As a result, flood adaptation continues to operate through a persistent ‘politics of

invisibility’ where poor people’s rights, desires, and ultimately their bodies are

rendered paradoxically central and invisible yet are systematically erased by

government projects (see Peluso 2009; Tschakert 2016). Here, populations ignored by

the PVT are both long-standing residents and newcomers who invest their lives into

making the floodplain a liveable place for themselves, their families, and their

communities. Disregarding situated experiences and knowledges, the government of

São Paulo opts instead to condition flood control on the successful removal of the poor,

even if this removal results in perverse and vicious cycles of poverty, and heightens

environmental risks for those already most vulnerable.

4.8 Contestation, resistance, and the reshaping of invisibility

Although the invisibility and exclusion of low-income residents from adaptation

projects (and the spaces these projects create) continue to underlie government action,

the PVT’s enactment on the ground has resulted in a stalemate between the state and

floodplain dwellers. Since its announcement, local residents have resisted the

implementation of the project, both directly and indirectly, reshaping their invisibility

in a myriad of ways. Here, we focus on three situated resistance tactics and their

effects: official contestations through protests and civil complaints; foot-dragging and

the deliberate delay of removal and relocation processes; and the consolidation and

continuous expansion of informal settlements.

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In the summer of 2009-10, the PVT and its associated removal efforts were met with

individual families’ refusal to leave and organised community resistance. Outraged by

the persistent flooding that occupied their houses for weeks at a time and the forced

displacement of families by the project, floodplain dwellers organised marches and

street blockades, occupied schools and vacant plots, and delivered official complaints

to various government agencies (Barboza 2015). Even though these actions were not

able to completely overturn removal processes, together, they were instrumental in

increasing the visibility of informal floodplain communities and their daily struggles,

particularly during floods. They were also decisive in expediting government

assistance.

Even so, while some community leaders were adamant in their fight for the right to

inhabit the floodplain, other residents accepted displacement from risky environments.

The latter simply asked for more transparent processes and proper compensation,

reiterating the slogan ‘a house for a house.’ As such, during the PVT’s second

significant removal effort, several families from Vila Any, Guarulhos, willingly agreed

to leave the floodplain in exchange for new apartments. Despite consenting, many still

appealed to DAEE officers’ moral and ethical values to bargain for more time before

the demolition process began. This seemingly unremarkable tactic affected the

community they were leaving behind, and the enactment of the park, in two significant

and complementary ways. First, local inhabitants used this additional time to sell parts

of their houses (e.g. windows, doors, and other building materials) and these parts were

likely used in the consolidation of other buildings within their community. Second, by

convincing DAEE officials to wait before demolishing their old houses, residents

inevitably stalled removal processes and opened up space for reoccupation. As Pedro

explained, if DAEE officials were waiting to demolish a house, they could not

demolish other buildings adjacent to it or risked compromising their structural

integrity, so the whole process was stalled.

Put together, both active contestation and residents’ foot-dragging tactics (combined

with the project’s own bureaucratic hurdles) forced DAEE officers to wait. As they

waited, unable to carry out the PVT’s ambitious removal plans, the areas marked for

removal were extensively occupied and consolidated. The areas with the most

significant expansion within the limits of the park can be found in two communities:

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Jardim Lapenna where the informal occupation adjacent to the sewage treatment

station (ETE São Miguel) has more than doubled since 2008 (from 3.08 to 6.29 ha);

and the area informally known as Cotovelo do Pantanal where the informal occupation

at the margins of the Tietê River has increased by almost 20% in relation to its original

size (from 9.9 to 11.57 ha) (Figure 4.4). However, these numbers most likely

underestimate these areas’ real expansion since they only reflect horizontal growth (as

seen in aerial photographs) and do not account for the growth of families living inside

each unit (e.g. through births, marriages, etc.) nor the vertical expansion of houses.

The latter is particularly relevant, as residents continued to improve (and elevate) their

housing structures to protect their bodies and belongings from future floods (see Egute

2016; Quinto 2017).

Figure 4.4 Informal expansion within the contours of the park. The images show areas demarcated for removal in 2008 (left) and informal expansion between 2008 and 2018 (right) in Jardim Lapenna (top) and Cotovelo do Pantanal (bottom). Aerial imagery: Google Earth 2008;

Google Earth, Digital Globe 2018.

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Our interviews show that such improvements are not only a practical response to

flooding but are also deeply intertwined with local resident’s desire to ascend socially.

In a transect walk along one of the many small water streams that still criss-crosses the

region, Fernanda explained that for the extremely poor residents living in the area,

building a brick house is a sign of reaching a higher social status. In São Paulo’s eastern

periphery, securing this higher status is essential because communities use their own

social hierarchies to compete for limited government funds and contested land rights.

Thus, as soon as they can afford it, floodplain residents replace their initial wooden

shacks with two-floor brick houses (Figure 4.5).

Figure 4.5 Expansion and consolidation of informal settlements within the limits of the park. New occupations evolve from wooden shacks (left) to more sturdy brick houses (right) through auto construction processes. The water tower from the sewage treatment station ETE São Miguel can be

seen in the background. Photograph taken during transect walk with resident Fernanda in 2017. Source: Karen Paiva Henrique, 2017.

The ever growing number of families moving in and the constant replacement of frail

wooden constructions by sturdier brick houses has characterised the floodplain as a

site of staggering fast-paced development. At the same time, the PVT’s static plans

have been ineffective in accounting for local sociomaterial dynamics, flattening

difference and ‘lumping the poor together’ through an extremely limited and outdated

housing offer. In 2017, the PVT’s removal efforts were still being carried out

according to plans originally prepared in 2008, with no updates thereafter. The

informal settlements marked for removal then were supposed to be maintained by a

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process dubbed ‘congelamento’ with areas ‘frozen in time’ and government officials

monitoring them to prevent further occupation (Inter-American Development Bank

2010). Nonetheless, without adequate housing policies or proper enforcement, DAEE

officials were unable to stop the reoccupation and expansion of informal settlements

in the floodplain. This failure was evident in a visit to Vila Any, when a DAEE officer

was taken by surprise by the number of houses still occupied after removal processes

in the area had been technically concluded, uttering: “but there are still so many people

in here!” (Heitor, Transect walk, 2017). As a result, the number of families located

within the contours of the park has, in some areas, doubled, making the PVT’s already

ambitious removal plans appear even more unattainable.

4.9 Opportunities for alternative urban adaptation futures

The evident disconnect between plan and reality in the PVT results in serious adverse

consequences for people living at the margins of infrastructure and service provision.

However, such disconnect also offers a strategic opening for informal communities to

continue to reclaim urban space and consolidate their surroundings. Although

seemingly mundane, these everyday tactics are how people negotiate access to city

space and, in the long run, can offer potential to provoke systemic change. Thus, we

borrow from Scott (1989) to argue that, like other politics of subordinate groups, the

negotiation of livelihoods, the reoccupation of vacant sites, the consolidation of

housing structures, and the continuous expansion of informal communities in the

floodplain

“fall into category of ‘everyday forms of resistance’, that these activities should most definitely be considered political, that they do constitute a form of collective action, and that any account which ignores them is often ignoring the most vital means by which lower classes manifest their political interests.” (p.33)

In the context of flooding, and climate change more broadly, acts of resistance and

contestation are part and parcel of the politics of adaptation (Eriksen et al. 2015). They

have shown to contribute to the opening of spaces in which emancipatory agency can

emerge and flourish (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling 2015; Tschakert et al. 2016). Recent

scholarly attention to rights and justice in climate change adaptation points to the need

to productively work with inevitable tension and to facilitate processes of deliberation

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to manage the multiplicity of agendas, recognise local and diverse knowledges and

capacities, and navigate difficult trade-offs (Harris et al. 2017; Ziervogel et al. 2017).

Successful adaptation to flooding in urban contexts, then, requires locally-situated

approaches that move away from narrow risk analyses and top-down technocratic and

infrastructural solutions and focus instead on inclusive governance, power dynamics,

and iterative processes of negotiating resilience (Harris et al. 2017; Ziervogel et al.

2017). This is particularly important in urban contexts in the Global South, where

everyday risks associated with rapid population growth and entrenched poverty

coincide with development failures to meet basic needs and, together, produce and

reproduce vulnerability (Pelling et al. 2018; Ziervogel et al. 2017).

In São Paulo’s eastern periphery, there are unmistakably opportunities for productive

engagements between local communities and the government to embark on adaptive

and resilient trajectories that also honour rights and social justice, largely due to two

openings for emancipatory agency. First and foremost, the relentless persistence of

floodplain dwellers to occupy and develop spaces from which they are systematically

excluded constitutes the most powerful tool for resistance and emancipatory agency as

it presents the potential to ultimately transform the contours of the park. As the

materiality of the floodplain has evolved into brick houses and make-shift

infrastructure, floodplain dwellers’ everyday practices have forced the PVT’s

proponents to go back to the drawing board. Second, while the complexities and

contradictions of community life remain largely elusive to the project, they have

become part of the daily experiences of those that enact adaptation in practice.

Interviews with DAEE officers revealed that a newly hired company had been tasked

to re-evaluate the viability of the PVT’s intended removals. The reflection of a DAEE

officer below encapsulates a sense of recognition beyond the authoritative operating

space of the state:

“When [the PVT’s] proponents draw [the park] on a clipboard, on the paper, it is a world without interference, without NGOs, without CETESB [Environmental Company for the State of São Paulo], it is a separate world. And when we go to execute [the project], we interact with everyone, the priest, the NGO, the municipal government, the CETESB. You need to answer to everyone. […] The project didn’t move forward because a lot of people questioned it and now we need to solve this issue with all these people. We

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need to either convince everyone or adapt the project so it suits everyone’s needs. These are the things that happen.” (Heitor, Interview, 2017)

The openings for emancipatory agency here identified can certainly be fostered

through inclusive and iterative approaches that build on multiple experiences and

connect institutional landscapes with the dynamics of everyday life. Such inclusive

and iterative decision-making processes form the core pillar of the so-called ‘adaptive

pathways’ approach (Fazey et al. 2016; Haasnoot et al. 2013; Wise et al. 2014). These

pathways foreground often contentious evaluation of choices, and potential benefits

and losses that emerge from dominant and competing adaptation trajectories,

providing an exciting way to rethink adaptation as we move into an increasingly

uncertain future. Examples include the Fostering Local Wellbeing (FLOW)

programme in South Africa, which reconnects unemployed and marginalised urban

youth to their surroundings and strengthens social ties and capacities through multi-

level partnerships with local business and government agencies (Ziervogel et al. 2016);

and community resilience initiatives in Scotland and Alaska that focus explicitly on

climate disadvantage to overcome multiple injustices and strive for “more socially

equitable living” (Fazey et al. 2018, p.38).

Productive, multi-scalar engagements between unequally positioned and unevenly

recognised actors requires critical reflection of on-the-ground capacities and the messy

politics of urban adaptation and resilience (Harris et al. 2017). In this article, we

advance the cross-fertilization of urban and feminist political ecology as a useful

conceptual and methodological entry point for such a critical approach. An UPE lens

allowed us to demonstrate how a state-led intervention to adapt São Paulo to future

floods has become yet another tool to discipline the use of city space, with perverse

effects for the poor. At the same time, a FPE approach revealed floodplain residents’

agency and capacities manifested in informal occupation practices and the

micropolitics of everyday adaptation. Our findings point to political openings for

“more successful cooperation and coordination” (Lawhon et al. 2014, p.512) between

multiple stakeholders, derived from the spaces of daily life. Thus, together, UPE and

FPE offer insights into the political complexity and multidimensional justice

implications associated with cities adapting to a significantly warmer future, including

opportunities to make this transition more inclusive and equitable.

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This is not to say that the pathway towards just adaptation is a simple one. Existing

institutions and adaptation policies are often constrained by lock-in mechanisms and

path dependencies that resist change (Ajibade et al. 2016). In São Paulo, obstacles for

transformational adaptation are most visible in the lack of coordination among

government agencies, alliances between authorities and industry actors affecting the

distribution of funds, and the electoral cycle shifting development and risk

management priorities every four years. Transformation is also hindered by existing

social hierarchies and prejudices that undermine empathy and cooperation between

and within marginalised groups. Our goal, however, is to assert that there are latent

opportunities to fundamentally alter the underlying processes and thus the outcomes

of adaptive interventions. We argue that the unyielding contestation of the state’s

exclusionary adaptation contours along the PVT has forced open a space for

deliberation that, after 40 years in the making, has engendered an opportunity to

rekindle the project’s initial social aspirations and lead to more just adaptation futures.

4.10 Conclusions

In this article, we have traced the evolution of São Paulo’s most ambitious project to

adapt to recurrent floods, weaving together planning documents and testimonies from

different stakeholders in relation to adaptation efforts currently undertaken by the state

government. We advance three propositions that merit consideration in the

development of adaptive interventions, particularly those requiring resettlements or

managed retreat. First, ‘soft’ infrastructures, although innovative from a techno-

managerial perspective, can still exacerbate old vulnerabilities and engender new ones

in communities already marginalised. Second, government authorities increasingly

recognise the need to collaborate with vulnerable populations to produce and enact

adaptation, but their efforts remain constrained by institutional legacies that resist

change and continue to render the voices, needs, and desires of the poor invisible.

Third, residents from informal floodplain settlements feel forgotten, alienated, and

excluded by government authorities, yet continue to apply their knowledges and

adaptive capacities to produce communities worth living and fighting for.

These findings reinforce the urgent need to rethink adaptation to flooding not as a

purely techno-managerial solution, but rather as an opportunity to reimagine the urban

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floodplain as a resilient landscape where all communities can gather and thrive.

Creating such a landscape entails actively contesting power asymmetries by fostering

inclusive decision-making spaces where people’s needs, values, and capacities are

recognised, and inevitable trade-offs are negotiated. Based on our findings, we argue

that, to create inclusive processes that lead to equitable outcomes, adaptation research

must engage with both state institutions, where adaptation is envisioned and funds

allocated, and the spaces of daily life, where adaptation is implemented, negotiated,

and contested.

Further research is needed to unravel the intricate relations between and within

different government institutions and the communities currently inhabiting risky

environments. We also recommend examining how local adaptive capacities can be

leveraged to produce context-relevant solutions in the face of exacerbated, yet

uncertain future climate conditions. Most importantly, there are latent opportunities

for emancipatory agency and productive engagements between seemingly antagonistic

actors to collaborate towards a more hopeful urban adaptation future in which those

currently marginalised become and remain visible.

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CHAPTER 5. EMBODIED EXPERIENCES

This chapter has been submitted to ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies as part of the Special Issue From the margins within: Exploring urbanism in the Global South, and it has been reviewed with requests for revisions:

Henrique, KP, ‘“I am of Pantanal”: Marginal spaces, political subjects, and the transformational potential of belonging’. [See Appendix 13]

* This chapter has been withheld from open access and will be released once the publication process is finalised.

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CHAPTER 6. PATHWAYS TOWARDS JUST URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS

This chapter has been submitted to Progress in Human Geography, and it has been reviewed with requests for revisions:

Henrique, Karen Paiva, Petra Tschakert, and Sarah Prout Quicke. “Pathways to urban transformation: From dispossession to climate justice.” [See Appendix 14]

* This chapter has been withheld from open access and will be released once the publication process is finalised.

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CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSIONS

This thesis has been driven by a long-standing curiosity to understand how cities adapt

to changing climatic conditions and extreme weather events. My master’s research

painstakingly documented architecture and urban design solutions to recurrent

flooding in the Global North, identifying a paradigm shift in the way cities are

envisioned and enacted in the face of an uncertain climate future (Henrique 2014). If,

in the past, flood management and control solutions centred predominantly on building

taller and stronger barriers, more recent efforts have attempted to reinvigorate urban

socio-natural relations, restoring and preserving floodplains along rivers to

accommodate excess water rather than disciplining it. Even if innovative from a

techno-managerial standpoint, these projects (and my efforts to decode them) lacked

an explicit and critical engagement with the populations who interact with these new

landscapes of flooding. In fact, they are mostly devoid of people, particularly those

directly affected by their implementation.

This is when, in 2015, I learned about the Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT), a project

largely advertised as a floodplain restoration scheme. On paper, the PVT exhibited

striking conceptual parallels to other proposals aiming to ‘make room for water’ within

consolidated urban environments. Similar to other initiatives I had examined in the

past, the PVT proposed an ample green landscape along the city’s most important

waterway to buffer floodwaters and thus protect its urban population as a whole. Upon

closer inspection, however, it became clear that the implementation of the park would

not occur without significant challenges. Unlike many other floodplain naturalisation

schemes and the contexts in which they are designed and developed, the PVT relies

heavily on river margins that are largely occupied. This is particularly true for São

Paulo’s eastern periphery along the Tietê River where primarily low-income dwellers

trade environmental security for a place to build their homes. Therefore, efforts to

restore São Paulo’s major urban floodplain to its ‘natural’ condition are inevitably

entwined with local communities’ ongoing struggle over the right to persevere, live a

dignified life, be included in decisions that profoundly affect their future, and,

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ultimately, be treated with respect. In short, as this thesis demonstrates throughout,

flood adaptation along the Tietê River is a political struggle over the right to belong.

Using the lens of political ecology, this doctoral thesis provides a unique and

comprehensive account of how this political struggle unfolds across multiple

dimensions, scales, and levels of governance to shape and reshape the contours of

flood adaptation in South America’s largest and ever growing metropolis. It does so in

three separate yet fundamentally connected parts, articulated in Chapters 3, 4, and 5

(the three empirical manuscripts).

The thesis began by probing how the problem of flooding entered the public debate

through elite media coverage of flood events during the 2009-10 floods, the worst in

the city’s recorded history. Chapter 3: Dominant discourses exposed how the media

framed flooding predominantly as a ‘natural’ phenomenon to be solved techno-

managerially by those in positions of authority. This framing was supported by

essentialised categorisations of floodplain dwellers who were repeatedly depicted as

villains and/or victims of the floods and whose voices were omitted time and again

from adaptation discussions. Through my analysis, I was able to demonstrate how

media reports mirrored the rhetoric espoused by government officials in the plans for

the PVT, configuring a dominant discourse that legitimised exclusionary state

practices while foreclosing opportunities for democratic debate over alternative

solutions. While at times spaces for more inclusive and just depictions of flooding and

adaptation did open up, these tended to be quickly foreclosed by stories that insisted

on the immediate removal of floodplain dwellers – a solution rendered largely

apolitical by a techno-managerial discourse that highlighted the limits to and

impracticability of any other action.

Moving from rhetoric to practice, Chapter 4: Contested materialities revealed how

these dominant discourses found their way into the PVT. They did so by configuring

an uneven adaptation landscape that physically excluded the urban poor from the

floodplain while conveniently circumventing industries and other private enterprises

that remained largely undisturbed by the project. These flagrant exclusions have led to

serious adverse effects for informal floodplain communities. First, families are

removed in the name of progressive urban flood adaptation, yet without a definitive

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housing solution, and hence often return to improvised houses even more exposed to

environmental hazards. Second, families who have not yet been removed but whose

future remains uncertain, refuse to leave when flooding strikes, despite the bodily risks

such a decision entails. The simple reason is that they are afraid of no longer having a

home upon return.

However, as Chapter 4 also demonstrated, floodplain dwellers do not sit idle against

such threats. In fact, many have mobilised against the PVT, stalling its implementation

both directly and indirectly through organised protests, foot-dragging, and negotiations

with government officers implementing the project. Together, these tactics have forced

the PVT’s proponents back to the drawing board, thus reshaping the contours of the

park ‘from below’. This analysis demystified stereotypes of floodplain dwellers as

powerless victims and government officials as unscrupulous villains. Instead, it shed

light on how these presumably antagonistic actors come together, at least at times, to

attempt a more inclusive adaptation effort based on genuine listening, mutual respect,

and hope. Yet, the analysis in this chapter has also demonstrated how institutionalised

practices and power dynamics continue to sustain the exclusionary contours of

government interventions, often sideling more context-relevant adaptive solutions

developed literally on the ground.

The third and last empirical contribution, Chapter 5: Embodied experiences, centred

the analysis on the floodplain and its subjects. Drawing on the shared story of one

community leader, his community, and the Tietê’s floodplain, the chapter wove

together a situated narrative of struggle, unwavering commitment, and profound

attachment to place. Through the lens of embodied encounters, it showed how

floodplain dwellers continuously manage to overcome adversity and use their bodies

to produce a community worth living in and fighting for. As a result of these corporeal

experiences, floodplain dwellers become political subjects who resist government

intervention in and through their everyday spaces. They do so, inter alia, by organising

and protesting, negotiating with political authorities, maintaining local histories alive,

and training a new generation of engaged citizens. As demonstrated in the chapter, this

political engagement often transcends the floodplain to connect São Paulo’s multiple

peripheries in a collective fight for social justice and a better life. This chapter

demonstrates how a feminist approach allows for locating marginal voices at the centre

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of climate adaptation discussions and, in so doing, provides valuable lessons for more

egalitarian adaptation trajectories within and outside São Paulo’s eastern periphery.

Individually, the empirical chapter contributions directly answer calls from the

literature in three distinct domains: first, for a deeper understanding of discourses of

environmental change, to identify ‘blind spots’ and challenge ontological assumptions

about human-environment relations currently guiding adaptation practices (Eriksen et

al. 2015; O’Brien 2012; Veland et al. 2018) [Chapter 3]; second, for more empirical

studies on the fairness and justice of ongoing adaptation efforts (Anguelovski et al.

2016; Chu et al. 2016; Fainstein 2015; Shi et al. 2016) [Chapter 4]; and third, for

community-based research to recognise what people value and consider worth fighting

for, in order to produce a grounded knowledge about desired (and possible) climate

futures (Barnett et al. 2016; Tschakert et al. 2017; Tschakert et al. 2019) [Chapter 5].

As most empirical research, these contributions were also shaped by both practical and

epistemological limitations on at least four fronts; these limitations, in turn, highlight

the need and possible avenues for future research. First, data collection and analysis

were directly impacted by a restricted access to the floodplain both in terms of safety

and time. Not being able to freely access floodplain communities limited the number

of interviews and other participatory activities that could have provided even more

depth and comprehensiveness to the study, especially in regards to local narratives of

flooding and situated adaptation trajectories. Further field-based research is needed to

locate additional experiences, values, knowledges, and capacities within and between

floodplain communities, examining how these are shaped by power dynamics and

multiple axes of difference (e.g. gender, age, ability, sexual orientation), also in the

spaces of everyday community life.

Second, although the DAEE is the department responsible for the implementation of

the PVT, there are many other departments working at multiple governance levels on

social housing, environmental conservation, and access to education and health whose

mandates indubitably intersect with the implementation of the park. Additional field-

based research would be beneficial to trace the connections and conflicts that exist

between these various departments as they compete for authority and limited funds.

Here, a comparative analysis between São Paulo and other municipalities affected by

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the PVT could provide important and yet understudied insights on how funds are

allocated and decisions negotiated between megacities, and large- and medium-size

municipalities, bringing to light the challenges that emerge from their (likely) uneven

distribution.

Third, by focusing on large-circulation broadsheet newspapers, the thesis inevitably

omitted the impact other media sources have on flooding and adaptation debates.

These include small-circulation dailies, radio and television shows, web-based sources

(e.g. blogs), and social media. A more encompassing media analysis could reveal how

different sources reiterate or challenge the narratives produced by Folha and Estadão,

and the government of São Paulo; bring different voices to the discussion; and shed

light onto the many ways in which rhetoric devices designed to attract and appease

different audiences may produce alternative understandings of flooding and

adaptation.

Finally, the empirical and theoretical contributions in this thesis are underpinned by

an epistemological approach that focused on the state government as the dominant and

most powerful actor and aimed to make visible the uneven burdens and undesirable

effects of its flood adaptation efforts as these are implemented on the ground. As a

result, less attention was given to alternative adaptation approaches that materialise in

the floodplain irrespective of the PVT or other large-scale government interventions.

It would be productive to approach this thesis problematic (i.e. the production of São

Paulo’s adaptation trajectory) from the ground up, using São Paulo’s floodplain

communities (rather than the institutionalised space of the PVT) as the analytical entry

point. Such an approach could locate strategic openings, or points of transgression, for

an affirmative adaptation biopolitics able to alleviate “actually existing insecurities”

and sabotage the existing neoliberal order (Grove 2014) by leveraging opportunities

for marginalised communities to become otherwise – i.e. to create and live a different

future (Anderson et al. 2019). Nurturing such an affirmative adaptation biopolitics

would undoubtedly require a sustained commitment to work within and alongside

affected communities and delineate questions that reflect their interests, needs, and

visions for the future.

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Such limitations notwithstanding, together, the findings from the three case study

chapters add empirical richness to critical urban and climate adaptation studies (as

summarised in Figure 7.1), addressing the need for more engaged scholarship on

climate change and cities “to inform the scale of action required” (Dodman et al. 2019,

p.3).

Figure 7.1 Empirical contribution. Main empirical contributions to critical urban and climate adaptation studies, organised by chapter and drawing linkages between the results.

The thesis delivers a new piece to the adaptation puzzle with each empirical layer of

analysis. It demonstrates, step by step, how power operates through discourses,

material practices, and embodied experiences. It is through this unique three-fold

analysis that the present work gives form to a messy decision-making space where the

contours of São Paulo’s dominant adaptation trajectory are continuously shaped and

reshaped in-the-making. Centring on the emergence and likely volatility of this

adaptation space in the context of the city’s eastern periphery, the thesis identifies two

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mutually exclusive yet co-existing political dynamics (Figure 7.2). These two

dynamics – the hegemonic politics of (in)visibility and the counter-politics of

belonging – constitute a novel dialectic that, so far, has been hardly examined in flood

adaptation scholarship.

Figure 7.2 Conceptual contribution. The contours of flood adaptation are constantly shaped and reshaped (i.e. are continuously in-the-making) as the floodplain continuous to evolve.

One the one hand, institutional legacies and uneven power relations constrain flood

adaptation efforts within a hegemonic politics of (in)visibility that renders the poor

paradoxically central and invisible to government interventions. These hegemonic

politics are sustained by dominant discourses and practices that, by and large, disregard

the voices of marginalised urban residents. They also obscure their needs, desires, and

capacities and discursively and materially erase their bodies from the spaces they

inhabit to create a tabula rasa for infrastructure and flood control development.

On the other hand, marginalised communities fight back, producing a counter-politics

of belonging. They do so to regain their voices and demand to be part of decisions

about their houses, communities, and the city as a whole that deeply impact their

individual and collective futures. These counter-politics are shaped through everyday

acts of resistance, from organised protests to daily negotiations, do-it-yourself

constructions, and neighbourhood improvements. Floodplain residents build upon

their situated knowledges, diverse capacities, and a shared attachment to place to

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reclaim the right to inhabit the floodplain and “reinvent the city after their hearts’

desire” (cf. Harvey 2012, p.25, building on Henri Lefebvre).

I argue that a counter-politics of belonging offers tangible entry points to reframe

adaptation narratives and practice according to what people value most and are willing

to protect, against all odds. It challenges the assumption that relocating poor urban

residents is the only and most preferable solution to São Paulo’s flooding problem by

identifying why the floodplain, in the eye of the beholder and with all its deficiencies,

is already a place worth living in. Re-centring adaptation discussions around people’s

right to belong invites a progressive politics that builds on situated capacities and

committed local leadership to negotiate possible solutions and inevitable trade-offs,

irrespective of climatic outlooks. In São Paulo’s eastern periphery, such an adaptation

politics is challenging, without a doubt. Yet, as this analysis shows, it may well harbour

opportunities to empower community leaders as liaisons between local needs and

policy makers, nurture existing political spaces for youth engagement, and draw on a

myriad of existing urban design proposals developed in partnership between

floodplain communities and universities to pursue community adaptation in place. If

planned retreat becomes inevitable, which is within the realm of climate projections

for São Paulo, a politics of belonging would also demonstrate the importance and the

benefits of co-producing new neighbourhoods. It is through such active and conscious

place detachment (Agyeman et al. 2009) that residents would be able to cultivate

attachment in these new spaces and, eventually, feel compelled to nurture and protect

them for the future.

Through this layered and multi-dimensional analysis, the thesis adds theoretical

nuance to scholarship on the politics of adaptation. It answers a growing call for studies

that critically engage with global climate change to locate new spaces for action and a

pro-poor politics based on inclusive governance (Bulkeley 2019; Ernstson &

Swyngedouw 2018a; Routledge et al. 2018; Swyngedouw 2015; Ziervogel 2019). I

argue that attention to this ‘messy’ adaptation space is instrumental to identifying

structures of domination and uncovering strategic openings for a more egalitarian

adaptation politics. Such a politics, in turn, preconfigures climate justice and just

societal transformations. As the thesis demonstrates, venturing into this muddled

adaptation space requires a number of theoretical engagements and methodologies that

149

simultaneously focus on the landscapes of policy making and the spaces of everyday

life. It entails interacting with multiple (and sometimes reluctant) adaptation actors to

make visible their potentially fundamental differences but also the crucial moments

when they come together to deliberate and negotiate practical adaptation solutions.

Taken as a whole, the empirical parts of this thesis offered a political ecology of flood

adaptation that brought together (urban and feminist) political ecology, critical urban

and media studies, and feminist scholarship to illuminate the fundamentally political

nature of climate adaptation efforts. I do not claim that this conceptual arrangement is

the only one possible; instead, I wish to highlight the potential and vital role of

incorporating multiple perspectives in order to identify and generate new types of

knowledge and trajectories to address urban environmental challenges (see also

O’Brien & Leichenko 2019).

In this vein, Chapter 6: Pathways towards just transformations represents an effort to

bring the empirical and conceptual findings from this thesis in conversation with most

recent scholarship on urban transformations, mainly in the field of human geography.

This theoretical contribution critically reviews state-of-the-art insights regarding

adaptation pathways, politics, and practice, and then proposes conceptual steps to

chart new trajectories towards just and fair urban climate futures, still wrestling with

the persistent dispossession of the poor while also broadening up the space of

disenfranchised ‘others’. These steps reflect three core aspects: first, a long-overdue

critical engagement with various modes of state (in)action, navigating between

convenient absence/unwitting failure and wilful ignorance/creative destruction in

relation to broader political economies; second, locating openings for contesting and

reshaping state-community interactions; and third, disavowing human exceptionalism

to account for multiple exclusions. Underlying this final contribution to the literature

(and the thesis as a whole) is a sustained commitment to overcome the allure of

technical fixes ingrained in most ongoing adaptation trajectories and advocate for a

just and fair urban climate future in São Paulo, and beyond.

I could not conclude this thesis without reflecting on Brazil’s current political

landscape and its potential impacts on (urban) climate futures. Since I concluded

fieldwork in 2017, Jair Bolsonaro has been elected president of Brazil. His presidency

150

raises serious concerns over the country’s political stance on national and global

environmental changes and associated impacts on marginalised groups, future

generations, and the biosphere as a whole. Adopting a conservative and divisive

rhetoric (that includes climate change denial) and a series of controversial policies,

Bolsonaro has positioned Brazil centre-stage in international debates over the planet’s

future, in deplorable ways. This includes the ongoing and massive logging and the

ravaging forest fires in the Amazon, with profound implications for indigenous

communities (whose voices nonetheless remain largely invisible in international

discussions) as well as precious ecosystem services. Rather than bringing his

contentious modus operandi to a halt, however, the president is now using the

international outcry over his inaction countering the fires to fuel a nationalist pride

over what belongs to Brazil and its citizens.

On the surface, I see Bolsonaro’s politics in stark contrast to the hopeful trajectories

outlined in this thesis with respect to climate change adaptation and measures against

urban flooding. His politics would affect low-income residents in at least two

immediate ways: first, his decision to cut funding to federal universities that have

become important allies to informal floodplain communities will likely undermine

ongoing efforts to co-produce knowledge about the river, its adjacent areas, and their

possible futures; second, his hate-fuelled rhetoric is already legitimising

discriminatory attitudes towards marginalised populations, altering how people relate

to one another in the spaces of the everyday. Although the long-term consequences of

his politics are yet to be fully understood, I wish to remain hopeful for a better future.

To quote Martin Luther King “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends

toward justice”. However, it will not do so by itself – it can only be achieved if

researchers, practitioners, politicians, community leaders, and ordinary citizens alike,

as a community of practice, are attentive to disenfranchised voices, needs, and

aspirations, insist on putting them at the centre of climate change adaptation efforts,

and co-produce responsible, inclusive, and just climate futures to which we all belong.

151

APPENDICES

Appendix 1. Ethics approval - University of Western Australia

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Appendix 2. Ethics approval - Brazilian National Council for Research Ethics [Portuguese]

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Appendix 3. Participant information form: City officials and specialists [English/Portuguese]

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Appendix 4. Participant information form: Floodplain dwellers [English/Portuguese]

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169

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Appendix 5. Participant consent form: City officials and specialists [English/Portuguese]

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Appendix 6. Participant consent form: Floodplain dwellers [English/Portuguese]

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Appendix 7. Publication in Global Environmental Change [Chapter 3]

Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Taming São Paulo’s floods: Dominant discourses, exclusionary practices, and the complicity of the media’, Global Environmental Change, vol. 58, pp. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101940

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Appendix 8. Reference list for all newspaper articles analysed

[Published as ‘Appendix A’ in Global Environmental Change]

Table A.1 Estado de São Paulo (Estadão)

Reference number (R#)

Date (dd/mm/yyyy)

Headline Author(s) Section & page29

1 24/02/2008 Poluição no Tietê encolhe 120 km Diego Zanchetta, José Maria Tomazela

C0C

2 22/04/2008 A limpeza da calha do Tietê A3 3 5/07/2008 Candidatura Alckmin A3 4 11/08/2008 Meio ambiente e seus complexos

problemas Adriana Carranca

A6

5 23/09/2008 A manutenção do Tietê A3 6 3/02/2009 Desafios ambientais da RMSP José Galizia

Tundisi A2

7 19/03/2009 Faltam 29 piscinöes na bacia do Rio Tamanduatei

Eduardo Reina C6

8 20/07/2009 Tietê terá parque linear de 75 km A1 9 20/07/2009 Tietê, maior parque linear do mundo Eduardo Reina C8 10 26/07/2009 Proteção ao Tietê A3 11 9/09/2009 Após 4 anos, Rio Tietê transborda com

metade da chuva Carolina Freitas, Diego Zanchetta, Fernanda Aranda, Marcela Spinosa

C3

12 9/09/2009 Especialistas criticam ampliaçäo de pistas

Bruno Tavares, Diego Zanchetta

C3

13 9/09/2009 Obra de desassoreamento serå estendida por um ano

Bruno Tavares, Diego Zanchetta

C3

14 11/09/2009 De novo as enchentes A3 15 12/09/2009 Kassab agora admite culpa por

enchente Diego Zanchetta

C8

16 13/09/2009 O caos cíclico das águas José de Souza Martins

J7

17 15/09/2009 Marginal Tietê, verdades e mentiras Aloysio Nunes Ferreira

A2

18 20/09/2009 250 mil caminhões de terra sufocam o rio

Bruno Paes Manso

C3

19 17/10/2009 MP ainda investiga ampliação Bruno Tavares C3 20 6/12/2009 364 mil t de areia e lixo 'encolhem'

Tietê Eduardo Reina, Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C4

21 6/12/2009 Guaio é estrangulado pelo esgoto e pela ocupaçäo ilegal

E.R. e V.H.B. C4

22 9/12/2009 As 15 horas, capital teve zero km de lentidão

Cristiane Bomfim, Naiana Oscar

C7-a

23 9/12/2009 Atrasos de ônibus passaram de 7 horas e viagens interior-capital foram canceladas

Elvis Pereira, Flavio Prado, Bras Henrique

C7-b

29 Letter added to page number when the same page included two or more articles analysed.

188

24 9/12/2009 Estado culpa sistema de bombas Fabio Mazzitelli, colaboraram Naiana Oscar e Bruno Paes Manso

C8-a

25 9/12/2009 Vazao do Tietê está no limite F.M. C8-b 26 9/12/2009 Quando ir a trabalho se torna missão

impossível Cristiana Vieira, Diego Zanchetta, Filipe Vilicic. Gilberto Amendola, Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C9-a

27 9/12/2009 Linhas de ônibus de Ribeirão são suspensas

C9-b

28 10/12/2009 Desculpas esfarrapadas A3 29 10/12/2009 Sobe para 8 no de mortos pela chuva Filipe Vilicic,

colaboraram Ana Conceição, Felipe Oda, Fernanda Aranda, Renato Machado e Ricardo Brandt

C1-a

30 10/12/2009 Zona leste: bairro segue alagado Naiana Oscar C1-b 31 11/12/2009 Criança some em bairro alagado Isis Brum,

colaborou Luisa Alcalde

C3-a

32 11/12/2009 Prefeitura näo concluiu remoçäo em favela onde catador foi soterrado

Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C3-b

33 11/12/2009 Começa limpeza na Mogi-Bertioga Rejanelima, José Maria Tomazela e Chico Siqueira, Especial para o Estado

C3-c

34 11/12/2009 O caso BR-3 em debate: lembre a peça, veja o filme

D6

35 12/12/2009 Bairro alagado será desepropriado Ana Bizzotto, Eduardo Reina, Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C3

36 13/12/2009 ‘A várzea pertence ao rio’ Ivan Marsiglia J4 37 13/12/2009 Os bêbados e os equilibristas José de Souza

Martins J5

38 14/12/2009 Bairro vira rio e Defesa Civil culpa invasões

Valéria França, Eduardo Reina

C8-a

39 14/12/2009 Maioria dos piscinões da capital está cheia de lixo

Felipe Oda, colaboraram Naiana Oscar e Cristiane Bomfim

C8-b

40 14/12/2009 Kassab promete solução Cristiane Bomfim

C8-c

41 15/12/2009 Famílias vão deixar área alagada até janeiro

Cristiane Bomfim

C4-a

42 15/12/2009 Em 12 dias, SP registrou 196 alagamentos

Luisa Alcalde, Felipe Grandin

C4-b

43 15/12/2009 Moradores já fizeram ameaças ao DAEE

Fabio Mazzitelli C4-c

189

44 16/12/2009 Bairro alagado pode ser bombeado Renato Machado

C4-a

45 16/12/2009 Novas casas devem ficar prontas em até 2 anos

Ana Bizzotto, Bruno Paes Manso e Renato Machado

C4-b

46 16/12/2009 Prefeitura cobra taxa de melhoria de moradores de área submersa

Isis Brum C4-c

47 16/12/2009 Meninos guiam carros nas poças Renato Machado

C4-d

48 17/12/2009 Chuva traz mais prejuizos a capital Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Brancatelu, Felipe Grandin, José Maria Tomazela

C5-a

49 17/12/2009 Proposta de bombear água de bairro alagado é inviável

Ana Bizzotto C5-b

50 17/12/2009 Sabesp jogou esgoto no Tietê A.B. C5-c 51 18/12/2009 Antes da enchente, crime ambiental Eduardo Reina,

Ana Bizzotto C8-a

52 18/12/2009 Prefeitura cadastra familias para remoçäo

Ana Bizzotto, Isis Brum

C8-b

53 18/12/2009 Caminhöes coletam lixo pela 1a vez A.B. C8-c 54 18/12/2009 Secretário diz que 70 construções

foram demolidas E.R. C8-d

55 19/12/2009 Em SP, bairro alagado tem suspeita de leptospirose

A1

56 19/12/2009 Bairro alagado em Säo Paulo já tem 9 casos suspeitos de leptospirose

Renato Machado, Eduardo Reina

C1

57 19/12/2009 Prefeitura e Estado retiram 1 pessoa Renato Machado

C3

58 19/12/2009 Corpo é achado em alagamento Eduardo Reina C3 59 20/12/2009 Com água pelos joelhos A3 60 20/12/2009 Em 2 dias, 21 pessoas saem do Jd.

Romano Alline Dauroiz, colaborou Daniela do Canto

C4

61 20/12/2009 Com água pelo pescoço José de Souza Martins

J6

62 21/12/2009 Saúde pública: Morre criança de bairro alagado

A1

63 21/12/2009 Morre criança de bairro alagado Renato Machado

C6-a

64 21/12/2009 Bombas sugam 400 mil litros d'água em 1 dia

R.M. C6-b

65 22/12/2009 Depois de escoamento, rua inundada tem lixo e lama

Renato Machado

C8-a

66 22/12/2009 Pai diz que garoto morto teve contato com água suja

Felipe Oda C8-b

67 23/12/2009 Leptospirose não matou menino Renato Machado

C6-a

68 23/12/2009 Começa demolição de casas alagadas R.M. C6-b 69 23/12/2009 Moradores aproveitam para pescar no

asfalto Renato Machado

C7

70 24/12/2009 Família espera solução em abrigo improvisado

Rodrigo Brancatelli

C5

71 26/12/2009 Triste Natal no bairro alagado A1 72 26/12/2009 No Natal, Jd. Romano volta a alagar Rodrigo

Brancatelli C3

73 27/12/2009 Mecânico ajuda bairro alagado Edison Veiga C3

190

74 29/12/2009 Chuvas em SP: Transtornos no interior e na capital

A1

75 29/12/2009 Sem solução para Jardim Romano, Prefeitura conta apenas com remoçäo

Renato Machado, Rodrigo Brancatelli

C1-a

76 29/12/2009 Morador de 'área seca' faz cadastro para casa

Diego Zanchetta

C1-b

77 29/12/2009 Há 15 suspeitas de leptospirose R.M. C1-c 78 30/12/2009 Flagelados agora convivem com

entulho Ana Bizzotto C3

79 31/12/2009 Subprefeitura promete tirar entulho do Jd.Romano

Ana Bizzotto C3

80 31/12/2009 'Fiz o que era do interesse da cidade' Bruno Tavares, luri Pitta, colaborou Diego Zanchetta

C4

81 3/01/2010 Tempestade provoca interdições em SP

Flavia Guerra C6

82 6/01/2010 SP limita obras na várzea do Tietê Bruno Tavares, Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Brancatelu, Silvia Amorim

C4-a

83 6/01/2010 Represas de São Paulo estão cheias Felipe Oda C4-b 84 6/01/2010 Região terá parque linear C4-c 85 7/01/2010 Mulher more ao cair em tubulação Lais Cattassini C5-a 86 7/01/2010 No Jardim Helena, casas para alugar

são raridade Ana Bizzotto C5-b

87 8/01/2010 Em 2009, capital registrou recorde de alagamento de ruas

Bruno Paes Manso, Daniel Jelin

C0C-a

88 8/01/2010 Sé, Pinheiros e Lapa são os bairros mais afetados

B.P.M e D.J. C0C-b

89 8/01/2010 Construção de piscinões deve começar em maio

Carolina Freitas, colaboraram Marcela Spinoza e Monica Pestana

C0C-c

90 8/01/2010 Jardim Romano, 1 mês vivendo debaixo d'água

Ana Bizzotto C3

91 9/01/2010 Kassab é ostilizado no Jardim Romano Naiana Oscar, colaboraram Ana Bizzotto e José Luis da Conceicåo

C4-a

92 9/01/2010 Contra enchentes, moradores fecham Avenida Sapopemba

JB Neto e Ricardo Valota

C4-b

93 11/01/2010 Kassab volta ao Jardim Romano Gilberto Amendola, colaborou Lucas Azevedo,

C4

94 19/01/2010 Contestação Carlos Henrique A. Loureiro

A3

95 21/01/2010 Alagamento sem fim Rafael Tavares C2 96 22/01/2010 Túnel fica quase 24 horas alagado Cristiane

Bomfim, Naiana Oscar

C5-a

191

97 22/01/2010 Jardim Romano, na zona leste, volta a ficar alagado

C5-b

98 22/01/2010 Ceagesp repete prejuizo de R$ 15 mi Ana Bizzotto C5-c 99 22/01/2010 ‘Obras viárias podem afetar sistema

anticheias’ Bruno Paes Manso

C8-a

100 22/01/2010 Siurb diz que bombas funcionaram corretamente

B.P.M. C8-b

101 22/01/2010 Enchentes já foram aliadas dos moradores de São Paulo

Rodrigo Brancatelli

C8-c

102 23/01/2010 Apos chuvas, Kassab planeja tirar 7 mil familias de beira de córregos

Diego Zanchetta, colaborou Gabriel Pinheiro

C1

103 24/01/2010 Problemas estruturais agravam cheias Rodrigo Burgarelli

C4

104 27/01/2010 Kassab retém verba de área de risco Fabio Leite, Plinio Teodoro, Roberto Fonseca, colaborou Tania Monteiro

C4-a

105 27/01/2010 SP registra 174km de lentidão Cristiane Bomfim

C4-b

106 27/01/2010 Cratera de Itapevi será aterrada em 60 dias

Rodrigo Burgarelli, colaboraram Damaris Giuliana, Maira Teixeira e Felipe Oda

C4-c

107 28/01/2010 Novas ruas alagam no Jd. Romano Vitor Hugo Brandalise, colaborou Isis Brum

C4-a

108 28/01/2010 De 11 mortos na capital, 7 moravam em áreas de risco

Felipe Oda, colaborou Ana Bizzotto

C4-b

109 28/01/2010 Limpeza de bueiro terá ajuda do Estado

Luisa Alcalde C4-c

110 30/01/2010 CRECISP orienta moradores de áreas alagadas da Capital

B6

111 30/01/2010 Reservatórios dividem opiniões D.Z. C4 112 30/01/2010 Nível do Sistema Alto Tietê preocupa

Sabesp e prefeituras Rodrigo Brancatelli

C4-a

113 30/01/2010 Chuva ininterrupta muda rotina de SP Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C4-b

114 31/01/2010 Esperando uma trégua A1-a 115 31/01/2010 Enchente será arma de Dilma; Serra

amplia viagens por SP A1-b

116 31/01/2010 Quando reservatório cheio é ameaça Lourival Sant'Anna

C4

117 31/01/2010 Até quando o sol raiar Ivan Marsiglia J8 118 1/02/2010 Jd. Romano pode entrar em

calamidade Luiz Guilherme Gerbelli, Raquel Cozer

C5

119 4/02/2010 Temporal em São Paulo mata 1 na zona norte; 2 estão desaparecidos

C8-a

120 4/02/2010 Após decreto, Jd. Romano ficará sem obra emergencial

Renato Machado

C8-b

121 4/02/2010 PT protocola 2 pedidos de CPI das enchentes

C8-c

192

122 5/02/2010 Säo Paulo registra mais 2 mortes Felipe Grandin, Marcela Spinosa, Damaris Giuliana, Monica Pestana, Cristiane Bomfim, Priscila Trindade

C3-a

123 5/02/2010 Árvore que provocou morte na Vila Maria seria retirada

Ana Bizzotto C3-b

124 6/02/2010 Unidade movel do CRECISP atende a desabrigados das enchentes

B4

125 6/02/2010 Pelo menos 17 bairros ficam sem energia elétrica

Luisa Alcalde, Luiz Guilherme GerBelli, Monica Pestana

C4-a

126 6/02/2010 Corpo é tirado do piscinão Washington Luis

Daniel Gonzales, Daniela Do Canto

C4-b

127 9/02/2010 Investimentos no Alto Tietê A3 128 9/02/2010 Ato de alagados tem políticos e

confronto Rodrigo Burgarelli

C1

129 9/02/2010 ‘Não precisa de tudo isso, né?’, critica morador

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C3-a

130 9/02/2010 Rio baixou, mas alagamento continua R.B. C3-b 131 10/02/2010 Cancelados 4 contratos de limpeza de

piscinão Cristiane Bomfim, Marcela Spinosa, colaborou Luis Guilherme Gerbelu

C5-a

132 10/02/2010 Vizinhos ao Jd. Romano sofrem com lixo e lama

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C5-b

133 12/02/2010 Bairro alagado tem de ser drenado Eduardo Reina C5 134 14/02/2010 Mesmo com ruas secas, calamidade é

mantida C9

135 19/02/2010 PM terá de cuidar de área de risco em SP

Isis Brum C8-a

136 19/02/2010 Na zona sul, continua a busca por desaparecido

Ana Bizzotto C8-b

137 19/02/2010 Obra deixa área de enchentes C8-c 138 19/02/2010 MP investiga negligência do governo

em cheia Roberto Fonseca

C8-d

139 20/02/2010 Operação detém 13 por descarte de entulho

Damaris Giuliana

C3

140 25/02/2010 Moradores do Itaim Paulista enfrentam PMs após enchente

Bruno Ribeiro, Elvis Pereira

C6

141 24/03/2010 Jardim Pantanal terá dique para evitar alagamentos

Eduardo Reina C7

142 12/04/2010 Tragédia anunciada Antonio Penteado Mendonça

B8

143 20/04/2010 4 meses após enchente, começa obra de dique no Jardim Romano

Ana Bizotto C4

144 15/05/2010 Expulsos do Jd. Romano tentam criar um bairro

Diego Zanchetta

C3

145 28/05/2010 Montanha de entulho aterra várzea do Rio Tietê dentro do Parque Ecológico

Diego Zanchetta

C1

193

146 29/05/2010 Corinthians: R$ 990 mil de multa por crime ambiental e obra de CT proibida

Diego Zanchetta

C1

147 6/07/2010 Três anos após despoluição, córregos de SP voltam a arrastar lixo e esgoto

Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C1-a

148 6/07/2010 Coleta da Sabesp tem defeito, dizem moradores

D.Z., R.B. C1-b

149 7/07/2010 33 bairros de SP ainda despejam esgoto no Tietê

Eduardo Reina C4

150 7/07/2010 Córrego do Ipiranga só terá obra no final de 2011

Rodrigo Burgarelli, Eduardo Reina

C4

151 21/07/2010 Itaim-bibi usa bandeira contra falta de memória

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C6

152 8/09/2010 SP terå plano municipal de saneamento. Por enquanto, sem falar de enchentes

Eduardo Reina C5-a

153 8/09/2010 Loteamento irregular ao lado da Billings tem pior situação da cidade

E.R. C5-b

154 8/09/2010 Chuva fraca já assusta o Jardim Romano

Bruno Paes Manso

C5-c

155 13/09/2010 Sem investimentos, Barra Funda vai ganhar 30 mil moradores em 5 anos

Rodrigo Brancatelli

C1

156 24/09/2010 Kassab fecha contrato de R$ 70,5 mi sem licitação, o maior da história

Diego Zanchetta

C3

157 25/09/2010 Para Kassab, acordo tem respaldo 'jurídico e moral'

Diego Zanchetta

C6

158 29/09/2010 Prefeito garante: ‘SP estå mais bem preparada para as enchentes’

D.Z., R.M., R.B.

C1

159 8/10/2010 Para blindar Kassab, Prefeitura faz 'dossiê enchente'

Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Brancatelli

C3-a

160 8/10/2010 Fim de semana deve seguir com tempo nublado

C3-b

161 14/10/2010 Sistema dará alerta de enchente 2 horas antes

Luiz Guilherme Gerbelli

C4

162 16/10/2010 A previsão das enchentes A3 163 31/10/2010 Parque Várzeas do Tietê começa a sair

do papel Mariana Lenharo

C3

164 27/11/2010 Jd. Pantanal: dique só depois da chuva Diego Zanchetta

C8-a

165 27/11/2010 Menino sumido ajudou irmão Bruno Ribeiro, Marcela Spinosa

C8-b

166 1/12/2010 Temporal alaga Anchieta, Régis e parte de SP e ABC

Eduardo Reina, Vitor Hugo Brandalise, Ana Bizzotto

C6

167 1/12/2010 Homem é levado em Bauru; em SP, corpo de garoto é achado

C6

168 14/12/2010 Em apenas 3h de chuva, 70 pontos de alagamento

Damaris Giuliana, colaboraram Marilia Lopes, José Maria Tomazela, Eduardo Reina, Vitor Hugo Brandalise, Tatiana Fåvaro, Pedro Da Rocha

C4

169 17/12/2010 Dique causa briga entre SP e Guarulhos

Mårcio Pinho C4

194

170 23/12/2010 Professora é arrastada ao tentar salvar carro

Diego Zanchetta, Cristiane Bonfim

C8-a

171 23/12/2010 Projeto de canalização do córrego já foi previsto em 2008

D.Z. C8-b

172 4/01/2011 Verba de Comunicação vai para o Tietê

R.A. A8

173 4/01/2011 Jd. Pantanal deixa de alagar Diego Zanchetta

C5

174 5/01/2011 Cena da Cidade C2 175 5/01/2011 O problema continua C2 176 9/01/2011 SP nos tribunais: as 10 maiores brigas

de moradores e Prefeitura na Justiça Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C1

177 12/01/2011 A equação näo fecha Gilberto Pacini A2 178 12/01/2011 São Paulo pode conter as enchentes A3 179 12/01/2011 Transtorno que se repete C6-a 180 12/01/2011 Para quem voltava para casa, medo e

prejuízos Flåvia Tavares, Paulo Saldana, Nataly Costa, Renato, Solange Spigliatti

C6-b

181 12/01/2011 Rodoviária suspende vendas, vôos atrasam, guinchos faturam

Mårcio Pinho e Nataly Costa

C6-c

182 12/01/2011 Atibaia decreta situaçäo de emergência Valéria França, colaborou Damaris Giuliana

C6-d

183 12/01/2011 No Bom Retiro, água teve de ser bombeada

M.P. C6-e

184 12/01/2011 Das áreas alagadas, 30 são velhas conhecidas

Cristiane Bomfim

C7-a

185 12/01/2011 Dicas para sair do sufoco Nataly Costa C7-b 186 12/01/2011 Começo de 2002 C7-c 187 12/01/2011 Março de 2005 C8-a 188 12/01/2011 Assoreados, Tietê e Pinheiros

transbordam Bruno Paes Manso, Renato Machado

C8-b

189 12/01/2011 Kassab culpa a chuva. Uma saída usada há 24 anos

Rodrigo Burgarelli, Bruno Ribeiro, Paulo Saldana

C9-a

190 12/01/2011 Dinheiro para obras de canalização encolhe

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C9-b

191 12/01/2011 Fevereiro de 2008 C9-c 192 12/01/2011 Fluxo de carros na Marginal deveria ter

sido parado C9-d

193 13/01/2011 Chuvas e escolhas Francisco da Costa Oliveira

A2

194 13/01/2011 Capital ainda tem área alagada Diego Zanchetta, Marcela Spinosa

C9-a

195 14/01/2011 Após dois dias, Jardim Pantanal continua inundado; só bomba tira água de casas

C9-b

196 16/01/2011 Ponte valoriza o Jardim Säo Paulo CI04 197 18/01/2011 Em SP, até CEU fica em área de risco;

Kassab não divulga mapa Mårcio Pinho C3

195

198 21/02/2011 Clima - as cidades não podem esperar mais

Washington Novaes

A2

199 21/02/2011 Grande SP ainda tem 9 bairros alagados

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C4

200 25/02/2011 Em 2 horas, 3 mortos e 73% a mais de raios

Nataly Costa, colaborou Marcela Spinosa

C3-a

201 25/02/2011 Secretário compra chuva de SP à de Friburgo

N.C. C3-b

202 25/02/2011 Calha do Tietê já não suporta tanta água

N.C. C3-c

203 27/02/2011 Lider ainda ajuda alagados na zona leste

Rodrigo Burgarelli

C2

204 7/02/2011 170 anos de projetos contra enchentes em SP

Rodrigo Brancatelli

C6

205 8/02/2011 Estado construirá creches e casas com a Prefeitura

Diego Zanchetta, colaborou Bruno Ribeiro

C7

206 11/02/2011 Represas evidenciam que é preciso ter pressa

Washington Novaes

A2

207 17/02/2011 Lago transborda e inunda Aclimação Paulo Saldana, Mårcio Pinho, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C4

208 17/02/2011 Temporal alaga avenidas, fecha tunel e para Congonhas e trens

P.S., M.P., R.B.

C4

209 1/03/2011 Dia de caos em SP. Solução, só a longo prazo

A1

210 1/03/2011 Tietê tarnsborda pela 3a vez no ano, SP tem dia de caos e solução só em 40 anos

Bruno Paes Manso, Diego Zanchetta, Eduardo Reina. Paulo Saldana, Renato Machado, Rodrigo Brancatelli, Valéria Franca e Flåvia Tavares

C1-a

211 1/03/2011 Faltam 5 piscinões no Aricanduva e no Anhangabaú

Bruno Paes Manso, Eduardo Reina, Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C1-b

212 2/03/2011 Contra enchentes, água do Pinheiros será bombeada mais rápido à Billings

Eduardo Reina, colaborou Renato Machado

C1-a

213 2/03/2011 Kassab promete consulta de obra na Pompeia em 30 dias

Diego Zanchetta

C1-b

214 2/03/2011 Plano já começou defasado em 1998 Julio Cerqueira Cesar Neto

C1-c

215 5/03/2011 Muros na beira da Marginal. A arma do governo para o Tietê não transbordar

Tiago Dantas C1-a

216 5/03/2011 Solução exige cuidar da erosäo, tratar lixo e criar túnel para cheias

Luiz Ferreira Vaz

C1-b

217 5/03/2011 Em 12 anos, plano de dreanagem só cumpre 1/3 da meta inicial

T.D. C1-c

218 12/03/2011 Só dinheiro não basta A3 219 1/04/2011 Planejamento metropolitano A3 220 5/05/2011 TCE libera pregão para limpar o Tietê Felipe Frazäo C6

196

221 26/05/2011 Prefeitura vai começar a aterrar fios e reformar calçadas do Largo da Batata

Rodrigo Burgareni, Vitor Hugo Brandalise

C7-a

222 26/05/2011 Desassoreamento do rio na capital começa hoje

C7-b

223 27/05/2011 Obras em locais de enchente ficam só no papel

Fabiano Nunes C6

224 11/07/2011 Muros antienchente ficam para 2013 Fåbio Mazitelli C3 225 14/07/2011 Imóvel tombado muda plano de parque Fåbio Mazitelli C4 226 28/07/2011 15 mil árvores não foram plantadas Paulo Saldana,

Renato Machado

C3

227 6/09/2011 3 das 4 medidas contra enchente estão paradas

Tiago Dantas C6

228 29/09/2011 SP quer espalhar pela cidade alarmes para avisar sobre enchente

Marici Capitelli C4

229 30/09/2011 Levantamento revela 56 peixes no Alto Tietê; 5 espécies novas

Alexandre Goncalves

A20

230 8/10/2011 Sem obra até 2014, Pompeia ganha praça antienchente

Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C6

231 9/10/2011 Como a ocupação do Tietê causou a contaminação do shopping

Diego Zanchetta, colaborou Rodrigo Brancatelli

C10

232 18/10/2011 Enchente pode render ficha-suja para governantes

Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C3

233 21/10/2011 Nem multa de R$ 12 mil evita descarte de entulho

Diego Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C7-a

234 21/10/2011 Reforma de galerias da Pompeia só acaba em 2014

R.B. C7-b

235 22/10/2011 O combate às enchentes A3 236 22/10/2011 SP não tem mais área de alto risco, diz

Prefeitura Adriana Ferraz, Bruno Ribeiro, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C6

237 24/10/2011 Entrevista Geraldo Alckmin, Governador do Estado de São Paulo

Alberto Bombig A8

238 2/11/2011 Capital deve ter até 20% mais chuva neste ano

Mårcio Pinho, Felipe Frazäo

C5

239 24/11/2011 Alunos fazem campanha contra enchente

Cristiane Bomfim

C10

240 17/12/2011 Twittadas da semana C2 241 25/01/2012 Quando o Jardim Romano virou rio E7 242 31/01/2012 Parque Várzeas do Tietê Diego

Zanchetta, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C4

243 5/04/2012 Chance de o Tietê transbordar será de 1%, diz Estado

Artur Rodrigues

C4

244 26/04/2012 Vereador prega placas em casas da zona leste

Diego Zanchetta

C7

245 6/06/2012 20 anos depois, Rio volta a discutir futuro do planeta

Herton Escobar A18

246 1/07/2012 Passa a chuva, ficam as marcas Pablo Pereira H8-a 247 1/07/2012 A proposta dos candidatos H8-b

197

248 29/08/2012 ‘Ação na cracolândia foi burrice’, diz Soninha

Guilherme Waltenberg

A12

249 22/09/2012 Governo de SP planeja mais 44 piscinões

Artur Rodrigues, Rodrigo Burgarelli

C3-a

250 22/09/2012 Morador põe móveis no alto na 'casa de gigante'

A.R. C3-b

251 22/09/2012 Estado quer a iniciativa privada limpando o Tietê

C3-c

252 22/09/2012 Rio também é marcado pelas enchentes

X4

253 24/09/2012 Governo quer que empresas cuidem de piscinões

Artur Rodrigues

C6-a

254 24/09/2012 Método ainda não mostrou eficácia Julio Cerqueira Cesar Neto

C6-b

255 7/12/2012 Jd. Romano tem imóvel de R$ 250 mil R.B. C8 256 11/12/2012 Marginal so terá obra anticheia apos o

verão Caio do Valle C4

257 15/12/2012 100 mil pessoas serão obrigadas a mudar de endereço

Victor Vieira H4

258 16/12/2012 Entrevista Fernando Haddad, prefeito eleito de SP

Adriana Ferraz, Bruno Paes Manso, Diego Zanchetta

C1

Table A.2 Folha de São Paulo (Folha)

Reference number (R#)

Date (dd/mm/yyyy)

Headline Author(s) Section & page27

259 15/01/2008 Chuva provoca alagamentos e lentidão em SP

C3

260 16/01/2008 Buemba! Quero rodízio de alagamento! José Simão E9 261 19/01/2008 Buemba! A marchinha do relaxa e

goza! José Simão E14

262 30/02/2008 Litoral de SP deve ter chuva forte e ventos de até 60 km/h

Fabio Amato e Talita Bedinelli

C9

263 10/03/2008 Trânsito eleitoral A6 264 14/03/2008 Kassab prepara pacote para o trânsito Ricardo

Sangiovanni C7

265 15/04/2008 SP não usou verba recebida de shopping para aliviar trânsito

Cinthia Rodrigues

C5

266 15/04/2008 Chuva em SP deve seguir nos próximos dias

C6

267 3/08/2008 Retificaçäo do Tietê previa construção de piscinões

M.B. E9

268 3/08/2008 Arquiteta propõe ir de gôndola ao Anhembi pelo Tietê

Mariana Barros E10

269 8/08/2008 Chuva causa lentidão de 201 km em SP

C6

270 9/08/2008 Zona norte é ponto de partida de série que abordará, aos sábados, problemas da cidade

A6

271 10/08/2008 Obra no Tietê está parada C2 272 17/08/2008 O pior E5-a 273 17/08/2008 Enchente é a maior queixa do Cambuci J.C. E5-b 274 23/09/2008 Buemba! Bush lança o Bolsa Bolsa! José Simão E10 275 17/10/2008 Srur veste colete salva-vidas em

estátuas de SP Fernanda Ezabella

E6

276 23/11/2008 O clima em Londres Marcelo Leite 11

198

277 30/11/2008 A tragédia prevista Walter Ceneviva

C4

278 1/12/2008 [Ilustração - Papai Noel Afogado] Angeli A2-a 279 1/12/2008 Irresponsabilidade mata Rogerio Gentile A2-b 280 9/12/2008 Relógios de rua de SP terão

informações sobre o trânsito Evandro Spinelli

C4

281 23/12/2008 Na marginal, água cobriu janela de carros

Talita Bedinelli C3-a

282 23/12/2008 Chuva forte prejudica últimos dias de compras de Natal em SP

C3-b

283 24/12/2008 Areas crônicas voltam a sofrer alagamento

Rogerio Pagnan

C3-a

284 24/12/2008 Piscinão transbordou por falha em bomba, diz subprefeitura

Talita Bedinelli C3-b

285 24/12/2008 Ueba! Dia de encarar o peru da sogra! José Simão E7 286 25/12/2008 SP tem projeto para 14 das 30 áreas

crônicas de inundação C5

287 26/12/2008 21 mil imóveis ficam sem luz no Natal em SP

C2

288 27/12/2008 A atual estratégia de combate a enchentes urbanas na região metropolitana de São Paulo é adequada?

[SIM] Aluisio Pardo Canholi/ [NAO] Ålvaro Rodrigues dos Santos

A3

289 28/12/2008 10 anos depois, Pantanal não tem mais 'gato'

F.B.M. C4

290 1/01/2009 É 2009! Acorda, macacada! José Simão E7 291 29/01/2009 Palmeiras luta na agua, no ar e reza Renan Cacioli D1 292 30/01/2009 Boom imobiliário agrava enchentes em

Perdizes e no Ipiranga Evandro Spinelli

C1

293 30/01/2009 Radar meteorológico controla barragem dos rios Tietê e Pinheiros

C3-a

294 30/01/2009 1 a cada 7 imóveis não tem área permeável em Pinheiros

Jose Ernesto Credendio

C3-b

295 30/01/2009 Enchente! Kassab agora é Kaxágua! José Simão E11 296 8/02/2009 Temporal alaga 55 pontos, arrasta

carros na zona oeste de SP e mata 1 A9

297 27/02/2009 Duas crianças morrem soterradas no Guarujá

Adriana Ferraz e Marcela Fonseca

C4-a

298 27/02/2009 Alagamento é crítico em 31 pontos, diz CET

C4-b

299 21/03/2009 Conselho cobra mudanças na Nova Marginal

Evandro Spinelli e Conrado Corsalette

C3

300 29/06/2009 Marginal Tietê Eduardo Jorge Martins Alves Sobrinho

A3

301 21/07/2009 Parque com 107 km2 de área será criado nas margens do Tietê

C7

302 9/09/2009 Irmãos de 3 e 8 anos morrem soterrados na zona leste de SP

C3-a

303 9/09/2009 Lixo nas ruas agrava alagamentos em SP

Pablo Solano C3-b

304 9/09/2009 SP tem de acabar com as marginais, diz professor

José Ernesto Credendio

C4-a

305 9/09/2009 Achei que estaria segura no elevado, diz motorista

Paulo Sampaio C4-b

306 9/09/2009 Onde havia terra, hoje há asfalto Evandro Spinelli

C4-c

307 9/09/2009 Sair de casa com essa chuva é uma estupidez

Rodrigo Fiume C4-d

199

308 9/09/2009 Na Paulista, Dia foi muito tranquilo C4-e 309 9/09/2009 Chuva causa congestionamento, alaga

marginais e libera rodízio C5

310 10/09/2009 São Paulo enche A2-a 311 10/09/2009 São Paulo e a maldição Clovis Rossi A2-b 312 10/09/2009 Frases Roberto

Watanabe A2-c

313 10/09/2009 Kassab gastou no ano só 7% da verba para piscinões

Evandro Spinelli

C1-a

314 10/09/2009 Sobe para 12 o número de mortos em SP e SC

Pablo Solano C1-b

315 10/09/2009 Kassab defende gasto com enchente e lixo

C3-a

316 10/09/2009 Após temporal, ruas de SP ainda acumulam lixo

Tainalon C3-b

317 10/09/2009 Para urbanistas, Nova Marginal amplia erro

Mario Cesar Carvalho

C4-a

318 10/09/2009 Para Serra, ampliação minimiza erro de projeto de 50 anos atrås

Rogerio Pagnan

C4-b

319 10/09/2009 A experiência das marginais de Seul Raul Juste Lores

C4-c

320 10/09/2009 Ceagesp perde 300 toneladas de frutas com temporal

C6

321 11/09/2009 Enchentes: carta aberta ao governador Alvaro Rodrigues dos Santos

A3-a

322 11/09/2009 Painel do leitor: Marginais Osmar Ferreira Rangel Neto

A3-b

323 16/09/2009 Painel do leitor: Enchentes José Hamilton Cruz

A3-a

324 16/09/2009 Painel do leitor: Enchentes Tomas Bussius A3-b 325 28/11/2009 Enchentes! Banana boat sem IPI! Jose Simão E15 326 30/11/2009 Antes tinha sujeira pra todo lado. Agora

tem córrego limpo. SABESP C3

327 4/12/2009 Caos em SP, de novo C1 328 4/12/2009 Temporal provoca Cinco mortes e

paralisa São Paulo Afonso Benites, André Caramante,José Ernesto Credencio, Márico Pinho E Talita Bedinelli

C2

329 4/12/2009 [Multiple highlights] C2 330 4/12/2009 Investimento de Kassab em piscinões

não chega a 8% Marcio Pinho C7

331 9/12/2009 Chuva alaga marginais e isola SP A1-a 332 9/12/2009 Para especialista, não há saida nos

próximos 3 anos A1-b

333 9/12/2009 A chuva e as pessoas Nelson de Sá A10 334 9/12/2009 Chuva mata 6; falha em bomba piora

enchentes C1-a

335 9/12/2009 De um lado, o caos; do outro, a paz de uma manhã de domingo

Paulo Sampaio C1-b

336 9/12/2009 Deslizamento mata quatro irmãos na Grande São Paulo

C2-a

337 9/12/2009 Bombeiros tem de nadar para apagar incêndio com baldes

Vinicius Queiroz Galvao

C2-b

338 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos C2-c 339 9/12/2009 Mãe é resgatada por helicóptero para

dar à luz C2-d

340 9/12/2009 Com enchente, carros invadem o Anhembi

C2-e

200

341 9/12/2009 Chuva inunda garagem na Barra Funda

C2-f

342 9/12/2009 Taxista cobra R$ 3 para passar por alagamento

C2-g

343 9/12/2009 Irmãos de 3 e 8 anos morrem soterrados na zona leste de SP

C3-a

344 9/12/2009 Lixo nas ruas agrava alagamentos em SP

Pablo Solano C3-b

345 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos C4-a 346 9/12/2009 Falha afetou a vazão de água no rio

Tietê C4-b

347 9/12/2009 Kassab culpa chuva e diz que lado positivo é que obras deram certo

Tatiana Santiago

C4-c

348 9/12/2009 Governo Serra 'estuda' adotar mais 2 bombas

C4-d

349 9/12/2009 Chuva causa congestionamento, alaga marginais e libera rodízio

C5

350 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos C6-a 351 9/12/2009 Professor da USP diz que é preciso

elevar marginais Mario Cesar Carvalho

C6-b

352 9/12/2009 Obra só ameniza as enchentes, diz engenheiro

Ricardo Westin C6-c

353 9/12/2009 Outras Enchentes C6-d 354 9/12/2009 Culpa por desastres naturais já opôs

filósofos Hélio Schwartsman

C6-e

355 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos C8-a 356 9/12/2009 Meteorologia alerta para mais chuvas

até sábado Ligia Sotratti C8-b

357 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos C9-a 358 9/12/2009 Após chuva, Kassab eleva verba

antienchente Mariana Barros C9-b

359 9/12/2009 Nos bastidores, PSDB e DEM trocam acusações

Jose Alberto e Fernando Barros De Mello

C9-c

360 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos EC3-a 361 9/12/2009 Motorista desiste de carro e sai de

bicicleta EC3-b

362 9/12/2009 Alunos faltam em escola de inglês na Lapa

EC3-c

363 9/12/2009 Cenógrafo compra bote para salvar estúdio fotográfico

Laura Capriglione

EC3-d

364 9/12/2009 Rotina de Caos EC5-a 365 9/12/2009 Ilhado, paulistano desiste de ir ao

trabalho EC5-b

366 10/12/2009 Fora da casinha Renata Lo Prete

A4

367 10/12/2009 Sistema anticheia só volta a ativa em 10 dias

Rogério Pagnan e Alencar Izidoro

C1-a

368 10/12/2009 Bomba não evitaria cheia, afirma Serra C1-b 369 10/12/2009 Ueba! Kassab lança Bihete Úmido! Jose Simão E15 370 11/12/2009 Orgão sabia do risco de Tietê

transbordar, mas não deu alerta Afonso Benites e José Ernesto Credendio

C1-a

371 11/12/2009 Nas rodovias, alerta só é dado em alguns casos

C1-b

372 11/12/2009 Bairros enfrentam água, esgoto e medo

Marcio Pinho C3-a

373 11/12/2009 Governos culpam ocupação e negam omissão

C3-b

201

374 11/12/2009 Água de beber Laura Capriglione

C4-a

375 11/12/2009 Governo anuncia auditoria em bombas contra cheia na marginal

Rogério Pagnan e Alencar Izidoro

C4-b

376 12/12/2009 A cidade de São Paulo se prepara de forma adequada para combater as enchentes?

[Sim] Miguel Bucalem

A3-a

377 12/12/2009 A cidade de São Paulo se prepara de forma adequada para combater as enchentes?

[Não] Alvaro Rodrigues dos Santos

A3-b

378 12/12/2009 Painel do Leitor: Chuvas Sérgio Rondino A3-c 379 12/12/2009 Governo não usa 45% de verba

antienchente Alencar Izidoro e Rogério Pagnan

C4-a

380 12/12/2009 Bombeiros encontram os corpos de dois estudantes na zona leste

Marcio Pinho e Leo Arcoverde

C4-b

381 13/12/2009 Chove não molha Felipe Nöbrega 1 382 13/12/2009 Demóforos A14 383 13/12/2009 Prefeitura quer compensar quem

permeabilizar solo C4-a

384 13/12/2009 Políticas ultrapassadas contribuem para enchentes

Cristina Moreno de Castro

C4-b

385 13/12/2009 Excesso de chuva e falha em equipamento do governo de SP provocam de novo o caos

C16

386 14/12/2009 Painel do leitor: Tietê Lutero Maynard

A3

387 15/12/2009 Colapso paulistano Fernando de Barros E Silva

A2

388 15/12/2009 Kassab quer antecipar retirada de famílias

Aline Mazzo C3-a

389 15/12/2009 Crianças vivem em meio a cobras e risco de doença

C3-b

390 15/12/2009 Area não deveria ser habitada, diz engenheiro

C3-c

391 16/12/2009 Câmara corta verba para ações antienchente

Mariana Barros C4-a

392 16/12/2009 Morador espera 4 horas por atendimento no Pantanal

Marcio Pinho C4-b

393 16/12/2009 Prefeitura estuda usar bombas para drenar a água

C4-c

394 17/12/2009 Jardim Pantanal ainda recebe água com esgoto

A1

395 17/12/2009 Diário da enchente A14 396 17/12/2009 Esgoto é despejado em área alagada

há 8 dias Laura Capriglione

C1-a

397 17/12/2009 Agora Kassab diz que irá retirar as famílias

Mariana Barros C1-b

398 17/12/2009 Helicóptero resgata crianças no temporal

C3-a

399 17/12/2009 Governo libera R$ 742 mi para chuvas e seca

C3-b

400 18/12/2009 Prefeitura incentivou ocupação no Jd. Pantanal

Evandro Spinelli e Laura Capriglione

C3

401 18/12/2009 Uma noite no esgoto Marcio Pinho C4-a 402 18/12/2009 Pantanal é fruto de 7 décadas de mau

planejamento Helio Schwartsman

C4-b

403 19/12/2009 Prefeitura diz ter solução definitiva para o Jd. Pantanal

C8-a

404 19/12/2009 Area alagada terá posto do Poupa Tempo

C8-b

202

405 19/12/2009 Area alagada tem 9 suspeitas de leptospirose

Ricardo Westin e Afonso Benites

C8-c

406 20/12/2009 Painel do leitor: Enchentes Hugo Alemida A3 407 21/12/2009 Menino morre com suspeita de

leptospirose Ricardo Westin C6

408 22/12/2009 Prefeitura exige mais verde em prédios novos

Mariana Barros C1-a

409 22/12/2009 Medida encarece construções, diz engenheiro

C1-b

410 22/12/2009 Após 14 dias, água baixa no Jardim Pantanal

Afonso Benites C8

411 26/12/2009 Alagados no Natal Laura Capriglione

C3

412 27/12/2009 Cai a taxa de aprovação ao governo Gilberto Kassab

José Ernesto Credendio

C1

413 29/12/2009 Chuva mata 1 e deixa 3.500 desalojados

C6-a

414 29/12/2009 Chuva leva moradores do Jardim Pantanal de volta para abrigo

C6-b

415 29/12/2009 Kassab anuncia 3.250 casas para as vítimas

José Ernesto Credendio

C6-c

416 30/12/2009 Kassabinho e 2012 Melchiades Filho

C12

417 6/01/2010 Chuva alaga grandes avenidas, de novo

C3-a

418 6/01/2010 Serra fala em barrar obras na várzea do Tietê

C3-b

419 7/01/2010 Moradores protestam contra enchente Aline Mazzo C4-a 420 7/01/2010 Diarista morre ao ser sugada por

bueiro sem grade C4-b

421 7/01/2010 Kassab vai construir piscinões que Serra engavetou há 5 anos

Mario Cesar Carvalho e Evandro Spinelli

C4-c

422 7/01/2010 Prefeitura diz que teve de analisar eficácia de obra

C4-d

423 7/01/2010 Governo acusa Bauducco de aterrar várzea do rio Tietê

Talita Bedinelli C4-e

424 8/01/2010 Chuva volta a castigar o Jardim Pantanal

C3

425 9/01/2010 Marginais são as vias que mais alagam Talita Bedinelli e Afonso Benites

C3-a

426 9/01/2010 Rua nos Jardins alaga, mas fica fora de estatística

C3-b

427 9/01/2010 Kassab quer horário exato para coleta de lixo

C3-c

428 9/01/2010 Kassab é hostilizado ao visitar área alagada

C4-a

429 9/01/2010 Para moradores, alagamento foi maior agora

Cristina Moreno de Castro

C4-b

430 9/01/2010 Moradores enfrentam PM durante protesto

Laura Capriglione e Cristina Moreno de Castro

C4-c

431 9/01/2010 Represas poderão ter de liberar água, diz Serra a prefeitos

Catia Seabra C4-d

432 9/01/2010 Catástrofe! Ana Maria Braga desaba! José Simão E9 433 13/01/2010 Bolsa-enchente de Kassab não garante

nova moradia Laura Capriglione

C7

434 17/01/2010 BBB 10! Boate gay é mais animado! José Simão E9

203

435 22/01/2010 Reféns da Chuva C1 436 22/01/2010 Em 77 anos, nunca houve janeiro tão

chuvoso Augusto José Pereira Filho

C2

437 22/01/2010 Reféns da chuva C4-a 438 22/01/2010 Atraso em obra agrava cheias nas

marginais Eduardo Geraque, Evanoro Sanellj e Alexandre Nobeschi

C4-b

439 22/01/2010 Bomba falha e túnel fica com água no teto

Mariana Barros C4-c

440 22/01/2010 Mauricio de Sousa fica preso uma hora no carro com o filho

Vinicius Queiroz Galvão

C4-d

441 22/01/2010 Reféns da chuva C5-a 442 22/01/2010 Kassab culpa chuva; no Grajaú, é

vaiado Evanoro Spinelli

C5-b

443 22/01/2010 Água invade estúdios e figurino, e Cultura faz plano antienchente

E10

444 22/01/2010 Socuerro! São Pedro cuspiu na gente! José Simão E11 445 23/01/2010 Ensaio sobre o aguaceiro Fernando De

Barros e Silva A2

446 23/01/2010 Há o que comemorar no aniversário de 456 anos da cidade de São Paulo?

[Sim] José Police Neto

A3

447 23/01/2010 Falha em túnel é inadmissível, diz técnico

Talita Bedinelli C4-a

448 23/01/2010 Sem bloqueio, carro entra em túnel inundado

C4-b

449 23/01/2010 Prefeitura aposta em parque e calçada verde

Evandro Spinelli

C4-c

450 23/01/2010 Serra reaparece, mas nao fala sobre enchente no Tietê

C4-d

451 23/01/2010 Urbanização em confronto com paisagem natural

Regina M. Prosperi Meyer e Marta Dora Grostein

C5

452 23/01/2010 Sampa! É o Feriadão da Afundação! José Simão E13 453 24/01/2010 Aniversário sofrido A2 454 25/01/2010 A cidade que despreza o rio 1 455 25/01/2010 São Paulo exclui o Tietê, mas aceita o

Pinheiros Evandro Spinelli

2

456 25/01/2010 Rio já está morto mesmo com projeto de despoluição

Eduardo Geraque

3

457 25/01/2010 Primeira grande enchente ocorreu em 1850

T.N. 4

458 25/01/2010 Tieté já teve 29 projetos fracassados Tai Nalon 5 459 25/01/2010 Para Dersa, obra vai ajudar no

combate às enchentes M.C.C. 6

460 25/01/2010 Há vida no Tietê Laura Capriglione E Daniel Bergamasco

8 e 9

461 25/01/2010 Projeto de 1924 Previa bulevar onde hoje é a marginal

T.N. 10

462 25/01/2010 História paulistana Fabricio Corsaletti

14

463 25/01/2010 Chuva alaga ruas e faz córrego transbordar

C3-a

464 25/01/2010 Para fugir de esgoto, morador invade escola

Daniel Bergamasco

C3-b

465 27/01/2010 Chuva provoca estragos em 132 cidades de SP

Afonso Benites e Eduardo Geraque

C4-a

204

466 27/01/2010 Índices são atípicos, mas não catastróficos

Helio Schwartsman

C4-b

467 27/01/2010 Manifestação contra inundações no Jardim Pantanal fecha Ayrton Senna

C4-c

468 28/01/2010 Ano anômalo A10 469 28/01/2010 Fatores locais e globais inflam chuva

em SP Eduardo Geraque

C4-a

470 28/01/2010 Propaganda de Kassab cobra menos lixo na rua

Evandro Spinelli

C4-b

471 28/01/2010 Prefeito pede a Lula PT não explore chuvas

Catia Seabra C4-c

472 28/01/2010 Para Serra, imprensa ignora ações de combate à enchente

Rogerio Pagnan

C4-d

473 29/01/2010 Garoto morre tragado por galeria na chuva

C3-a

474 29/01/2010 Permeabilização não evita enchentes, afirma geólogo

Mario Cesar Carvalho

C3-b

475 30/01/2010 Mais técnica na política Walter Ceneviva

C2

476 31/01/2010 As águas vão rolar Elio Gaspari A9 477 2/02/2010 Chuva forte isola pessoas em ônibus C4-a 478 2/02/2010 Após enchentes, governo decide

aumentar a limpeza do Tietê Adriana Ferraz C4-b

479 2/02/2010 Bombas vão sugar entulho do fundo do rio

C4-c

480 4/02/2010 Tiroteio A4 481 4/02/2010 Com chuva e ventania fortes, árvore

cai e mata motorista Alencar Izidoro, Ricardo Gallo e Vinicius Queiroz Galvåo

C1

482 4/02/2010 Temporal lota estações do metrô e pára trens

V.Q.G. C4-a

483 4/02/2010 Famílias só deixam Jd. Pantanal sob promessa de que vão voltar

Laura Capriglione

C4-b

484 4/02/2010 Gestão Kassab não comenta procedimento

L.C. C4-c

485 4/02/2010 CET não tem esquema para Indy em SP

José Eduardo Martins, Renan Cacioli e Sandro Macedo

D3

486 4/02/2010 Madonna! Jesus era um capeta! José Simão E11 487 5/02/2010 Em mais um dia de chuva, 50 árvores

caem e zôo alaga C6-a

488 5/02/2010 Enxurrada destrói via e arrasta idosa C6-b 489 7/02/2010 Empulhação Tucana A14 490 8/01/2010 Mitos sobre enchentes em São Paulo Dilma Seli

Pena A3

491 18/01/2010 Chuva faz Rebouças virar rio e alaga Pompeia

Talita Bedinelli, Vinicius Queiroz Galvao, Afonso Benites e Eduardo Geraque

C1-a

492 18/01/2010 Empresário vê seu carro boiar na av. Pompeia

V.Q.G. C1-b

493 19/01/2010 Kassab que horas são? Barbara Gancia

C2

494 19/01/2010 Chuva alaga maior reta do circuito de rua da Indy

José Eduardo Martins

D3

495 20/02/2010 SP terá chuva acima da média até maio

Fabio Amato C8-a

205

496 20/02/2010 Pista da marginal Pinheiros alaga 30 vezes em 50 dias

Afonso Benites e Catharina Nakashima

C8-b

497 28/02/2010 SP quer vôo não tripulado para blindar mananciais

Evandro Spinelli

C3

498 23/03/2010 Lições de verão Fernando de Barros e Silva

A2

499 26/03/2010 Falha na coleta de lixo agrava enchente em SP

Evandro Spinelli

C4-a

500 26/03/2010 Carro boia em Perdizes e ônibus fica ilhado na Pompeia

C4-b

501 26/03/2010 Pedestres levam banho dos carros Daniel Bergamasco

C4-c

502 7/04/2010 Rua no Jardim Pantanal volta a alagar Laura Capriglione

C7

503 7/04/2010 Socuerro! Sudeste vira chuveste! José Simão E11 504 11/04/2010 Semana do leitor Emanuel

Cancella A8

505 11/04/2010 A vila fantasma Laura Capriglione

C3-a

506 11/04/2010 PM monta guarda para evitar invasão L.C. C3-b 507 18/08/2010 Exposição revela cheias paulistanas

dos séculos 19 e 20 Leticia de Castro

C6

508 14/10/2010 Grande São Paulo terá sistema de alerta de cheias

Eduardo Geraque

C4

509 12/12/2010 'Água sobe mais de 1m', diz moradora C.M.C. C2-a 510 12/12/2010 Outros paises já fizeram as contas: é

melhor devolver aos rios suas várzeas Wagner Costa Ribeiro

C2-b

511 12/12/2010 Córrego corre a céu aberto, mas não enche

C.M.C. C2-c

512 7/01/2011 Área na Pompeia fica submersa pela chuva a cada 17 dias no verão

Eduardo Geraque

C3

513 12/01/2011 O que deu errado? C1 514 12/01/2011 O que eu faco se tiver contato com a

água C3-a

515 12/01/2011 Número de pontos de alagamento é o maior desde 2005

Eduardo Geraque e Ricardo Gallo

C3-b

516 12/01/2011 Mãe e filha morrem soterradas; Estado de SP registra 14 mortes

Jams Cimino C3-c

517 12/01/2011 Sem desespero!, pensei, mas não pude controlar o medo da cheia

Conrado Corsalette

C3-d

518 12/01/2011 Assinantes recebem jornal com atraso C3-e 519 12/01/2011 Se minha casa foi atingida pela

enchente C4-a

520 12/01/2011 Trovão vira toque de recolher em Santa Cecilia

Cristina Moreno de Castro

C4-b

521 12/01/2011 Jardim Romano fica seco, mas vizinhos continuam submersos

Talita Bedinelli C4-c

522 12/01/2011 Publicidade pode ajudar a envolver paulistano em causa anticheia

Raul Juste Lores

C4-d

523 12/01/2011 Sinal de alerta de chuva não chega ás ruas

Eduardo Geraque

C5-a

524 12/01/2011 Inundações não tem cura, mas tem tratamento

Fåbio Taxahashi

C5-b

525 12/01/2011 Se eu estiver de carro na enchente C6-a 526 12/01/2011 Alckmin promete obras, para outro

verão Alencar Izidoro C6-b

527 12/01/2011 De novo, Kassab diz que culpa foi de chuva intensa

C6-c

206

528 12/01/2011 Se eu precisar dirigir em um alagamento

C7-a

529 12/01/2011 Com caixa cheio, Kassab não usa verba reservada

José Benedito da Silva

C7-b

530 12/01/2011 Prefeitura diz que obras estão em fase de projeto

C7-c

531 16/01/2011 Muito natural Janio de Freitas

A7

532 16/01/2011 Chuvas de verão Informe Publicitario

A10

533 23/01/2011 Antes tarde do que nunca 10 534 25/01/2011 isto é natural? Evanoro

Spinllii, Eduardo Geraque e Vanessa Correa

C4-a

535 25/01/2011 Sem limpeza, Tietê transborda de novo C4-b 536 11/02/2011 Prefeitura despeja entulho em corrego Apu Gomes e

Eduardo Geraque

C6-a

537 11/02/2011 Secretaria afirma que lixo será recolhido

C6-b

538 23/02/2011 Boom imobiliário rodeia as marginais Sabine Righetti C4 539 28/02/2011 Tempestade trava SP em pleno

domingo Ricardo Gallo e Alencar Izidoro

C1-a

540 28/02/2011 Piscinões para regiões alagadas seguem no papel

José Benedito da Silva

C1b

541 5/03/2011 Alckmin inicia obra antienchente, mas admite que é pouco

Cristina Moreno de Castro

C3

542 6/03/2011 Alckmin escancara divergência com Serra

Catia Seabra e Daniela Lima

A7

543 8/03/2011 Em 4 anos, alagamentos triplicam na marginal Tietê

Cristina Moreno de Castro

C7

544 13/03/2011 O que leva às enchentes YB31 545 13/03/2011 Perdas e danos na Vila Madalena YB31 546 2/04/2011 TCE susta licitação para limpeza do

Tietê C10

547 7/04/2011 Tribunal anula licitação para limpeza do Tietê

A1

548 7/04/2011 Tribunal anula licitação para limpar Tietê

Alencar Izidoro C13

549 26/04/2011 Alagoas terá sistema de alerta contra enchentes

Silvia Freire C7

550 15/05/2011 Calçadas ecológicas da marginal Tietê Bruno Ribeiro YB44 551 5/06/2011 Margem do Tietê deve ser alterada, diz

sul-coreano E.G. C9

552 1/09/2011 São Paulo tem chuva de verão no inverno

C9

553 19/09/2011 Pompeia vai ter obras antienchente apenas em 2015

José Benedito da Silva

C3

554 17/10/2011 Em um dia, cidade tem 21% da chuva esperada para o mês

C4

555 30/10/2011 Lazer e placidez perto do rio Tietê Silvio Lancellotti

YB74

556 8/11/2011 Rios moribundos A2 557 12/11/2011 Chuva atrapalha saída para o feriado C5 558 17/11/2011 Lixo em piscinões do ABC elevam risco

de enchentes Eduardo Geraque e Diego Padgurschi

C10

207

559 30/11/2011 Chuva de 2h alaga ruas e arrasta carros em São Paulo

C8

560 3/12/2011 Paciência, motorista C2 561 9/12/2011 Chuva alaga 24 pontos da cidade e

trava trânsito na hora do rush C2

562 16/12/2011 Chuva 'normal' transborda rios e córregos

Eduardo Geraque e Evandro Spinelli

C9

563 16/12/2011 Ueba! O Natal do peru alagado! José Simão E13 564 12/01/2012 Socuerro! Rodízio de cracolândias! José Simão E11 565 24/01/2012 Chuva em São Paulo alaga ruas,

derruba árvores e fecha túnel Raphael Marchiori

C3-a

566 24/01/2012 Enchente volta a castigar o Jardim Pantanal

Tatiana Santiago

C3-b

567 26/01/2012 No Jardim Pantanal, rua fica inundada mesmo sem chuva

Fabiana Cambricoli

C8

568 7/03/2012 SP anuncia plano contra enchentes para 2040

Eduardo Geraque

C9-a

569 7/03/2012 MP que cria cadastro de catástrofe é aprovada

Maria Clara Cabral

C9-b

570 23/03/2012 SP prepara nova parceria público-privada

Agnaldo Brito B1

571 28/03/2012 40% dos parques anticheias ficam no papel

Eduardo Geraque

C4

572 21/06/2012 Aqui em São Paulo tem um Brasil melhor.

Governo Federal

B3

573 16/07/2012 Obstáculos aéreos A2 574 29/08/2012 Obras de Alckmin contra cheias estão

paradas ou atrasadas Carolina Leal e Eduardo Geraque

C4-a

575 29/08/2012 Governo nega atraso em limpeza, mas cita problemas com piscinões

C4-b

576 8/09/2012 Enchentes A3 577 16/09/2012 Obra não impede piora na nota para

enchentes Giba Bergamim Jr.

9

578 8/11/2012 Fifa teme roubos, alagamentos e homofobia em SP

Juca Kfouri e Martin Fernandez

D1

579 7/12/2012 Chuva alivia calor e causa transtornos no trânsito

C8

208

Appendix 9. Statistical results

[Published as ‘Appendix B’ in Global Environmental Change]

209

210

211

212

213

214

Appendix 10. Voices in media coverage

[Published as ‘Appendix C’ in Global Environmental Change]

215

216

Appendix 11. Publication in Geoforum [Chapter 4]

Henrique, KP & Tschakert, P 2019, ‘Contested grounds: Adaptation to flooding and the politics of (in)visibility in São Paulo’s eastern periphery’, Geoforum, vol. 104, pp. 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.026

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

Appendix 12. Interview questions

[Published as ‘Appendix’ in Geoforum]

In this appendix we provide the questions used to guide the semi-structured interviews

conducted with (a) governmental officials and technical experts and (b) key floodplain

informants. The questions were adapted depending on each informant’s expertise and

experience. Additional flexibility was needed to ensure that all participants,

particularly floodplain informants, were comfortable at all times. All interviews have

been conducted by the first author in Portuguese.

A. Semi-structured interviews with governmental officials and technical experts:

1. Could you talk briefly about your professional career and the work you

develop here at the (name of department/institution/company)?

2. What is the main focus of the (name of department/institution/company)?

3. How would you describe flooding in the city of São Paulo?

4. What do you think are the main causes behind these flood events?

5. What are the (name of department/institution/company) current and future

plans in relation to flood events in the city of São Paulo, particularly in

relation to the Tietê River?

6. Could you describe the project Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT)?

a. What is the current status of the PVT: which phases have been

concluded, which phases are currently under development, and which

phases haven’t been initiated yet? If any of the project’s phases are

delayed, could you talk about the reasons for that?

b. The PVT aims to relocate approximately 7,500 families that currently

inhabit the margins of the Tietê River. Could you talk about these

plans?

c. What is the current status of the relocation process?

7. How does the PVT fit in other plans your (department/institution/company)

has for the city of São Paulo, particularly in relation to urban flooding?

229

8. What is your opinion in relation to the PVT? Do you think the project is

suitable for its site and do you think it will fulfill its intended goals?

9. How do you envision the future of the Tietê River floodplain?

B. Semi-structured interviews with key floodplain informants:

1. Could you talk briefly about yourself?

a. What is your occupation?

b. How old are you?

c. How long have you been living in this community?

2. How would you describe the issue of flooding in your community?

a. What is the frequency of flood events in your community?

b. What was the last time the community suffered a flood event?

c. What level did flood waters reach?

d. How did this event affect your daily life?

e. Did you receive any assistance from the government?

f. Did you receive any assistance from the community?

g. Do you think another flood event like this will affect the community

again?

h. How are you preparing for future flood events?

3. What do you think is the main factor responsible for the floods?

4. What other factors do you think contribute to the floods?

5. Are you familiar with the project Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT)?

a. Do you agree with the construction of the park?

b. How do you expect the construction of the park will affect your

community?

c. How do you feel about the relocation of families for the construction

of the park?

230

d. Do you expect to be relocated?

6. What other measures do you think could be taken by the government for the

management of flooding of the Tietê River?

7. How do you feel in relation to the floods?

8. How do you feel in relation to assistance provided by the government before,

during, and after the floods?

9. How do you envision the future of the Tietê River floodplain?

231

Appendix 13. Submission details: ACME [Chapter 5]

Title

“I am of Pantanal”: Marginal spaces, political subjects, and the transformational

potential of belonging

Abstract

This article examines the uneven and intimate impacts of global environmental change

as unprecedented climatic conditions redefine the way cities are envisioned and

enacted. Cities are at the centre of climate adaptation efforts, however often with

disproportionate burdens for the poor. A case in point, São Paulo, Brazil, is currently

enacting a multi-million dollar floodplain restoration scheme that combines new

infrastructure with the removal of informal floodplain communities to protect the city

against flooding. To legitimise removals, the project brands floodplain residents as

villains and victims of the floods while rendering their voices, needs, and desires

invisible. In this article, I draw on feminist scholarship and encounters with community

leaders to confront this erasure-in-action and reveal counter narratives and everyday

practices embodied by floodplain subjects. In the process, I reconceive the floodplain

as a space of belonging where particular political subjectivities are forged with the

potential to transform unjust adaptation practices. The article aims to animate critical

adaptation scholarship with a feminist approach, making visible the intimate struggles

that emerge at the margins of urban development in response to global pressures,

climatic and otherwise. It also provides lessons for political engagement towards more

inclusive and sustainable urban futures.

232

Submission acknowledgement

233

Appendix 14. Submission details: Progress in Human Geography [Chapter 6]

Title

Pathways to urban transformation: From dispossession to climate justice

Abstract

Cities in the Global South are quintessential sites for climate adaptation; many are

rapidly expanding, struggle with increasing inequalities, and experience

unprecedented harm from climatic extremes. Despite scholarly recognition that

adaptation pathways should reduce multiple vulnerabilities and inequalities, current

adaptation efforts largely preserve the status quo. Many benefit powerful actors while

further entrenching the poor and disadvantaged in cycles of dispossession. We bring

together scholarship on adaptation pathways, politics, and practice to deconstruct

adaptation trajectories. We propose three conceptual steps – acknowledging injustices,

embracing deliberation, and nurturing responsibility for others – to chart inclusive

pathways towards just climate futures.

234

Submission acknowledgement

235

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