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Vulnerabilities and risks in population and environment studies

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Abstract

In the study of risks , different sciences use the same category in different ways, each related to its own ontological assumptions. But many of these fields communicate very little with one another. This article seeks to approximate two of these areas of study that have shown similar concerns and that can mutually strengthen one another, namely, geography and demography. Geography was one of the first disciplines to include risk in its environmental dimension and has had broad experience in simultaneously focusing on social and natural dynamics. Demography, on the other hand, faces greater difficulties because only recently has it incorporated the environmental dimension into its scientific scope. Both have brought the concept of vulnerability into their conceptual framework as complementary to that of risk. Geographers understand vulnerability as a more symbiotic form of the relationship between society and nature, whereas demographers give it a strong socioeconomic component. In this regard, the conceptual discussion on risks and vulnerabilities, in its attempt at approximating these two fields, is a way of conceptually advancing and strengthening the different approaches to empirical work, especially in population–environment studies which is the common ground for the dialogue between the two disciplines.

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Notes

  1. This strategy seeks to develop a frame of reference for the different perspectives as well as to allow a better understanding of the evolution of the concepts. However, there are currently other geographers, not directly associated with studies on natural hazards, who have advanced in their discussion of vulnerability, especially in the context of Global Environmental Change Science and of Sustainability Science. This discussion has been developed in Hogan and Marandola Jr. (2005).

  2. This is, in fact, the idea of resilience, a concept originally developed in physics, which has been taken over by ecology and today is present in a vast bibliography on environmental issues. The authors mention this fact in passing but they do not deal directly with the concept. A more direct association of this concept with studies on vulnerability is a promising perspective.

  3. In the book by Burton, Kates and White, although vulnerability appears in a diffuse way in the text, it is stressed in the summary of ideas, indicating the importance it would take on in the years to come: “Nature, technology, and society interact to generate vulnerability and resilience vis-à-vis disaster. In the short run the global toll in damage will continue to rise, while loss of life will be reduced substantially. The long-term thrust of development in nations is toward reducing the social cost of hazard to society—but in periods of rapid transition societies become peculiarly vulnerable to hazard. A central task for international cooperation should be to ease these transitions. Hazard vulnerability varies among nations, emphasizing loss of life in the developing, and catastrophic damage in the highly industrialized.” (Burton et al. 1978, 223, our bold face)

  4. This geographer, a researcher at the Hazards Research Lab, of the University of South Carolina, U.S.A., has made important conceptual and retrospective assessments on what she calls Vulnerability Science, in the perspective of studies on environmental risks and hazards (Cutter, 1994, 1996, 2003).

  5. Ayres et al. (1999) point out the limitations of these concepts for studies related to health.

  6. This book, organized by Haroldo Torres and Heloisa Costa, selected texts produced by the Working Group during the 1990s, as a representation of its conceptual and thematic history (Torres & Costa, 2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geosciences (IG), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, 13084-970, Brazil

    Eduardo Marandola Jr

  2. Population Studies Center (NEPO), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil

    Eduardo Marandola Jr & Daniel Joseph Hogan

  3. Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil

    Daniel Joseph Hogan

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  1. Eduardo Marandola Jr
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Correspondence to Eduardo Marandola Jr.

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An earlier version of this article was presented at the 14th National Meeting of Population Studies, sponsored by the Brazilian Association of Population Studies (ABEP) held in Caxambú, MG, Brazil, 20–24 September 2004. That version was subsequently published in the Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População 22, 1, 29–53, 2005. The present text has been considerably revised and expanded, and translated from the Portuguese version.

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Marandola, E., Hogan, D.J. Vulnerabilities and risks in population and environment studies. Popul Environ 28, 83–112 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-007-0036-7

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