Epistemic injustice, risk mapping and climatic events: analysing epistemic resistance in the context of favela removal in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Abstract. Environmental and climate justice scholarship has increasingly focused on how knowledge and expertise play into the production of injustice and into strategies of resistance and activist claim making. We consider the epistemic injustice at work within the practices of risk mapping and assessment applied in Rio de Janeiro to justify the clearance of favela communities. We trace how in the wake of landslides in 2010, the city authorities moved towards a removal policy justified in the name of protecting lives and becoming resilient to climate change. We examine how favela dwellers, activists and counter-experts joined efforts to develop a partially successful epistemic resistance that contested the knowledge on which this policy was based. We use this case to reflect on the situated character of both technologies of risk and the emergence of epistemic resistance, on the relationship between procedural and epistemic justice, and on the challenges for instilling more just climate adaptation strategies.

Introduction to the special issue “Climate and marine justice – debates and critical perspectives”

“…Nonetheless, research, awareness, and the adoption of marine justice are still in their infancy. In line with Bennett (2018), Armstrong (2020), and Menton et al (2020), we argue that greater attention and resources must be dedicated to issues of marine justice to promote a just and equitable pathway towards ocean sustainability. Who suffers most from hurricanes and coastal erosion, and who benefits from deep-sea mining?…”

“…Moreover, environmental justice scholarship has recently dealt with epistemic justice on different scales and in many parts of the globe (Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020). In this vein, Fricker (2007Fricker ( , 2016 identifies two different forms of injustice in her seminal work on epistemic justice.…”

“…It blocks the "flow of knowledge" between actors, leads to marginalization, and downgrades the knowledge claims of actors that are affiliated with ethnic and/or class characteristics which the hearer considers less legitimate (Fricker, 2016:162). Second, hermeneutical injustice refers to situations of injustice where marginalized actors are not able to raise their concerns because they cannot align and translate their concepts to comply with dominant Western epistemology (Fricker, 2016; see also Weißermel and Chaves, 2020;Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020).…”

“…Knowledge and power asymmetries, as many of the contributions to this SI show (cf. Alba et al, 2020;Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020;Fünfgeld and Schmid, 2020;Ruiz-de-Oña Plaza, 2020), are deeply intertwined with epistemic and ontological injustices in environmental and climate governance. Finally, the articles of this SI and avenues for future research are presented.…”

“…This is true of adaptation (cf. Alba et al, 2020;Fünfgeld and Schmid, 2020;Mendes Barbosa and Walker, 2020) and mitigation measures, such as market-based mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions like the Clean Development Mechanism and REDD+, and it is also relevant for the rights of indigenous and peasant communities to have self-determination, development, and livelihoods (Schroeder and McDermott, 2014;Hein, 2019;Corbera and Brown, 2010;Smits and Middleton, 2014).…”