University of São Paulo: E-book analyzes impacts of the pandemic and brings alerts about socio-environmental injustices
The close relationship between the climate, biodiversity and health crises currently experienced, as well as the need to develop public policies with this focus, are themes of analysis in the book Sociedade, Meio Ambiente e Cidadania em Tempos de Pandemia , a publication written by the social scientist and urban planner Pedro Henrique Campello Torres, the result of postdoctoral research developed at the Institute of Energy and Environment (IEE) at USP. The e-book is available for free at this link .
The work was supervised by Professor Pedro Jacobi, from the IEE, and was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp), launched by the publisher Blucher Open Access. “The importance of biodiversity, climate change, energy, waste, sanitation and urbanization are topics presented to stimulate debate, always with the covid-19 pandemic at the center of the discussion”, says Torres. The researcher highlights that he has been researching new forms and agendas of governance and planning in the face of the impacts of climate change.
Torres also emphasizes that the lens of theoretical-methodological analysis brings the book closer to his postdoctoral research. “The governance of the health emergency, or rather, its bad governance, is also verified in the environmental area, the main focus of my research. Also the unequal impacts of environmental or health problems, as in the case of covid-19, which primarily affect the most vulnerable populations. With the pandemic, it was possible to identify the exacerbation of these equalities, especially in these territories ”, he explains.
Interdisciplinary initiative
The work has 226 pages and is composed of nine chapters, plus the introduction, in a collaboration between professors and postdoctoral researchers who taught the discipline Society, Environment and Citizenship at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH) at USP. . “The experience of this collective work allowed us to bring together professors and students from different EACH courses, resulting in an interdisciplinary, critical initiative that values multiple scientific knowledge in the face of obscurantism and denialism”, emphasizes the author.
The first chapter, for example, deals with the relationship between pandemics and global environmental change. The authors revisit the emergence of covid-19 and other pandemics throughout history to show how they are associated with important social changes. They explain the reasons that explain the increase in the frequency of epidemics and analyze whether the Amazon can become a new epicenter for the emergence of pandemics.
“Social changes can alter human population dynamics, also affecting the demand for natural resources. Anthropogenic interventions such as these impact the quality of ecosystems and, consequently, human and animal health, and can lead to an increase in the emergence of diseases, especially zoonoses.
In Planetary Justice and Equity in the Face of Covid-19 , Torres presents as a theme the production and reproduction of
injustices and inequalities – as well as the fight for justice – in dialogue with the lenses of environmental justice and planetary justice. In the text, he addresses the disruptive governance of the federal government in the face of covid-19, the anti-vaccination movements and denialism on a planetary scale and the “injustices in the territory”. It brings data on Covid-19 mortality rates and the proportion of black people in the city of São Paulo and points out how these data are examples that could have been taken into account for policies and management of vaccination prioritization.