Vulnerability of water supply, urban drainage and sanitation systems to climate change in the metropolitan area of Baixada Santista: adaptation challenges and prospects in Santos and São Vicente

• Grant number: 10/11503-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2010
• End date: August 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Coutinho Vargas
• Grantee: Guilherme Stephan Sartori Luchiari
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 08/58159-7 - Urban growth, vulnerability and adaptation: social and ecological dimensions of climate change on the coast of São Paulo, AP.PFPMCG.TEM

Abstract

One of the most important issues related to cities vulnerability to climate change is the quest for a sustainable and integrated management of urban waters, as many of them are expected to face growing flooding problems as well as increasing difficulties to assure drinking water supply and adequate sanitation services, especially those located on coastal areas. This project seeks to analyze how two contiguous middle size cities from the coast of Sao Paulo are preparing themselves (or not) to cope with such problems: the municipalities of Santos and Sao Vicente. Its purpose is to address the different adaptation and mitigation strategies and measures that are being discussed, planned or implemented not only in both cities, but in the metropolitan area they belong as well. Although both cities are subject to the same risks of sea level rising and critical hydrometeorological events, their vulnerability and their adaptation capabilities should be strongly variable, as they present highly differentiated social and economic conditions. (AU)