Risk communication and governance: examples of communities exposed to lead contamination in Brazil and Uruguay

Author(s)

Gabriela Marques Di Giulio

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2010-12-16

Examining board members

Bernardino Ribeiro Figueiredo; Monica Maria Bastos Paoliello; Thomas Patrick Dwyer; Herling Gregorio Aguilar Alonzo; Eduardo Marandola Junior

• Advisor: Bernardino Ribeiro Figueiredo; Lúcia da Costa Ferreira

Abstract

The study seeks to engage with contemporary debates on risk communication and governance. Drawing on empirical research in three communities exposed to lead, this work focuses on participation of different social groups in the social construction of risk. It also tries to offer recommendations to institutional practices, related to public participation in management of public health and environmental risk situations. In this work three cases are studied: Santo Amaro da Purificação (BA), Bauru (SP) and La Teja (Montevidéu, Uruguay). The research seeks to investigate/understand/analyze how the risk issue entered the public opinion, and how the risk was perceived, communicated and managed in those situations. We use an integrated approach to deal with risks in situations of contaminated areas, which understands the risk as real and a social construction. To support this, in this study we adopt the social amplification of risk, participative risk communication and risk governance approaches. The hypotheses and arguments are validated through documental research, with analysis of journalistic articles, and empirical research, including interviews with social groups (involving local people, authorities, researchers and journalists). The findings highlight the main characteristics of those situations as well the common risk perceptions of contamination, which include concerns about hazards, fear, attempts to deal with the risk and/or to deny the problem. The findings suggest that the media has aformative role in ways in which risk is communicated and perceived. This demonstrates that social amplification of risk approach can be used to help explain these case studies. Considering risk communication, the findings suggest that, in general, the efforts focus on information transmission and public persuasion, based on the basic model of communication and the knowledge deficit model. The findings also suggest that the strategies to deal with risk gravitate towards a risk management approach that considers only scientific knowledge as legitimate knowledge, and underestimates the potential input from the public. The analysis of results encourages thinking that the risk management requires actions among different sectors, as well as interdisciplinary approaches which include participative risk communication, articulation, cooperation and integration between the different social groups involved (AU)