Hazards and Vulnerability for the population on the Brazilian Coast:

Sea Level Rise and Reasons for Concern

Roberto Luiz do CarmoAndrea Ferraz Young

Recife, PE

The 4th International Conference on Population GeographiesThe Chinese University of Hong Kong - July 10/13, 2007

Universidade Estadual de CampinasDepartamento de Demografia

Núcleo de Estudos de População

Juréia, SP

Objectives

* Identify the possible impacts of sea level rising for the Brazilian population leaving on coastal zone;

- how many people leaving on the coast?- life conditions;- environmental characteristics;- vulnerability;

Juréia, SP

Methodology

* GIS system

- demographic information: Census Data

- life conditions and environment: Census Data and HDI (municipal level, supported by UNDP);

- Digital maps: IBGE (Brazilian Census Bureau);

Juréia, SP

Remarks

* Relationships between population and environment: • administrative X environmental regionalization;

* Scales• time;• spatial references and capture of information;

Santos, SP

“vulnerability cannot be directly measured, but estimated through a group of socioeconomic and environmental variables. Vulnerability refers to a certain type of risk and region. It is the result of the relationship of a series of circumstantial factors of a quantitative and qualitative order” (Peduzzi et al., 2001).

Vulnerability

Santos, SP

• Vulnerability Project (NEPO/UNICAMP)

- the ability to respond to these risks (which may be of very different kinds, relating to social and economic situations in addition to the environmental ones) is fundamental to understand the different contexts resulting from risk exposure. The ability to respond has been considered as vulnerability;

- the ability (or inability) of a social group to mobilize a given asset group implies that this group may be more or less vulnerable to a certain risk (or group of risks);

Santos, SP

* In terms of mobilizable assets, Kaztman et al. (1999) suggest the following classification:

- Physical Capital: involving all the essential means for the pursuit of well-being. These could be further divided into the Physical Capital itself (housing, land, machinery, animals, relevant durable goods for social reproduction) or the Financial Capital, whose characteristics are high liquidity and multifunctionality, involving savings and credit as well as forms of insurance and protection;

- Human Capital: including work as the main asset plus the value added to it through investments in health and education, which would imply in greater or lesser physical capacity for work, qualifications and so on;

- Social Capital: including the networks of reciprocity, trust, contacts and access to information. In the authors’ words it would be “the least alienable of all the types of capital, whose use strongly overlaps and is limited by the very network of relationships that defines this form of capital”

Ubatuba,SP

The Geographic Information System

• 477 seaside municipalities (5.562 total Brazil);• 34,3 million people in the year 2000 (20 km buffer);

Ubatuba,SP

Ubatuba,SP

Juréia, SP

Recife, PE

Marajó, PA

Recife, PE

Some Results by Regions

Number of Inhabitants

< 5.000

5.000 to 20.000

20.000 to 50.000

50.000 to 100.000

100.000 to 500.000

> 500.000

Categories: differences by size

João Pessoa, PA

REGION 1980 1991 2000 1980/91 1991/00

North 252.186 435.924 660.611 5,10 4,73

Northeast 7.920.904 11.192.873 14.436.364 3,19 2,87

Southeast 10.736.757 12.799.693 14.546.613 1,61 1,43

Soul 2.847.233 3.781.062 4.670.458 2,61 2,38

Total 21.757.080 28.209.552 34.314.046 2,39 2,20

Population leaving in the 20km buffer

Marajó, PA

Roberto Luiz do Carmo

roberto@nepo.unicamp.br

João Pessoa, PA

João Pessoa, PA

Marajó, PA

Marajó, PA