Investigaciones Geográficas

Climate justice and access water in San José de Maipo, Chile

2024-12-18T14:08:40+00:00

As communities worldwide face the growing impacts of climate change, residents and local decision-makers negotiate, define, and plan adaptation strategies. In Chile, the Framework Law on Climate Change 21.455 (2022) mandates that municipalities develop climate action plans. Amid a 14-year-long extreme drought, declining snow cover, and glacier retreat, we studied access to potable and subsistence water and fair adaptation to climate change in San José de Maipo, a mountainous municipality located at the headwaters of Santiago. We conducted 22 interviews with residents, rural drinking water associations (APRs or SSRs), municipal officials, informal collectives, and water advocacy groups and participated as observers in 12 community events. We found that participants are deeply concerned about climate change, linking it to drought, glacier retreat, snow loss, and extreme rainfall events that disrupt drinking water sources and subsistence agriculture. Vulnerability is shaped by pollution from extractivism, the water rights system, geographic isolation, and limited institutional capacity, creating an increasingly challenging reality for water supply and access. The formation of new APRs, increased environmental education, nature-based solutions, glacier and wetland conservation, and changes in water governance were the most frequently proposed solutions for fair adaptation and are supported by the literature as effective.

Territorial justice and accessibility to health in metropolitan areas

2024-11-11T16:30:35+00:00

The territorial imbalances are generated by the processes of spatial production typical of the neoliberal Latin American context, distancing the regions from the path of development. Health is a right that contributes to development. In the analysis of public services, both the availability of the equipment and its distribution in the territory are relevant, from the perspective of territorial planning. This situation determines the possibility for society to access and improve its quality of life. Using the tools of geographic information systems and free access and open source applications (QGIs, OpenStreetMap, OpenRouteService), through network analysis and isochron calculation, areas of differential accessibility to the 3 third level centers are obtained, in an intermediate Argentine metropolis, Santa Fe, in the process of consolidation and integration. The analysis of the geographical accessibility of the population to
the highest health centers (emergencies, specialties and complex treatments) and the resulting cartographic product, represent a diagnostic and prospective instrument to obtain an approach to territorial justice in the metropolitan area. The concept of territorial justice is linked to others such as environmental and spatial justice, with which it shares the approach to sustainability from Latin American environmental thought; It is conceived as one that promotes a territorial culture that monitors the values and interests at stake in current dynamics, proposing mechanisms of redistribution and territorial rearrangements, redefining the roles of the state, the market and society.

Relationship between Economy and Environment: Need for conceptual alternatives to the environmental crisis

2024-06-24T22:42:27+00:00

Based on bibliographic reviews and discussions, the relationship between the current economic model and the global environmental crisis is analyzed. The use of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a standard measurement of social wellbeing is questioned, since the GDP does not take into account how income is distributed or the
environmental effects of economic activity, to the point that a country can be depleting its resources and exhibit positive signs in its economy. Therefore, unlimited growth is not feasible, since the planet has physical limits. In light of this, other economic indicators are presented that possibly better account for the degree of well-being of
societies. New ways of establishing the relationship between the economy and planetary ecosystems are proposed, in addition to the need for new forms of approaching environmental knowledge. As alternatives, the paradigm of
“degrowth” is proposed to advance towards sustainable development or a focus on priorities in which the objective is no longer growth but human and environmental well-being. In short, a new economic paradigm must consider the economic system as an open system, in order to harmonize “Biological Time” and “Economic Time”, making it necessary to move from an anthropocentric ethic to an eco-centric ethic, managing the environmental crisis from a trans-disciplinary knowledge. In this way, an economic system that improves income distribution and respects the biological dynamics of the natural system can help move towards Sustainable Development.

Projecting Development with Coherence: A Comparative Analysis of Local Territorial Planning Instruments in the Los Lagos Region

2024-11-29T19:52:46+00:00

The definition and meaning of constructs such as development have real consequences on our way of acting and understanding reality. Since territory is a spatial concept to apprehend reality, how we understand development also has consequences on how we consider it. The present work analyzes these implications in the context of the Los Lagos Region, Chile, using the content of communal development plans to indicate how this concept is
understood at the local policy level. To this end, a quantitative analysis of comparative textual data was used to determine relevant themes and significant differences regarding the plan of the communes of Calbuco, Fresia, Los Muermos, and Maullín both at a general level and concerning the conception. of existing development. The findings show that although several similarities were found, each plan attempts to adapt its content to the local reality by incorporating unique nuances that reflect its territorial configuration, demonstrating an accentuated place-based approach in territorial planning. Finally, the potential of the method used to evaluate the coherence between different territorial planning instruments is raised, taking a multilevel approach in order to avoid harmful phenomena such as decoupling.

Cambios ambientales en el lago Böeckella entre 1958 y 2023, península Antártica

2024-11-20T21:09:10+00:00

La Península Antártica (PA) ha experimentado un rápido calentamiento en los últimos años, lo que ha provocado la degradación del permafrost. En el norte de la PA, en Bahía Esperanza, el lago Böeckella ha experimentado eventos de drenaje rápidos y repentinos en las últimas décadas impulsados por procesos de termokarstía. Este estudio tiene como objetivo caracterizar los cambios ambientales en la Bahía Esperanza, en especial en el lago Böeckella entre 1958 y 2023. Se han utilizado datos limnológicos y sedimentológicos; datos de suministro de agua de deshielo; fotografías; teledetección; y datos de batimetría del lago Böeckella. El 29 de febrero de 1988, el lago tenía un área de 40236 m2 pero desde el 2010, el lago Böeckella se ha dividido en pequeños lagos, registrando un área total de 20408 m2 en 2023. Una disminución de aproximadamente el 50%. Los datos batimétricos muestran que entre 1993 y 2013 el lago aumentó en profundidad, debido al colapso del terreno. Además, el alto nivel de escorrentía superficial en el área proveniente del glaciar Buenos Aires puede estar contribuyendo a un aumento de materia orgánica e inorgánica que ingresa al lago Böeckella, así como a otros cambios limnológicos. El lago Böeckella ha sufrido cambios a lo largo de los años debido al deshielo del permafrost y a la intensidad de la erosión termokarstica provocada por el aumento de la temperatura del aire registrado en los últimos años. Sin embargo, las interferencias antropogénicas afectan fuertemente la dinámica del lago.

Morphometric of a ungauged basins: the case of the Sauce Corto stream (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

2024-10-28T12:21:28+00:00

The analysis of morphometric parameters is relevant to understand the physical characteristics of a drainage basin and their impact in hydrographic dynamics, mainly in countries in the global south where flow measurements are not systematic and there are no long-term historical data series. This tool is particularly relevant for ungauged basins, such as the Sauce Corto stream basin (SC) (Buenos Aires, Argentina), analyzed in this study. The occurrence of extreme precipitation events in the upper part of this basin causes effects in the main towns of the Coronel Suárez district and its rural áreas. The aim of this work was to characterize morphometrically the sub-basins of the upper basin of the Sauce Corto stream in order to assess their potential to generate floods. The basins were characterized qualitatively-quantitatively and indexes related to the shape, relief and drainage network were used.
Its calculation made it possible to determine those sub-basins with the greatest hazard of flooding, with the basins on the western margin (Nacimiento Oeste, Nacimiento Este y Cerro 832) being those with the greatest potential, linked to parameters associated with the relief, the drainage network and the shape of this basin. Its study constitutes a tool for the development and implementation of local flood risk management.

Geología y geomorfología como soporte para la gestión ambiental en Brasil

2024-11-26T18:26:03+00:00

El medio físico ha sido cada vez más explotado debido a la expansión de las actividades económicas en los territorios, lo que requiere un uso cada vez más intenso de los recursos naturales. Estas actividades en ocasiones ignoran las características de los componentes naturales, provocando su degradación. En el municipio de Viçosa do Ceará, en la región noroccidental de Ceará, noreste de Brasil, se destacan rasgos geomorfológicos y formaciones geológicas como elementos del medio físico local que tienen un alto potencial geoturístico, científico y paisajístico, entre otros, que, en algunos casos, contextos, son explotados sin una comprensión adecuada de sus especificidades, causando así impactos ambientales negativos. Teniendo esto en cuenta, este artículo tiene como objetivo caracterizar y analizar los aspectos geológico-geomorfológicos del municipio de Viçosa do Ceará como soporte para la gestión territorial y ambiental. La metodología utilizada en esta investigación, basada en un enfoque sistémico, se organizó en tres etapas principales: levantamiento del marco teórico, trabajo de campo y sistematización de la caracterización de los componentes naturales mediante técnicas de geoprocesamiento. El estudio demostró que el municipio de Viçosa do Ceará tiene una rica diversidad geológica y geomorfológica, lo que requiere políticas de ordenamiento territorial y gestión ambiental.

Superexploitation and Domestic Work in Rural Territories of the Global South: Value Exchange Between Partially Waged Rural Households and the Silvo-Agricultural Extractive Capital in Chile

2024-11-13T13:06:50+00:00

This article aims to present a theoretical discussion regarding the problem of the value of waged labor in silvoagroextractive territories, characterized by a structure of household units where combined incomes from waged labor and domestic production (destined for self-consumption or partially for the market) predominate. The article explores whether the labor invested and consumed in domestic production within the household constitutes a source of accumulation for the capital that employs labor from these units, and it analyzes the specific mechanism that may operate in this transfer of value. This analysis is conducted in dialogue with some contemporary proposals that
theorize about the possibility of incorporating non-commodified domestic labor into capitalist value chains deployed in these territories, although such proposals argue for the insufficiency of a labor theory of value to understand these phenomena in the context of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene. In an alternative reading, it is argued that the notion of super-exploitation of labor is useful to describe this value transfer, which would support the hypothesis that it is the household units themselves that drive a deeper and more complete proletarianization in peripheral
spaces. In this vein, it is argued that concepts such as super-exploitation and the particularities of the method it implies make visible specific dynamics in the Global South.

Triple crisis planetaria

2024-12-30T00:01:28+00:00