Demystifying natural disaster: Environmental racism in Rio de Janeiro

Demystifying natural disaster: Environmental racism in Rio de Janeiro

Politics and International Studies

Luca De Sa Amado

2024

The state of Rio de Janeiro has its inequalities reflected in many different ways. One of these is the city’s uneven urbanisation which has revealing impacts showing much more serious problems Rio is under. Developed urban infrastructure, or the lack of it is an effect of environmental racism, one of the many ways structural racism can be seen. This article aims to identify the occurrence of environmental racism in Rio de Janeiro State with empirical data analysis and critically engage with it through a holistic understanding of racism, analysing the common-sense perspective of naturalising, rationalising and individualising environmental disasters. Also, it aims to critically explore the media perspective on these events as tragedies and analyse the depoliticisation strategy of public power over black, brown and peripheric people’s deaths and all the other consequences they suffer because of environmental disasters.

environmental racism, Rio de Janeiro, racial projects, depoliticisation