Risks have been classically understood as a probability of damage or a potential hazard resulting in appropriate management strategies. However, research on environmental issues such as pollutants in the aquatic environment or the impacts of climate change have shown that classical management approaches do not sufficiently cover these interactions between society and nature. There have been several attempts to develop interdisciplinary approaches to risk that include natural as well as social science contributions. In this paper, the authors aim at developing a social-ecological perspective on risk by drawing on the concept of societal relations to nature and the model of provisioning systems. This perspective is used to analyze four cases, pharmaceuticals, microplastics, semicentralized water infrastructures and forest management, with regard to risk identification, assessment and management. Finally, the paper aims at developing a perspective on risks which takes into account non-intended side-effects, system interdependencies and uncertainty.
Vietnam's most popular island, Phu Quoc, is undergoing rapid social-ecological change. Two crucial drivers of this are tourism development and plastic-intensive everyday practices. The growing amount of wasted single-use plastics is increasingly shaping the appearance of places on the island and challenging the creation of tourist imaginaries of a pristine tropical landscape. Very few qualitative empirical studies have analysed the place-making quality of waste in tourism settings, along with everyday waste management practices and their social-spatial implications. The paper draws on Goffman's theatre metaphor of front-and backstage places to explore waste-tourism relations as an ongoing place-making practice aimed at creating the image tourists are seeking. We scrutinise the place-making efforts of both the international tourism industry and local authorities. Our empirical findings reveal that the frontstage paradise makes backstage places necessary to accumulate or store discarded items. As our research shows, this has led to increasing spatial fragmentation of the island into clean places for tourists and dirty places for residents, reflecting an unequal distribution of the waste burden.
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