Exploring appropriate socio-technical arrangements for the co-production of landslide risk management strategies in informal neighbourhoods in Colombia and Brazil

Abstract

This paper explores the scope for upscaling and transnational transfer of participatory landslide risk management strategies for informal settlements in Latin America. Drawing on lessons from transdisciplinary action-research in three neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia, and one in São Paulo, Brazil, the paper discusses how bottomup approaches were developed to co-produce landslide risk management in both Global South cities, in a way that optimises the collaboration between communities and relevant governmental bodies. The analysis focuses on mitigation and 'agreement-seeking', from the perspectives of scale, power and knowledge, which help understand the parallels between co-production of landslide risk management and co-production of urban services. Two key conclusions are that landslide risk management should be built into neighbourhood upgrading and management, and that both community and the state have stronger roles to play in landslide risk management from their respective capacities. The paper also reflects on the role of academia in enabling co-production of landslide risk management through engaging with local communities.

Adaptation strategies for people: mitigating climate-change-related risks in low-income and informal urban communities through co-production

“…The initial action-research experience in Pinares de Oriente was expanded to two further communities in Medellín (Table 1; Medellín, Phase 2) with a similar exposure to landslide risk due to their location on steep slopes, high above the city in the northeast sector. The aim of this research was to apply a refined methodology to neighbourhoods with different histories and community characteristics, to explore the potential for transferring this approach to different socio-economic and political contexts within the same city (Smith et al 2020b(Smith et al , 2021. The settlements chosen for this phase of the research included El Pacífico (in Comuna 8), a dense and consolidated neighbourhood, and Carpinelo 2 (in Comuna 1), a more recently settled and much less consolidated community (see Smith et al 2020b for further details).…”

“…Although funding was not available for risk mitigation interventions within these two additional communities, possible future interventions were jointly identified by community members and the research team (Smith et al 2021). Stakeholder mapping was also conducted to provide the communities with a departure point for future actions to be agreed.…”

“…Stakeholder mapping was also conducted to provide the communities with a departure point for future actions to be agreed. A key conclusion from research phases 1 and 2 was that landslide risk mitigation in these communities in the north-east sector of Medellín is intimately connected with drainage, as well as with pedestrian (and in parts limited vehicular) circulation pathways through the neighbourhoods (Smith et al 2021). The research therefore highlighted that landslide risk management at the neighbourhood level in these areas is intrinsically linked with the urban infrastructure, demonstrating the scope for the co-production of risk mitigation infrastructure in the built environment.…”

“…Initial research in Medellín focused on the development of co-produced solutions to monitor and mitigate landslide risk in informal communities at the urban-rural city edge (Smith et al 2020a(Smith et al , 2020b(Smith et al , 2021. The research took place in the Pinares de Oriente neighbourhood, within Comuna 8, one of the low-income districts located high above the city in the north-eastern sector, where largely self-built communities have grown on steep slopes.…”

Coproduced urban water services: When technical and governance hybridisation go hand in hand

“…The widening of the coproduced service delivery process to multiple actors cannot but entail a structural change toward new and more complex governance arrangements and structures (Han, 2022;Smith et al, 2022) that include a variety of non-state actors. To characterise those forms of hybrid governance in coproduction, we rely on the concept of hybridisation, instead of hybridity, by borrowing this distinction from the debate on post-colonial peace, conflicts, and statebuilding studies (e.g., Peterson, 2012;Visoka, 2012;Albrecht and Moe, 2015;Kyed, 2017).…”