Environmental Justice

The Matanza Riachuelo is a heavily contaminated 64 km long river that runs along the southern peripheries of the city of Buenos Aires. There are three sources of contamination: sewage, industrial waste, and garbage. It is estimated that health and living conditions are highly risky for at least 1.7 million people living in the river basin.

Why Citizen Social Science for Environmental Justice in Buenos Aires?

Policy actions in the basin must include the understanding of the affected population about the nature and meaning of such socio-environmental risks, to ensure robust social participation needed to guarantee environmental justice.

We understand Environmental Justice as fair and meaningful participation of all people directly affected by environmental pollution. This includes participation in decision-making processes, in the definition of what the problem, as well as the social-environmental risks, are, and in the design of actions to mitigate these risks. Therefore, gathering information about how different groups of citizens in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin think about and identify these risks is very much needed.

How will it happen?

The project will have a direct impact on raising the visibility of the problems of living and working in Matanza-Riachuelo basin. We will use different tools to achieve this goal, e.g. collective mapping methodologies to identify key categories of social/environmental harm within a population, workshops to co-design the research, and a public-access database that will be generated using an open source platform.

Actions happening since 2020
April 21, 2020

Semi-structured Interviews

21 April – 2 December, 2020. FARN and UNSAM identified stakeholders from the academia, public policy, non-governmental and local communities…

April 21, 2020
August 11, 2020

First Microworkshop

Through a videocall local community actors were engaged in a discussion of their problems, the actors with whom they create…

August 11, 2020
August 25, 2020

Second Microworkshop

Through a videocall local communities’ actors were engaged in a discussion of their problems, the actors with whom they create alliances and…

August 25, 2020
October 29, 2020

Co-design Workshop

A workshop was conducted with stakeholders from the academia, public policy, non-governmental and local communities organisations. 35 people participated. The…

October 29, 2020
December 2, 2020

Third Microworkshop

A face-to-face meeting with neighbours and local organisations’ members, to map and discuss the problems they face in relocation processes,…

December 2, 2020
December 17, 2020

Internal Co-design Workshop

FARN, UNSAM and M7red joined this virtual internal workshop to set specific objectives for the Citizen Science Platform and to…

December 17, 2020
January 5, 2021

Interviews & Informal conversations 

January to December  FARN and UNSAM have started interviewing researchers working on platform themes to collect impressions regarding the methodological…

January 5, 2021
June 18, 2021

Informal conversations 

June 18th to November 27th  – UNSAM had informal conversations with territorial actors and networks to have inputs to develop…

June 18, 2021
January 11, 2023

Testimonial videos

The production of three five-minute videos and two shorter ones with testimonials by co-researchers finished. These videos share co-researchers experiences…

January 11, 2023
January 11, 2023

Deskwork

Febraury-March, 2022 UNSAM and FARN researchers systematised participants’ discussions to finalise contents for the beta version of QPR platform, including…

January 11, 2023
January 11, 2023

Methodology’s interviews

May 9th – August 2nd Interviews with public policy actors for q-method analysis. Q-method is a research technique that allows for the…

January 11, 2023
January 11, 2023

5 implementation workshops

August 13th, September 15th, September 25th, September 27th, September 30th, October 22nd – 2022   Implementation workshops of the platform QPR…

January 11, 2023
January 11, 2023

6 dissemination workshops or activities

August 13thSeptember 15thSeptember 25thSeptember 27thSeptember 30thOctober 22nd  2022 Dissemination workshops and activities with organizations in the basin which had not participated…

January 11, 2023