Espaços verdes públicos e justiça ambiental: correlações em Ribeirão Preto - SP

Abstract

This dissertation discusses environmental injustices in the Municipality of Ribeirão Preto’s urban space, State of São Paulo. Based on the perspective that urban Public Green Spaces (PGSs) are capable of producing several benefits for the population that accesses them and of minimizing or mitigating adverse climate effects, the study considers such infrastructures as central in determining the scenario of greater spatial justice in the Municipality. Considering the history of the city's production in Ribeirão Preto and the different epistemological approaches related to socio-environmental inequalities, the work adopts various approaches of justice to review how different historical processes established the scenario of inequality that manifests itself in the contemporaneity. In order to establish the panorama of the configuration of environmental and spatial injustice in force in the municipality, it investigates how the social factors of income, race and housing typology become defining factors in obtaining or not the environmental benefits produced by Public Green Spaces. The study uses public information to generate its analyses based on geoprocessing tools and statistical analyses. Considering proximity to PGSs, surface temperature and distance from areas at high risk of flooding, these factors are highly correlated. As a result, income stands out, as the distance from PGSs increases, the temperature decreases, and the distance from flood areas increases. Regarding race, the white population stands out, being in areas with lower temperatures and further away from flooding. The housing results show how vulnerable populations are allocated to urban spaces characterized as areas of environmental risk. The study demonstrates how environmental inequality was formed in Ribeirão Preto, with the worst rates concentrated in the North and West sectors, as opposed to the South and East sectors, and, in this way, intertwines the terms “environmental justice” and “spatial justice” as terms associated with each other.