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Contribution short abstract

The purpose of this proposal is to discuss the concept of privileged vulnerability in the context of climate-related disasters. It highlights matters of agency, unequal distribution of risk, and calls for a critical review of environmental and social policies.

Contribution long abstract

Some of the points to be brought forward in this discussion regard:

- Sustainable welfare in theory and practice;

- Green Growth and its impact on the less privileged;

- Overview of mainstream climatic policies in the EU;

- Affluent communities as ‘environmentally privileged’, but also as ‘polluter elites’;

- Power imbalances in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of current environmental/public policies;

- Need for decolonisation of disaster management.

The proposed topic aims to expand analyses on disaster management and environmental/public policies through a critical lens. In this light, the specific discussion is expected to address the existence of power imbalances in the process of risk prevention and mitigation, which contribute not only to the acceleration of climate change but also to an ever-growing global inequality that leaves lower-income communities disproportionately affected. It is, then, considered important to orient future public policy analyses to the deconstruction of the neo-colonial norms embedded in disaster/climate change management, while pointing to the need for a socially and environmentally just model of evaluation.