Paper short abstract:

The research studies epistemic differences around a technological disaster. The results discuss lessons for environmental justice of damage compensation, and for public participation in monitoring and remediation of the socio-environmental impact of infrastructure projects.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic studies of socio-environmental risk and socio-technologies of power presented in my book Fighting for Andean Resources, the research debates epistemic differences among various groups involved in a disaster of an oil spill. The study discusses contextual lessons of techniques of biopolitical governance that do not map neatly onto livelihoods of disaster-affected communities (Barrios 2017). The analysis of damage compensation and public participation in monitoring and remediation for the socio-environmental impact of infrastructure projects reveals biopolitical strategies. Repsol's recent oil spill on the Peruvian coast is widely recognized as the largest national technological disaster. In similar disasters, multiple socio-environmental impacts were not initially acknowledged by the emergency or remediation team. It was academics who included resident views and identified cumulative impacts on populations -especially human- and various ecosystems. The research identifies central aspects to improve monitoring and compensation systems, better reflecting complexity, beyond reductionism associated with emergency management. Fishermen forced government entities to include monitoring points ignored by experts and currently claim for a fair compensation. The analysis of the local perception of the affected marine ecosystem and the environmental impacts, contrasting findings of the emergency and remediation team, will contribute to a better understanding of the local response to the degradation of the ecosystem and the discussion of valuation for compensation. The discussion of forms of knowledge focused on fishermen's demands, highlighting affectations to their livelihood, all articulates an empirical and theoretical contribution for environmental justice studies.