Contenu du sommaire : Vulnerabilidades urbanas en los países andinos (Bolivia, Ecuador, Perú)

The Margen Izquierda of Río Rímac (MIRR) sector, known as Cerro El Agustino, symbolizes the first popular and informal neighborhoods of Lima. The precarious habitat, the various forms of marginality as well as a strong exposure to the natural and/or anthropomorphic hazards, are some characteristics of those spaces at risk. From the point of view of the inhabitants as well for the public authorities, these spaces are stood represent a marked risk, which varies according to the purposes and the interests of each one. The implications analysis of these representations, in particular through the attempted actions against risks, brings out the elements needed to understand the resulting processes of construction and reinforcement in response to vulnerabilitiy. Institutional factors and government forms of these urban spaces appear as keys factors of the construction of vulnerability

In the metropolitan area of Lima/Callao, the collection and elimination of waste are made difficult by the absence of an urban territory authority. Wastes produce health and environmental risks. Analysis of waste management from the perspective of vulnerability, allows observing the production of spaces by the waste management, as well as of spatial logic of waste transfer, and thus vulnerability transfer, between territories and between populations. These transfers of vulnerability are markers of ecological inequalities. Thus, the poorest people who are very important in the elimination of waste by their recycling activity are the most exposed to the risks produced by these wastes. As a consquence, the reduction of waste management vulnerability is carried out through the concentration of the vulnerability territories and very localized populations.

The rebuilding process following the seismic event which affected Peru on August 15, 2007 was deeply inegalitarian. Indeed, very few families were able to rebuild even more than one year after the disaster. The poorest, especially the ones who were not able to rely on the support of the social and power networks, were excluded from the rebuilding process. A survey was carried out with 1703 disaster victim families of the Chincha province and it shows that the population vulnerability, which was already high before the earthquake, increased because of the reinforcement of family precariousness, of the increase in vulnerability of constructions, and the fact that the social cohesion has been weakened.

El Beaterio fuel storage facility represents an economical interest in both the local (Quito Metropolitan District) and national (Ecuador) scale. At the same time, this facility constitutes a present threat to the surrounding community. The community's exposure to potential threats does not respond to social location factors alone, but is also related to municipal urban planning policies adopted during different municipal administrations. Firstly, these administrations conducted an urban consolidation that does not account for the threat that these facilities pose. Once the danger became evident through a series of minor events at the fuel storage facility as well as fuel smell in the air, a transformation of hazard perception was implemented by both the community and the municipality. This change in hazard perception allowed the creation of hazard control tools using technological hazard simulation models and urban planning. Setting boundaries in protection areas and buffer zones where human settlements were established lead to land conflict and a struggle between institutions and population. The main issue was the relocation of the facilities on a safer place. In this context, the policy of reducing a part of the technological hazard (liquefied petroleum gas), which was considered the most dangerous, finally increased the vulnerability of the population. This vulnerability is due to another change in hazard perception and also to the population's growth affecting zones that were previously considered buffer zones. Therefore, El Beaterio technological hazard obeys a «creation and transformation» dynamic that shows the current local authorities uncertainty over the reduction of the aforementioned hazards.

The article proposes an analysis of the risk associated with the Cotopaxi volcano in Los Chillos valley (Valle de Los Chillos), on the south east side of metropolitan Quito. At first examination it presents a priori a quantifiable risk. However the recognition of uncertainties, which reveal risk complexity, challenged this approach. Complexity is linked not only to the difficulties of hazard evaluation, but also to urban evolution, political management of territories or exposed population variability. The exploration of various risk complexity factors and associated uncertainties improves the understanding of vulnerability. This approach also opens perspectives and the reduction of uncertainties appears as a way to reduce risk and improve crisis management tools.

The treatment and planning of the western slopes of the Quito are at the heart of the natural risk management in the city. The deconstruction of this public policy reveals as much about the challenges of development as it does about the logic of controlling urban margins. It is true that the planning of the slopes has led to a fight against hazards that endanger the operation of the sanitation network and urban mobility. Even before, this was part of a logic of control of urban sprawl and territorialization of margins that the authorities wish to integrate into the municipal planning. The evolution of this project also shows that the struggle against the “natural” risk supports a policy to improvement the quality of life.

The city which is the seat of the Bolivian government is regularly damaged by events of natural and anthropic origin. This explains why since its foundation, the authorities implemented natural risk preventive measures to limit the exposure of the city and of those elements considered essential to the operation of the urban environment. Policies of risk management evolved over the history of the city including measurements of city planning to allow the prevention of damage in urban spaces and engineering works that are based on the concept of resistance to hazards to withstand threats and to avoid their release. Nonetheless, the successive policy changes have resulted in their partial inefficiency. Whatever the policy of risk management directions retained, they always seem to have been in contradiction with the urban development. Urban development hindered the actions of risk management as a result of the non-observance of the municipal standard, and the lack of anticipation of undesirable effects produced by the engineering works intended to help withstand threats. Conscious of the problem, but without giving up management tools to deal with the risks now anchored in the culture of La Paz, the municipal authorities are exploring new approaches, in particular that of the management of emergency and/or crisis. Since the experience of the hail storm of February 19th, 2002, they set up a Committee of emergency operation, whose operation evolves by experience feedback.

Risk management in Lima is made through specific actions, spatially and by sectors. This situation is partially explained by the absence of metropolitan management, as well as public policy fragmentation. Risk management actions essentially are based on local mobilizations, specific conflicts, or support from outside institutions. This article suggests analyzing a series of actions implemented according to financing opportunities or the mobilization of local actors. It proposes a non-exhaustive panorama of risk management experiences in Lima and tries to identify the actors, the territories, and the mechanisms employed. Thus it provides elements for reflection on risk management modalities and on the stakes involved in the implementation of a risk management policy in an urban agglomeration on the scale of Lima/Callao.

In recent years, damages of natural origin have affected the town seat of the Bolivian government and these have led authorities to implement new policies of risk management. Thus, they have been seeking to manage crises by taking into account the various crisis phases: emergency, recovery and rebuilding. The first two phases have made them consider the organization of the assistance, in particular the management of shelters for the disaster victims. The last led them to think about risk and its long-term management: at the same time they have built works intended to withstand natural threats (violent precipitations, floods, landslides), and they have installed mechanisms to remove disaster victims from exposure to threats of natural origin by relocating them in other parts of metropolitan La Paz. In addition to the explicit recognition of the powerlessness of risk managers to reduce threats, the policy of relocation showed that they have difficulties in conceiving of risks in accord with what is at stake.

This paper presents the main results of an investigation of road disruptions generated within the Metropolis of La Paz by two events: a natural one and a social-related one. The first one was produced by a strong hailstorm on the 19th of February 2002, and the second one, called «The Gas War», resulted from riots and road blockades in October 2003. Both events led to the most severe disturbances that the metropolis had to face in recent times. This article aims at pinpointing the places that were the most affected in each case and at understanding why the impacts of these two events were so critical and so widespread. The methodology implemented to answer these questions is examined. We also demonstrate the relevancy of analysing road network vulnerabilities in order to assess the vulnerability of a territory as a whole.

A survey on Cotopaxi volcano risk perception was conducted in 2007 in Los Chillos Valley located near Quito. The analysis focuses (1) on perception of volcanic hazards and its characteristics, (2) on perception of the most exposed areas to volcanic hazards and (3) risk perception in the place of residence. The survey results show a clear awareness of the existence of volcanic hazard. It also shows significant distortions between the scientists and population points of view on the most exposed areas. Given the uncertainties in volcanic risk, this type of research on risk perception is very useful in terms of prevention and population vulnerability reduction. Its objective is not to ensure that people have the same view that the scientists but to demonstrate the benefit of linking constructively the views of different actors.

Representative of urban poverty in the suburbs of La Paz, El Alto has become one of the most emblematic places of social demands in Bolivia. However, these aspects often result in forgetting that with its high demographic and spatial growth, the city is more and more exposed to various threats of natural or anthropic origin. Within the framework of a DIPECHO project from the Department of Humanitarian Aid of the European Commission, the team of the PACIVUR program from the UR029-IRD was put in charge of identifying risk zones in two of the eleven districts which make up El Alto. The identification of risk zones has provided elements to implement a better preparedness against possible disasters. Thus, it required knowledge of physical processes from the outset of threats and the elements that can be damaged and which can cause disasters, as well as useful elements for the management of possible resultant crises.

Considering the limits of preventive action and the weaknesses in the systems of crisis management, this article aims to demonstrate the relevance of a spatial approach to crisis management and the need to enlarge research on this issue. It is necessary to reflect upon the types of spaces and the territories involved in the management of crises being treated in these investigations. The case of Quito is proposed as an example of the application of this approach. We identify crisis management areas in the Quito metropolitan district in order to link areas where the population is particularly vulnerable with areas of health care resources. The example shows that the spatial approach of crisis management permit to go beyond disaster preparedness, establishing relationships between preparedness, prevention and mitigation planning.

The increasing complexity of societies and cities involves increasing interdependences between networks and between territories that reinforce their vulnerability. Based on a conception of risk based on the territorial strategic elements and their vulnerability, we explore the hypothesis that these effects of risk propagation can be construed as the concept of vulnerability transmission. Indeed, vulnerability is transmitted through an increasing number of relations of increasing complexity that links the strategic elements between them and with the territory. This text is a first attempt, based on examples, to formalize the concept of vulnerability transmission.