{"id":30935,"date":"2016-07-26T14:15:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=30935"},"modified":"2016-09-23T13:41:12","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:41:12","slug":"casa-fluminense-hosts-workshop-discussing-challenges-in-post-olympic-rio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=30935","title":{"rendered":"Casa Fluminense Hosts Workshop Discussing Challenges in Post-Olympic Rio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On Wednesday July 20, Rio-based public policy group Casa Fluminense<\/a>, comprised of representatives of\u00a0hundreds of civil society organizations across the state,\u00a0held a workshop for journalists covering Rio de Janeiro after the Olympic Games<\/a>. Speakers briefed journalists on what they see as the biggest challenges facing the city and the most important issues in the upcoming mayoral elections in October.\u00a0Topics examined in Casa Fluminense’s research into urban inequality<\/a> in Rio include transport<\/a> and urban mobility<\/a>, sanitation<\/a>, pollution<\/a> in the Guanabara Bay and public security<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Use<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers divided Rio de Janeiro’s greater metropolitan region<\/a>\u00a0into three areas for their analyses: the city of Rio, the Baixada Fluminense<\/a> to its north and west, and the Metropolitan East on the other side of Guanabara Bay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The workshop was opened by economist Vitor Mihessen, who revealed that 74% of the state\u2019s population lives in the highly urban Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region,<\/strong> making Rio de Janeiro \u201cthe most metropolitan of any state in Brazil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mihessen\u2019s analysis of social inequality across Rio de Janeiro state used census data<\/a> including Human Development Index scores, average monthly wage, commute times, school enrollment levels, mortality rates and access to running water<\/a> and trash\u00a0collection<\/a> as an introduction to understand how quality of life varies across the state. The sum of all of these factors, he argued, is demonstrated in average life expectancy in Rio: the statewide life expectancy is 75 years of age, but residents living in Quiemados or Serop\u00e9dica in the Baixada Fluminense live, on average, two years less than those in Rio city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make this comparison so we can see how [not broadening our view\u00a0to] the\u00a0metropolis can be a problem,\u201d said Mihessen. \u201cIt\u2019s also interesting from a public policy<\/a> point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Clarisse Linke, researcher from the Brazilian Institute of Transport and Development Policy<\/a>, spoke about transport as a major challenge for Rio state in the coming years. Average monthly wages throughout the state contribute to the picture of a varying quality of life depending on geographical location, with Rio city inhabitants’\u00a0average monthly salary\u00a0of\u00a0R$2,216 starkly contrasting the R$624 of those in Japeri in the Baixada Fluminense.<\/p>\n

But according to Linke, commute times provide better indicators of\u00a0quality of life:\u00a026% of those living in Rio city itself and a statewide average of 20% of people spend more than one hour commuting between home and work.\u00a0Linke argued that managing transport should be a priority for megacities like Rio de Janeiro. In all megacities, the population is likely to have doubled by\u00a02030 in relation to 2000 levels, occupying three times more\u00a0physical space than they\u00a0did at the beginning of the millennium, and accounting for 75% of economic production worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than half of those living in Japeri spend over an hour traveling outside of their district to work every day,\u201d said Linke. \u201cThis is primarily a mobility issue, but it\u2019s caused by urban planning problems. We have to try to pressure the [mayoral] candidates to address this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linke\u2019s research advocated three main strategies: the creation of job opportunities away from the main city and in the surrounding regions\u00a0of the metropolis, the improvement of sustainable public transport and its infrastructure, including pedestrian and bicycle options within cities, and the \u201cde-incentivizing\u201d of private transport and cars.<\/p>\n

\"Transit<\/a>
Transit sheds and population density in Rio de Janeiro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt is crucial that we understand what the inequalities in mobility reflect,\u201d said Linke. \u201cWe have a serious problem, with public transport that is ultimately a necessity and on the other hand an increase in the number of vehicles in the city and an investment in automobile infrastructure that benefits very few.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engineer Eloisa Elena Torres spoke about sanitation and pollution challenges facing the city, with the notoriously polluted Guanabara Bay<\/a> remaining one of Rio\u2019s biggest environmental challenges. Torres\u2019 maps showed how waste from the city, Baixada and Eastern districts all flow directly into the bay.<\/p>\n

\"Torres'<\/a>
Torres’ map shows areas that drain into Guanabara Bay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no problem with what\u2019s actually in human waste,\u201d she said. \u201cThe problem is that the city is complex, and the substances we produce are also complex, and we don\u2019t know how this will impact the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torres\u2019 research placed potential socio-environmental impacts of pollution of the bay into six categories: unsanitary conditions; quality of life and health risks; watershed threats; real estate and environmental degradation and depreciation; implications for fishing<\/a> and water activities; job and income losses with a decline in tourism<\/a>; and risks to marine life.<\/p>\n

\"Pollution<\/a>
Torres’ examples of pollution in Guanabara Bay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Basic sanitation was another factor affecting\u00a0quality of life that varied greatly between districts: 99% of Nil\u00f3polis residents in the Baixada Fluminense had access to sewage systems, but the same could be said of only 12% of those living in Maric\u00e1 in the Metropolitan East. For the 22.2% of those living in non-upgraded favelas in Rio\u2013nearly 10% higher than the state average\u2013sanitation remains a primary point of contention.<\/p>\n

Torres\u2019 main concern is the looming privatization of sanitation, owing to virtual monopoly of state-owned water firm CEDAE<\/a>, its public-private partnerships<\/a> and potential government plans to sell off the company<\/a>\u2013placing control of sanitation far out of the financial and political control of Rio citizens.<\/p>\n

\"Torres'<\/a>
Torres’ map shows which companies control sanitation in areas across the state<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Public security researcher Silvia Ramos addressed concerns over growing urban violence<\/a> in Rio state. Mihessen\u2019s research showed how this, too, varied across different districts: for every 100,000 inhabitants in Queimados, for example, there were 72.4 homicides on average, a figure markedly different from Rio municipality, which had 18.6, and from the state average of 25.4.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have to pay a lot more attention to territorial inequalities,\u201d said Ramos. \u201cTerritorial inequalities are much deeper than we already know: it may be the most important way for us to understand everything today, including violence, as well as any inequality between gender, age, class, income, race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramos\u2019 research shows how violent crime rates in Rio de Janeiro have steadily decreased over the years. The introduction of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)<\/a> initially had a significant impact in reducing violent crime in the city\u2019s favelas, although in recent years this has crept slowly back up, perplexing policy makers.<\/p>\n

\"Homicide<\/a>
Homicide rate over three decades in Brazil (red) and Rio (yellow)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere are various explanations for this, but it is a police project,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were 9,000 police introduced, all new and all young, and this produced a wave [where violent crime moved from the municipality of Rio to the Baixada Fluminense]\u2013not just in the favelas but all across the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramos also touched on the under-reported issues concerning violence and crime in the state: that overall crime, including violent crime, was much higher in the Baixada than in the city, and that if violent crime is higher, other types of crime often reflect this. But for Ramos, the most worrying element of all is the media\u2019s capacity to swiftly forget violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone saw the map of violence<\/a>\u00a0[when it was published in 2012], and a week or two later didn\u2019t talk about it. Newspapers\u00a0increasingly follow a model of silence when it comes to talking about violence. We are talking less and less about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayoral elections will take place in October 2016, after the Olympics. In addition to the recently-declared state of calamity<\/a>, existing budget deficits<\/a>, failures to address problems with education<\/a>, healthcare<\/a>, sanitation, transport, and crime, Casa Fluminense\u2019s research presents an opportunity for candidates to address matters that will likely have a greater immediate impact on residents\u2019 lives than the Games. Tonight, July 26, is the official launch of Casa Fluminense’s Agenda 2017<\/a>\u00a0proposal, signed by over 50\u00a0civil society organizations and think tanks across Greater Rio. Mayoral candidates from across the region have been invited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Wednesday July 20, Rio-based public policy group Casa Fluminense, comprised of representatives of\u00a0hundreds of civil society organizations across the state,\u00a0held a workshop for journalists covering Rio de Janeiro after the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":30962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736,1290,1333,335,1282,452,1869,1329],"tags":[9,460,1713,880,1692,1382,397,1197,531,203,755,1709,23,1900,1259,996,598,1312,551,15,530,301,809,409,1698,740,2224,535,1631,200],"writer":[1956],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-policies","11":"category-research-analysis","12":"category-rio20","13":"category-transit","14":"category-by-international-observers","15":"tag-9","16":"tag-baixada-fluminense","17":"tag-casa-fluminense","18":"tag-census","19":"tag-crime","20":"tag-development","21":"tag-education","22":"tag-greater-rio","23":"tag-guanabara-bay","24":"tag-inequality","25":"tag-infrastructure","26":"tag-japeri","27":"tag-mass-media","28":"tag-media-narrative","29":"tag-mega-events","30":"tag-metropolitan-region","31":"tag-municipal-election","32":"tag-nilopolis","33":"tag-niteroi","34":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","35":"tag-pollution","36":"tag-public-policy","37":"tag-public-security","38":"tag-public-transportation","39":"tag-queimados","40":"tag-research-findings","41":"tag-rio2017","42":"tag-sanitation","43":"tag-seropedica","44":"tag-transportation","45":"writer-ciara-long"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30935"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=30935"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=30935"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=30935"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=30935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}