Prevenir catástrofes promoviendo anegaciones Riesgo de inundación y vulnerabilidad en la ZMVM

Abstract

Floods have always presented a risk to the population living in the Valley of Mexico, and very early governments have been forced to develop strategies for its containment. The sequence of interventions of various types and magnitude in the hydrology of the basin, together with the changes caused by the dynamic growth of the city have led to a situation where decisions are strongly influenced by past strategies and their unwanted consequences, whereas involve the production of patterns of social vulnerability that tend not to be considered in the understanding of what constitutes the risk of flooding in the metropolitan area. The notion of vulnerability is central to the understanding of disasters and to develop risk scenarios. This proposal has as its starting point the understanding of vulnerability as embedded in the structure of relations between agents in a risk scenario, rather than a question of exposure or condition of an individual agent. As an element of any risk scenario, the structure of the vulnerability is not the result of the sum of the vulnerabilities of each agent, but limits the possible actions of all agents in the scenario. In order to show the heuristic potential of the concept of structure vulnerability, the risk of flooding in the metropolitan area of Mexico City is discussed. This particular case permits to clearly show that the possibilities of action and decision of the different actors (the National Water Commission, local governments, neighborhood organizations and families themselves), are constrained by the three main components of any structure of vulnerability: a) the dominant definition of risk, b) the characteristics of infrastructure and management systems, and c) socio-political planning and economic development.