CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERFACES BETWEEN SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL VULNERABILITY, TERRITORY, AND POWER RELATIONS

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the interfaces between climate change, socio-environmental vulnerability, territory, and power relations, focusing on the production of environmental injustice. It is based on the understanding that the climate crisis, although global, manifests unevenly, disproportionately affecting socially vulnerable populations. From this perspective, socio-environmental vulnerability is understood as a social construct, resulting from historical processes of inequality and the unequal distribution of resources and infrastructure. The theoretical framework is grounded in environmental justice, which highlights the concentration of environmental risks among marginalized groups, as well as in critical and decolonial perspectives that associate the climate crisis with the coloniality of power and the logic of nature exploitation. Methodologically, this is a quantitative, ecological, and analytical study, with a territorial focus on the municipality of Aracaju, based on secondary data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and the National Sanitation Information System (SNIS), for the analysis of socioeconomic, environmental, and urban infrastructure indicators. The results demonstrate the concentration of vulnerabilities in peripheral neighborhoods, characterized by low income, limited sanitation, and greater exposure to climate risks, revealing the overlap of inequalities within the territory. It is concluded that the impacts of climate change are socially produced and territorially distributed, requiring the formulation of public policies guided by the principles of environmental justice and the reduction of socio-spatial inequalities.

Keywords: Climate change; territory; socio-spatial inequality.