[{"jcr:title":"Insper's Arq.Futuro Cities Lab partners with MIT to investigate climate justice","cq:tags_0":"centro-de-conhecimento:laborat-rio-arq--futuro-de-cidades","cq:tags_1":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/pesquisa","cq:tags_2":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/internacional","cq:tags_3":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/institucional","cq:tags_4":"tipos-de-conteudo:acontece-no-insper/parcerias"},{"richText":"The project, which involves students from the United States, examines the impact of climate change on the lives of women living in favelas and neglected areas","authorDate":"21/03/2023 13h07","author":"Leandro Steiw","madeBy":"Por","tag":"centro-de-conhecimento:laborat-rio-arq--futuro-de-cidades","title":"Insper's Arq.Futuro Cities Lab partners with MIT to investigate climate justice","variant":"imagecolor"},{"jcr:title":"transparente - turquesa - vermelho"},{"themeName":"transparente - turquesa - vermelho"},{"containerType":"containerTwo"},{"jcr:title":"Grid Container Section","layout":"responsiveGrid"},{"text":"The partnership between Insper’s  [Arq.Futuro Cities Lab](https://www.insper.edu.br/pt/pesquisa/centro-de-estudos-das-cidades)  and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) D-Lab took another step forward with the visit of three foreign students to São Paulo. The students, Ololade Olaore (from Harvard) and Luiza Zibenberg and Tiffany Wong (from Wellesley College), enrolled in the Gender & Development course at MIT, led workshops at Ocupação 9 de Julho (9 de Julho Settlement), at Heliópolis favela and the Cidade Tiradentes district. They conducted the fieldwork in January during the Winter Break in the United States, after completing the curriculum, and also talked to community leaders who are part of the Laboratory.   Juliana Mitkiewicz, coordinator of the Center for Women and Territories at Insper’s Arq.Futuro de Cidades Laboratory, has been collaborating with D-Lab since 2017, where she completed part of her PhD program. “Not only does this laboratory offer elective courses that address social contexts, but it also enables students to apply theory into practice, mostly in countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” says Mitkiewicz. “We applied our project on women and climate change within an MIT subject on gender and development. While there is a context of several different countries within Brazil, we wanted to take a special look at the urban question of climate justice from a gender perspective in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.”   According to Mitkiewicz, it is impossible to dissociate the issue of gender-related justice from the debate on climate justice. It is well known that women experience more injustices than men. The idea, then, is to understand how favelas and neglected areas are dealing with the issues of climate change, and how women – pioneers in these urban spaces and the primary providers for their families, mostly – are suffering even more just because they are women. “That’s where the partnership began,” says Mitkiewicz. “We took this initial approach for two weeks to understand, from the perspective of women, how they see their territories in the context of the climate crisis.”   When visiting other countries, foreign students don’t have a precise projection of what they will find and often experience a positive reality shock regarding their stereotypical view of favelas and neglected areas. “When students see that strength surrounded mostly by women, it becomes very transformative for them, from the perspective of a young woman who comes to do research and deconstructs various biases created by the media and things that are said about these territories,” asserts Mitkiewicz.   At the same time, this encounter strengthens the women’s movement within their own communities. “It is a gain beyond the results”, highlights Mitkiewicz, “because we want more than just academic researchers conducting surveys in Brazil. We want women from these same communities to take ownership of the investigations and participate as researchers. We want them to feel welcome and contribute to this sharing of knowledge.”   The choice of territories in São Paulo has broadened the perspective. Ocupação 9 de Julho is a movement fighting for housing in a building in the central region of the state capital, with a community vegetable garden amidst the concrete. It raised questions about respect, dignity, and the right to housing, which are even more critical than climate change. Heliópolis, with approximately 200,000 residents, is the largest favela in São Paulo. The young women in this community have shown remarkable awareness of climate change and mobilized to find solutions. Cidade Tiradentes, in the far east of the city, is known for its self-managed housing community efforts. The area is still surrounded by greenery and nature, and the impact of climate change is mainly discussed by the leaders of these movements.   From this first experience in São Paulo, some specificities of the territories in question became evident, as noted by Paulina Achurra, the academic coordinator of the Arq.Futuro de Cidades Laboratory. “Floods, which are becoming more frequent and intense, are more relevant in the outskirts. On the other hand, air pollution is a significant issue in the city center,” observes Achurra. “The impact of these troubles is not limited to flooded houses but is felt in people’s daily lives. Public transportation is disrupted, and schools are closed — in wealthy neighborhoods, schools may close for one day but reopen the next. This disrupts the whole support system for women. The unequal impact becomes evident, the issue of climate justice.”   Active listening   The next phase of the relationship between MIT and the Center for Women and Territories is already planned for March: they will visit Complexo da Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, and evaluate the differences and similarities between the communities in the two most populous cities in the country. Maré is a community where the environmental theme has been historically important, either for the area’s geographical conditions (it was built on land reclaimed by the residents, which is gradually subsiding), or for the engagement of its residents with the subject. Last year, the community submitted a letter on climate rights to COP 27 — the Climate Change Conference held in Egypt last November.   Mitkiewicz explained that in order to understand women’s perspectives in discussions related to these neglected areas, an active listening process will be used, with questions broad enough to allow for maximum sharing of information and experiences. Fieldwork will support the project’s five primary objectives:   • understand what climate change and climate justice are, from the perspective of women in favelas and neglected areas; • based on that understanding, develop and implement a participatory methodology for collecting data on climate change from the perspective of women in these communities, and then expand it to other communities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and eventually to other regions of the country • develop an advocacy plan on climate issues from a gender perspective by collecting data and co-creating the methodology with the communities; • combine the advocacy plan with data collection to guide public policies related to the climate crisis; • support and empower the voices of those women, amplifying them so they participate in discussions about climate change issues with local and state governments, especially within their own territories.   The development of the data collection methodology on climate change will involve significant participation from young people. In this regard, the experience of De Olho na Quebrada Laboratory (freely translated as Watching The Hood Lab) will be relevant. The laboratory is made up of residents aged 15 to 22 from Heliópolis who research and disseminate data on the problems and potentialities of the favela. “The community has this group of young people who already call themselves researchers and collect data,” says Mitkiewicz. “We also want to learn from them how to collect information in a more inclusive way.”   Effective action   In a subsequent phase, the team will analyze existing public policies in Brazil at the federal, state, and municipal levels, focusing mainly on São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. They will then select a pilot program and the area for implementation to test the methodology developed in the partnership, and train personnel. “We understand we are not part of the community and, as we aim to strengthen the research network within the areas, the idea is to have the community train more youths to collect and champion the data”, explains Mitkiewicz. In the third phase, a trained group from the communities will carry out the actual data collection, analyze the information, and identify the necessary interventions, striving for effective action in the areas. “The project has two key deliverables: the public research, published as a scientific paper, and an inclusive article that democratizes the methodology and knowledge, in collaboration with the community and academia”, says Mitkiewicz.   The project aims to influence public policies on behalf of women and the climate issues that directly affect them. In addition, the project aims to create a youth movement for climate change mitigation and adaptation. “These youths are a great source of mobilization and transformation”, the professor affirms. Partnerships such as the one between Arq.Futuro de Cidades Laboratory and MIT’s D-Lab will also involve undergraduate students. In the next phase, Undergraduate Research internships will be offered in Insper courses, enabling the school’s students to interact with MIT researchers and the communities involved."}]