Resilience and Environmental Justice: Potential Linkages

In May 2008, the remote city of Chaiten in Chile was evacuated due to the risk of a volcano eruption. Few days later, severe floods drove to the destruction of the almost entire city. In the months following the disaster, the Government developed projects that failed to relocate the city to a safer location as well as strategies to support the affected population aimed to improve community resilience. Contradictory institutional policies as well as the unforeseen effects of implemented bond schemes have resulted in a highly segregated and environmentally unjust city where public policies. outputs are unevenly distributed. Thus, this paper addresses how some related processes of increasing resilience may impact negatively upon environmental justice, hence exploring a potential inverse relationship between resilience and environmental justice. Five years on, nearly half of the population have returned to Chaiten despite the refusal of the authorities. While northern Chaiten concentrates most of the population and investment, 160 families living in the southern Chaiten bear the lack of potable water and other basic services, and are more vulnerable to future disaster impacts. Split in two due to both geography and policies, Chaiten faces now two realities.