Disaster Risks and Environmental Complexity: The 2007 Oil Spill in Caleta Córdova, Chubut, Argentina

Abstract

As a contribution to the analysis of the relationships and interdependencies between the construction of disaster risks and the complexity of coastal spaces, the causal factors of the disaster related to the hydrocarbon spill in the sea, which occurred in 2007, were evaluated compared to the coast of Caleta Córdova (Comodoro Rivadavia, Chubut), Argentina. The field work and the search and compilation of diverse documentary sources were essential for the retrospective reconstruction of the event. The total hazardousness of the environmental disaster resulted from the combination of natural, socioeconomic and technological processes, which affected various contexts exposed to it. Global vulnerability was a latent condition, prior to the event and consolidated from the mode of production of the coastal space, the rationality of the activities of the oil industry and the decisions of the stakeholders involved. The integrated evaluation of the causal factors of the disaster and in particular the classification of the causal networks of the total hazardousness, allowed to identify, in the social actions, a relevant component in the consolidation of a disaster risk space in Caleta Córdova, in the which reflexive complexity dominated over events of ordinary complexity.

Keywords

• costas marinas
• derrames de hidrocarburos
• peligrosidad total
• vulnerabilidad global
• patagonia
• argentina