Cheias de controvérsias: desagregações entre a natureza, obras e as comunidades no Baixo Mondego (Portugal)

Abstract

Flood disasters highlight communities’ vulnerabilities rather than the rupture of the relationship between communities and nature as a disaster driver. Due to the importance of this rupture for flood mitigation study, this paper aims to discuss how public policies of flood risk management, through infrastructural works, build such rupture. Thus, flood damage derives to a large extent from the lack of affected communities’ consultation. The Lower Mondego region is a good example: devastated for centuries by riverine floods, it has undergone numerous structural interventions. The most recent one was the Mondego River regulation project, planned in 1962 and executed from 1977. To understand the dynamics involved in this process, the author applied the actor-network theory, articulated with the sociology of controversies. The author used the case-study method and collected, through focus groups, the views of 93 affected persons from the municipality of Coimbra within this region. Asked about structural measures in their localities and their effectiveness, these persons underscored the regulation project. Their reasoning shows that such works have been holding effects contrary to their purposes, being transformed into flood and disaster triggers. Having been built in inappropriate places and with contentious characteristics, the works have increased existing vulnerabilities and built new ones and have altered the relationship of these communities with nature, the river, and its floods. The most publicly mentioned cause is the discharge from the Aguieira dam and the lack of coordination with the weir-bridge, which hides the other works. One can conclude that the river works before 1977 had led to harmonious coexistence between villages and floods, representing a good example of resilience. The relationship with these previous works, now superseded by the regulation of the river, shows how risk mitigation by the modern state has been damaging communities in the floodplain.

Keywords

• regularização do rio mondego
• ruptura com a natureza
• vulnerabilidade social
• cheias
• baixo mondego