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Minas Gerais, Brazil

Misria

Addressing climate change in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais demands collaboration across traditional bureaucratic divisions. While the team officially tasked with devising climate plans falls under the purview of the Secretary of the Environment, their efforts to reduce vulnerability to climate change and support those already suffering its effects have brought them into many uneasy alliances. These efforts ranged from acquiring funding or technical support from European partners with fundamentally different views of environmental projection, to securing logistical aid from Civil Defense which was a part of the Mineiro military cabinet, to encouraging cooperation from the major economic institutions primarily focused around mining and agriculture. Working with these different groups necessitated that climate analysts become adept at shifting their rhetorical framing from audience to audience, but this work carried great ethical and practical risk. Were the climate scientists acting cynically when they adopted rhetoric they did not fully believe? Were they being naïve in trusting partners who may not genuinely value climate justice? What kinds of self-reflection might assist climate analysts and STS scholars in our efforts to grapple with the moral complexities of climate governance? 

Image Source: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters, "Deadly dam burst in Brazil prompts calls for stricter mining regulations," The Guardian, 10, November 2015.

Wald, Jonathan. 2023. "Beyond Cynicism and Naïveté: Ethical Complexities of Climate Governance." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

What groups and government agencies have become involved in plant oversight?

albrowne

Brasstech is a part of multiple regulatory programs that are led by multiple agencies within the California state government. The California Environmental Protection Agency oversees the site through the local CUP{A. The local Cupa in Santa Ana is the Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA), Division of Environmental Health. OCHCA is the lead agency on four of the regulatory programs this Brassetch facility is a part of. These regulatory programs include chemical storage facilities, hazardous waste generator, hazardous waste onsite treatment, RCRA LQ HW generator. All of which came into effect starting 04/19/2018.

 

The last regulatory program this facility is part of is the industrial facility stormwater program, in which the California State Water Resources Control Board is the lead agency. This program came into effect for this facility on 06/30/2021.