Conceptualizing and mapping exposure of vulnerable Roma communities to natural hazards

Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the SAS v.v.i. became a partner of the Centre for Social and Psychological Sciences, the Institute for Forecasting of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in implementing the project Conceptualizing and mapping of exposure of vulnerable Roma communities to natural hazards.

The project, which is financed by the Foundation to Promote Open Society (FPOS), will be implemented in IV. quarter of year 2022 and in year 2023. From a theoretical perspective, the research attempts to reconsider the concept of environmental justice in light of field research in marginalized Roma communities. The forms and scope of unequal treatment are systematically identified, analysed and described with special attention to the impacts on affected communities. At the practical level, this research identifies cases of environmental injustice, maps out the impacts of unequal exposure to environmental harms and differentiated access to natural recourses, and shows how social injustice is transformed into environmental harm and the creation of environmental “hot spots”. The principal researcher of the project is our colleague Daniel Škobla.