How did public expenditures behaved in the face of the vulnerabilities of the sinking Maceió?

Abstract

In this article we will address the case of one of the largest socio-environmental disasters in an urban area in the world, which is ongoing in the capital of Alagoas located in the Northeast of Brazil, Maceió. In this context, we aim to demonstrate the performance of municipal management in mitigating the city's socio-urbanistic-environmental vulnerabilities, which were further aggravated by the subsidence of the soil caused by the extraction of rock salt carried out by the mining company Braskem. To this end, after presenting a spatial cartography to characterize the affected neighborhoods, we observed the performance of municipal management in combating inequalities based on the allocation of public resources between the years 2010 and 2022. With the results found, we identified that expenditure on Policies aimed at mitigating inequalities were reduced over the period analyzed. Furthermore, it was possible to infer that the scenario found in the area affected by the catastrophe is also a consequence of the inertia of the Public Power's action in the face of this socio-environmental crisis produced.

Keywords: environmental disaster; urban planning; public expenditures.