This is project is funded by FPRN as part of the EPEC programme for early career 2020-21 round.
Increasing temperatures and heatwaves are a deadly threat in tropical geographies where precarious urban infrastructures, informal urbanisation, and systemic social exclusion create new forms of thermal vulnerabilities. This project intends to understand the lived experiences of cooling poverty in vulnerable black communities and the interactions between different sources of material and immaterial deprivations in the city of Rio de Janeiro. To do so, this project engages with qualitative approaches such as interviews and energy diaries. A participatory, people-centric notion of ‘cooling poverty’ will be brought to the attention of local authorities; academia and energy policy makers.
‘I’m extremely happy to have been awarded this grant by the Fuel Poverty Research Network. This grant will allow me to shed light on the lived experiences of extreme heat and the detrimental effects that cooling poverty has on vulnerable communities in Rio de Janeiro. Without this important award, I would not be able to carry on this research and contribute to the understanding of cooling poverty from a people-centric perspective.’
Antonella Mazzone 2022
Antonella presents a summary of her project, including research questions, methodology, finding, implications and outputs.