Environmental Conflicts and the Emergence of the Environment as a Social Problem in Rio de Janeiro

This article adopts a constructionist perspective to analyse the emergence of the environment as a social problem in Rio de Janeiro. It deals with the set of practices and arguments that organise the dispute over defining the environment as an issue. After identifying the demands and actors involved in environmental conflicts in Rio de Janeiro, it presents the main discursive schemes conveyed. The article argues that the specifics of the environment as a public issue are related to the tensions and the possibilities generated by the polarisation between, on the one hand, the understanding of the environment as a public resource and, on the other, the particular nature of the comprehensions expressed in the context of the conflict.