Heating Deprivation in the Southern Cone: Sensitivities and Resilience Shaping the Vulnerability Experience

Abstract

Energy poverty is common in the Southern Cone, mainly in regions with cold climates such as Argentina and Chilean Patagonia. The phenomenon of energy poverty manifests in various dimensions: access, equity, and quality. In southern Latin America, energy poverty is strongly driven by heating deprivation caused by a lack of thermal insulation, limited access to quality fuels, and budget constraints. Heating deprivation constitutes the lived experience of vulnerability to energy poverty. Using the vulnerability framework, we can analyse vulnerability as shaped by the sensitivity and resilience of the inhabitants of a household when dwelling in a low-temperature house. Sensitivity is related to temperature thresholds that allow people to reach thermal comfort. Resilience is the ability to respond with strategies to deal with low indoor temperatures or to provide heat with a different fuel despite its costs. In the Global South, with its multidimensional poverty and social inequality contexts, sensitivity and resilience are articulated through psychosocial responses, social practices, and strategies. In this chapter, we explore the lived experiences of heating deprivation by researching three sectors of the Southern Cone. These include rural communities in Argentine Patagonia, a small town in southern Chile, and the elderly population in an old neighbourhood in the capital of Chile. We analysed practices, strategies, and responses through interviews and an on-site visit to each household.We identified strategies for coping with shortages and maladaptation in low-temperature houses. All of these construct a narrative of resignation to deal with heating deprivation. The current socio-political crisis in the Southern Cone and the global socio-ecological crisis call for just actions that do not reinforce the causal factors driving them. We can learn how to face the current challenges by observing the sensitivities, and adaptative and response capacities that comprise the vital experience of vulnerability in contexts of energy poverty.