Climate Change-Brazil: Calls for Adaptation Unheeded
By Mario Osava, InterPress Service, Jan 9 2009
Torrential rains have deluged several Brazilian states since November, causing nearly 200 deaths so far and reinforcing environmentalist campaigns calling for urgent climate change adaptation measures.
At least 136 people have been killed by mudslides or flooding in the southern state of Santa Catarina over the past two months. A large number of people are also missing, and there are 300 confirmed cases of leptospirosis, which will add to the likely death toll.
The rains flooded, damaged or destroyed the homes of over 1.5 million people, one-quarter of the state's population. The affected regions are in the east of the state, the most industrialised and populous part of Santa Catarina, so the economic losses are enormous.
In the central state of Minas Gerais, 23 people have died and 60,000 people in 97 towns and cities have had to abandon their homes.
Tens of thousands of people's homes were flooded in the Atlantic seaboard states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, where there were at least six deaths from leptospirosis, and the death toll is mounting.
"Let's hope they pay more attention to us after these disasters," Edir de Souza, preventive action manager at the Santa Catarina state Civil Defence Department, told IPS. He was referring to the need for an urban planning law to regulate what can be built, and where, in different city zones.
"If only they had listened to us, there would have been less damage," de Souza said. The landslides, torrents of water and floods caused more fatalities in sections of the city built on slopes and areas susceptible to flooding, and these could have been avoided, he said.
His hope is that climate change and the rise in extreme weather phenomena will "raise the voice and the authority of civil defence bodies," which by law should exist in each of Brazil's 5,563 municipalities but have not yet been created in nearly one-quarter of them.
In addition to preventing the expansion of cities into risk areas, preventive action includes educating communities, training civil defence staff, and "structural works" such as slope stabilisation and cleaning river beds and banks to ensure unobstructed passage for floodwaters, de Souza said.
In late November 2008, engineers, researchers and university professors in Santa Catarina posted a "reflection" on the Internet about the tragedy in the hard-hit northeastern Vale do Itajaí (Valley of the Itajai River).
The experts emphasised that "intense rainfall is part of the subtropical climate," and therefore hills, slopes and river banks should not be deforested. Yet they were, and this had the effect of aggravating flash floods and landslides, they said.
"The challenge is to reduce vulnerability," but the state parliament is considering a draft environmental code which, because of pressure from ranchers, industrialists and construction companies, relaxes regulations for the protection of rivers, forests and hilltops, thus increasing both the risk and the serious effects of disasters, they said.
The east of Santa Catalina suffers from torrential rains in cycles of seven to 10 years. But the current catastrophe is turning out to be worse than that of 1983, in which 49 people died, they said.
"Rural and urban land use must be adjusted to nature, whose laws are irrevocable," rather than the other way round, their reflection concludes.
This week, attention has shifted to the Araranguá Valley, where torrents of rainwater ran down from the mountains but did not flow out to sea because of high tides, and instead flooded huge areas.
"The outflow channel will have to be corrected," de Souza said. He added that Civil Defence Department and other local authorities are overwhelmed by concerns about disease, accommodation for those left homeless, and the economic losses and their social effects, such as unemployment and a fall in municipal income, which will lead to restrictions in services.
The recent events show that Brazil is "highly vulnerable" to natural disasters, whether or not they are caused by climate change, environmentalist Roberto Smeraldi, the head of Friends of the Earth-Brazilian Amazon, told IPS.
This vulnerability, added to regional and global climate change, intensifies the consequences of extreme weather conditions and "exponentially increases the probability of disasters," which are "socially unjust" because they affect mainly the poor, Smeraldi said.
The situation requires more rigorous protection of water sources, forests, rivers and soil, but laws are being discussed at national level that run counter to this need, since they would cut back environmental legislation and reduce protected forest areas, he complained.
The excessive rainfall in the east of Santa Catalina contrasts with the drought in the west of the state, and in the neighbouring states of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, where the shortage of water has already damaged crops, another outcome that will worsen with climate change, according to experts. (END/2009)
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