Southern Brazil, a showcase of the devastation caused by climate change

It had already been raining without respite for seven days, the waters rising higher and higher, when last Tuesday the mayor of Eldorado do Sul warned its 42,000 residents that the time had come. General Withdrawal. He ordered everyone to leave their homes immediately, ordering them to flee because the city would be flooded for the next 10 days. Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil’s richest, is experiencing a roller coaster of torrential rains and drought as tropical and polar air masses collide over it. However, it has never seen a rain storm as destructive as the one that began 12 days ago and shows no signs of abating.

It rains, it pours. Gauchos, residents of this state, have faced floods three times in eight months. On May 2, Thalia Silveira, 21, was looking after two of her cousins ​​in Eldorado do Sul when flooding hit. Neighbors encouraged him to run away. They reached a shelter, but soon had to leave because the atmosphere was so tense: “There were people drinking and fighting.” “Now is the time to work on rebuilding. We are alive. And this is the most important thing,” Silveira resigned a few days later at one of the few points in the city, a section of the BR-290 highway turned into a meeting point for evacuation by boat or helicopter.

Practically, the entire state – birthplace of Gisele Bündchen and Ronaldinho, bordering Uruguay and Argentina – is flooded. Water reached the roof at many places. It destroyed everything. About 340,000 people have fled their homes, some mayors are considering moving their cities to higher ground to rebuild, countless families have lost everything. “Some people are considering migrating, becoming climate refugees,” Natalie Unterstel, president of Talanoa, a center for climate policy studies, says by phone. He added, “This could be our Hurricane Sandy or Katrina moment.” This disaster, which exposes the weakness of infrastructure, makes politicians and citizens understand that nature does not forgive aggression and it is necessary to act now. Without any excuse or delay.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacted immediately. He visited the region twice, organized the government, announced significant economic aid, and declared that the floods were “a warning to the world. We must be mindful that the Earth is taking its toll on us.” The experienced Lula is well aware that his management of this crisis, in a state that elected far-right Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, could define this third term, although his environmental policy is far less ambitious than Brazilian activists are demanding. , although much more committed and light years away from the negativism of its predecessor.

According to the latest official report, 136 people have died in the floods and 125 others are still missing. The situation at the ground level is still very serious. Rescue efforts and aid delivery are extremely complicated as roads and bridges have been washed away due to rain. The main airport has been deactivated.

Despair is spreading among the two million people affected – one in every five residents of the state – as two meteorologists predict rain, landslides and winds through Monday the 13th and, to make matters worse, fake news. As lies are worsening the environment, rescue ships require special permits. Looting has begun and rescue workers are afraid to work after dark.

Karina Bruno Lima, 36, researches severe storms and disasters for a doctorate in climate science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, a state that could be considered an unbeatable laboratory for the effects of climate change; Last year it faced two floods and a cyclone followed by three years of severe drought. “This disaster was caused by a combination of factors: El Niño, which brings more rain, a current that brings moisture from the Amazon, an atmospheric blockage with a hot air mass in the center of Brazil… All that instability trapped Rio. Grande do Sul But there is also human influence. The warm atmosphere and oceans generate the energy for these extreme events,” said Lima, who is also affected by the storm, without telephone coverage and with very unstable internet. 2023 has been the hottest year of the millennium.

With global warming, climate disasters are becoming more regular. They occur more frequently, are more intense and cause more damage. And, as Lima emphasizes, the aggravating factor in this case is that “many cities are built next to water bodies and without any preparation to withstand extreme rain-related events.”

She herself knows this. The scientist had to abandon his home in Porto Alegre, where containment embankments have not faced the worst flooding since 1941. The roads in the center are now rivers through which lifeguards navigate by canoe. Lima is nestled in Paso Fundo, a rural area free from flood threat, 400 kilometers from the capital, which has become famous throughout the world due to participatory budgeting.

Lima, who is also a science communicator, emphasizes that “people have to understand that this requires complex solutions.” That’s why he believes it’s important to “elect representatives who prioritize climate and environmental issues and then demand that they be held accountable.” He emphasizes that now is the time for “managers to listen to the warnings that science has been issuing for decades.”

Brazil’s most international singer, Anita, who performed with Madonna in Rio, is blaming Congress directly for the Rio Grande do Sul disaster, according to a video posted on her Instagram account on “deforestation, pesticides and indigenous Blamed for “passing laws that encourage land invasions”. , “In the next election, don’t vote for climate deniers,” he asks his 65 million followers. An important statement five months before the municipal elections. Climate policy expert Unterstel clearly states that “the war against nature has to stop. “Nature is an ally, she can stop the water from moving.”

The disaster has once again focused attention on legislative aggression to break environmental regulations and the enormous power lobby Brazilian agriculture, a central sector of the economy. Rio Grande do Sul is Brazil’s fifth largest economy, a state with a powerful agricultural sector that produces 70% of rice, with beans ubiquitous on the table of any Brazilian, whether poor or rich. Supermarkets have limited sales and the government will import one million tonnes to avoid shortages and send prices skyrocketing. Lula has taken advantage of the climate disaster to emphasize his claim that rich countries, which destroyed their forests for industrialization and prosperity, support Brazil and other countries that developed less and that sought to exploit money and technology. Along with preserving our forests.

Both experts emphasize that, once the emergency phase has passed, it is essential to look to the future and quickly adopt mitigation and adaptation policies. That is, one, to drastically reduce emissions to stop global warming. And, the climate scientist points out, “completely incompatible with opening new oil projects,” as Lula considers doing in the Amazon and Petrobras hopes to do. And two, it is necessary to build infrastructure that can withstand rapidly increasing weather-related attacks. “In Porto Alegre, the dams gave way because there was no maintenance and they didn’t know how to operate the water pumps!”

Thousands of deployed officers, police, army and volunteers have managed to rescue more than 70,000 people and 10,000 pets. Like every tragedy, this one also has a symbol. There is neither a child, nor a pregnant woman, nor an old man, nor a lifeguard, but a horse called candy, who spent six days on a rooftop in a flooded field. Discovered by a Globo Television helicopter, he was rescued the next day in a major operation that included anesthetizing him and removing him in a sump. Television and First Lady Janja da Silva broadcast it live. The sociologist’s feelings were such that she came face to face with her husband and gave him the good news in person.

Brazilians heaved a sigh of relief as they scrambled to raise money and donate aid to their affected compatriots, trying to avoid falling into the fraud. There are always heartless people. And while the gauchos plead with the sky to stop the rain, in the north-east of this continental country they beg for rain and the inhabitants of the center do not take off the fans because of the heat wave with maximum temperatures above 30 degrees, which Inappropriate for the tropics. Winter season.

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