Rio Grande do Sul Floods: How Can Brazil's Politicians Not See Climate?

-OpEd-

SÃO PAULO — The tragedy that has stuck Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, is unprecedented. The amount of rain that has fallen in recent days and is still falling there is extreme and so are the consequences. The death toll has reached 100, and more than a hundred people are still missing. More than 1 million people have been affected.

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These impressive figures and the images that look more like disasters caused by hurricanes or tsunamis can generate a false idea of rarity, of bad luck. “It rained like never before, we couldn't have prepared for it" is the phrase most often used to justify calamities like this.

But it is no accident. It was already known, already expected. And, I'm sorry to say, it's going to happen again. And again. And not just with the gauchos in Rio Grande do Sul.

Scientists' warnings

Don't take me for an alarmist or a pessimist. Science has been warning for a long time that the increased occurrence of extreme events is one of the main consequences of climate change. The surreal amount of carbon dioxide that accumulates in the atmosphere — due to human activities — and warms the planet, alters the entire functioning of the climate system. A warmer Earth means more energy in the equation. Heat is synonymous with tragedy.

Due to its geographical location, Rio Grande do Sul is particularly sensitive to the natural phenomena El Niño and La Niña. That's why it's relatively common for droughts and heavy rains to alternate there. But global warming is making this worse. So is deforestation. And although much of this new reality translates into situations that seem to take us by surprise, scientists had already estimated that this would be the case. The consecutive tragedies that have been accumulating since last year were not for lack of warning.

The independent online newspaper Intercept Brasil recalled on May 6 a study commissioned in 2014 by the government of then president Dilma Rousseff that warned of the risk of flooding in Rio Grande do Sul. The "Brazil 2040" report mentioned the dangers of agribusiness, especially in the state, and also of hydroelectric dams, which clashed with the government's electricity expansion plans. The report ended up being shelved in 2015 without any action being taken.

We didn’t have to wait until 2040 for predicted dangers to become reality. And it wasn't just this study that warned about the risks. Local researchers, such as Francisco Aquino, a climatologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), have shown that extreme events are already intensifying, without anything having been done to prevent deaths and losses.

Last year, Rio Grande do Sul was the state with the highest number of rain-related emergency and disaster decrees in Brazil.

Mitigating the problem

Agência Pública found that, over the course of last year, the Brazilian government issued 1,073 rain-related emergency and disaster emergency decrees across the country — 433 of them were in municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul, around 40% of the total. During this period, at least 71 people died as a result of the storms in the state.

But global warming, environmental damage and scientific predictions are one thing, and what we do with them is another. Knowing what lies ahead, we need to act: first to try to avoid the worst, to mitigate the problem — which basically means reducing the emissions of gases that cause global warming.

Then you have to adapt to protect the population. Because even if we ended emissions today — which, unfortunately, is a long way off — these gases, especially CO2, will remain in the atmosphere for a long time. That means we will have to deal with the damage for a long time to come.

We need to create, among other things, more resilient structures. We need to get people out of risky areas, provide safe housing, basic sanitation, develop good warning systems and escape routes. We must increase the green cover of cities so as not only to reduce the effects of heatwaves, but also to protect hillsides and riverbanks so that they don't become silted up and overflow. It's a lot of work.

Climate policy expert Natalie Unterstell, from the Talanoa Institute, summed up the situation on social media: "What is happening in Rio Grande do Sul today is our new reality and not a 'sad exception.' We need to understand that we depend on infrastructure, systems, policies, and houses made for a climate that no longer exists. We depend on systems that are incapable of protecting us."

Climate experts weigh in

Brazil's National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts (CEMADEN) highlighted this unpreparedness in a technical note on the tragedy, writing “We can say that disasters generated by heavy rainfall are the result of human activities. Buildings in areas at risk of flooding, which were already flooded in September 2023, were flooded again in May 2024; this time, with a higher number of fatalities."

The note refers to towns such as Roca Sales and Muçum. Destroyed in last year's storms, they have been hit again now. People whose homes were destroyed then are now once again homeless.

“Hydraulic structures that protect the city of Porto Alegre did not withstand the flood waves and broke, which suggests that they were undersized or that they did not take into account that rainfall volumes could increase over time,” CEMADEN researchers write.

And they warn: “Porto Alegre’s lack of resilience to climate extremes and climate change was detected in 2023, and this is the case for other large cities that may not be prepared for extreme climate events such as those that occurred in 2023 or will occur in the coming decades. Climate change could therefore increase the risk of disasters in Brazil's urban areas in this decade, as has already been recorded in the cities of Petrópolis and Recife in 2022, in São Sebastião and the Taquari River Valley in 2023, and in Porto Alegre in 2024.”

But actions are still in opposition to the necessary prevention. Not only are emissions continuing to rise, but no adaptation plans are in place. In Rio Grande do Sul — although this is not unique to the state — environmental laws have been weakened. Governor Eduardo Leite changed 480 points of the state's Environmental Code in 2019, as this report tells us.

An investigation by Agência Pública last year showed that the state government has shelved several plans to deal with climate change.

Weakening environmental laws

Meanwhile, federal deputies from the state of Rio Grande do Sul — who would do well to fight in Congress for policies to protect their constituents from disasters like those over the past nine months — are acting to weaken national laws in favor of agribusiness alone. Rio Grande do Sul federal deputies have a history of voting packages that actually tend to reduce environmental protection.

Currently, 25 bills and three amendments to the Constitution are being processed in Congress that make environmental legislation more flexible. They target, for example, the Forest Code — the country's main law protecting native vegetation — environmental licensing and even the financing of environmental policy. The Climate Observatory has dubbed the bills the "Package of Destruction".

It's worth remembering that the state's agribusiness sector has suffered loss after loss as a result of extreme events. Yet the sector prefers to pay attention to a climate denier instead.

Meteorologist Luiz Carlos Molion, a retired professor from the Federal University of Alagoas (Ufal), who last year said in testimony to the NGO CPI that there was “incredible alarmism” surrounding El Niño and that the phenomenon was not going to cause drought in the Amazon or storms in the south of the country — just a few days before these tragedies occurred — is always invited to give talks to producers.

Facing reality

At the end of April, Molion was at the Northern Gaucho Wheat and Corn Forum, in the city of Getúlio Vargas, where he said that rainfall in the April, May and June quarter should be below average in the Passo Fundo region. Again, I don't need to tell you that Passo Fundo is among the cities affected now, right? This was also the case during the September rains last year.

Reality imposes itself.

The climate crisis needs to be the new imperative for public policies, economic plans and strategic infrastructure planning. Cities will have to be rebuilt, and it won't be possible to do things the way they've always been done. The climate has changed. It is no longer possible to elect people who do not have a science-based approach to protect the population from the current risks as guiding principles as they lead the country, states and municipalities.

You can't elect MPs with a short-term vision who defends a single sector, using the guiding logic of “everything goes for today, and we'll see about tomorrow.” Tomorrow is here, my friends. May this terrible tragedy be on the minds of all of us in Brazil when we vote in the local elections in October.