Record floods in southern Brazil that have killed more than 170 people and displaced over half a million are a warning sign of more disasters to come across the Americas because of climate change, a United Nations refugee agency official said on Tuesday.
Nearly 389,000 people in Rio Grande do Sul state have been displaced from their homes by heavy rains and flooding, which local officials say was the worst disaster in the region’s history. Scientists say climate change has doubled flooding.
Andrew Harper, the refugee agency UNHCR’s special adviser on climate action, visited a flooded area of the state capital, Porto Alegre, over the weekend and called it “a ghost town.”
“It was under water for about 40 days. There wasn’t even a rat running around. Everything was dead,” Harper said in an interview Tuesday.
Even after floodwaters receded, residents have not returned to neighborhoods, where streets are filled with waterlogged trash and debris. Many are still living in shelters, including Venezuelan refugees settled in Porto Alegre.
UNHCR is assisting the local government to build temporary housing.
Harper said residents of some of the worst-affected areas may never return, as they have had to flee repeatedly due to flooding. But how many people will become so-called climate migrants will only be known many years after the disaster.
Harper said the floods had exceeded all local authorities’ expectations about climate disasters and that governments needed to do more to prepare for these events.
“We’re seeing the same thing emerging in Brazil that we’re seeing across the United States. So they’re at their own peril to ignore it,” Harper said.
He said governments need to understand where the people most vulnerable to climate change live, such as the area he visited in Porto Alegre, and include those people in their climate plans.
“It’s a warning sign, but we’ve been seeing the warning signs for the last five, ten years,” Harper said. “At which point you should slap someone in the face and say, ‘Wake up, you’re not going to ignore this.’”
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