![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-Chuva-litoral-hum-2023-03-info-1-1140.png\")
\n <\/picture>Although few ideas have left the drawing board, Brazil has created tools to help state and municipal managers establish effective strategies. One is the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), established in 2016 with the aim of reducing the nation\u2019s vulnerability to climate change. The national document offers guidance on risk management in 11 different sectors, including agriculture, coastal zones, and biodiversity. \u201cBut the NAP is not enforced by law. The implementation of its actions is thus at the discretion of each state and municipality,\u201d explains Ivan Carlos Maglio, a civil engineer from the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (IEA-USP). He notes that the first Brazilian initiatives to combat the effects of the climate crisis involved controlling greenhouse gas emissions, a trend that changed\u2014especially after 2015\u2014when scientific studies showed that measures were needed to adapt to these impacts rather than trying to stop them. According to Gabriela Marques Di Giulio, a professor at USP’s School of Public Health, the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP) represented a significant milestone in this change of approach. \u201cFrom the moment the effects began more starkly impacting day-to-day city life, the international debate switched to how to mitigate the losses and damages associated with the climate crisis,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
In the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, the starting point for risk and disaster management policies was a preventive plan drawn up by the Civil Defense in 1989 for controlling landslides in the Serra do Mar mountains of Santos, Cubat\u00e3o, Guaruj\u00e1, and S\u00e3o Vicente. In 2009, the State Policy on Climate Change was enacted through Law No. 13,798. In 2022, the state approved and published the 2050 Climate Action Plan<\/em>, which featured contributions from researchers associated with the FAPESP-funded Biota S\u00edntese program and which also involves members of the state government. \u201cWe proposed strategies to promote ecological restoration in urban areas and so-called peri-urban areas in the state,\u201d says the researcher.<\/p>\n S\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o Municipal Government<\/span><\/a> Victims in S\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o near houses damaged by floods and landslidesS\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o Municipal Government<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n According to Di Giulio, these peri-urban areas, which account for 3% of the state’s total area, are highly vulnerable to climate impacts due to deforestation, land use pressure, and illegal occupation. \u201cAt the same time, they have great potential to provide ecosystem services,\u201d she says. Ecosystem services are benefits provided to humans by the natural functioning of ecosystems.<\/p>\n According to SEMIL geologist Claudio Jos\u00e9 Ferreira, around 100 municipalities have mapped risks in their territories, while the state as a whole has at least one regional assessment. \u201cThe challenge now is to incorporate climate projections into these maps. We are supporting some municipalities to write adaptation plans with this new focus,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n As part of the endeavor, the Resilient Municipalities of S\u00e3o Paulo program was created in 2020, providing training on the creation of adaptation plans to 12 towns in 2022, including Americana, Embu das Artes, and Ubatuba. \u201cOne of the central focuses of these workshops was to highlight the importance of incorporating future climate change scenarios into public policies, including an increase in the Earth’s temperature and a higher incidence of rainfall by 2050. Historical data are no longer enough for designing effective actions,\u201d emphasizes Carvalho. Eight of the participating towns and the Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista completed adaptation plans incorporating these guidelines.<\/p>\n<\/div> Ferreira highlights that the Federal Constitution of 1988 established a requirement for municipal master plans, which are regulated by Law No. 10,257, of 2001. He notes that many municipalities include risk management in their master plans, as is the case in Mogi Mirim, which has just reformulated its own. \u201cThe problem is that their risk analyses consider climatological measures until 2020, which is not enough to deal with the extreme events predicted in recent projections,\u201d he warns. Emphasizing the urgent need to invest in public policies that consider future scenarios, the geologist points out that in the 1990s, environmental disasters were mostly restricted to the Serra do Mar region. In the last two years, however, their effects have been felt in more than 500 towns across the state, which now face erosion, landslides, and flooding.<\/p>\n Maglio, from USP, says that S\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o does not have an adaptation plan, but its new master plan, approved in 2021, establishes that 101 illegally occupied areas are to be turned into Special Social Interest Zones (ZEISs). The engineer, who acted as a consultant for the document, explains that it used data from 2017 to identify geotechnical risks, determining that these ZEISs, which have a total population of around 25,000 people, require urgent intervention to prevent the occurrence of disasters. \u201cThe development of the master plan did not involve any predictions about the future. The vulnerabilities of these areas to landslides and floods are even more intense when you look at future scenarios,\u201d he warns, citing the municipalities of Santos, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, S\u00e3o Paulo, and Salvador as examples of adaptation plans that incorporate projections.<\/p>\n Lessons from Bangladesh<\/strong> Mamun Hossain \/ AFP via Getty Images <\/span><\/a> Banana vendor on a flooded street after heavy rainfall in the town of Sylhet, Bangladesh, in 2022Mamun Hossain \/ AFP via Getty Images <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Over the past two years, roughly 7% of Bangladesh’s budget has been allocated to combating the effects of climate change. The country now has 14,000 shelters capable of providing emergency accommodation to around 2.4 million people, 50 meteorological stations, and an alert system that issues warnings in mosques, on the radio and television, and through text messages, as well as a network of volunteers who go house to house to warn people. The topic of climate risk is also taught in school. Despite the advances the country has made, Torres stresses that it continues to face difficulties rebuilding its infrastructure after major storms.<\/p>\n The sociology of disaster, a field of study that focuses on analyzing the long-term effects of disastrous events and their impacts on society, emerged in Europe and the USA in the 1970s and has been gaining interest in Brazil since the 1990s. Economist Norma Valencio of the Federal University of S\u00e3o Carlos (UFSCar), one of the pioneers in the field, points out that its contributions and analyses are essential to combating the worsening climate crisis. \u201cIn the last 15 years, public policies on disaster management have been based on knowledge produced by fields such as geology, physical geography, meteorology, and climatology, which do not place enough attention on a long-term understanding of the social structure and dynamics of locations susceptible to risks or the people affected,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n According to Valencio, the sociology of disaster also analyzes the influence the military has on Brazilian civil defense agencies and how they deal with these kinds of events. Since it was created in the 1990s, the country’s civil defense system has delegated command to police officers, firefighters, or military reserve forces. \u201cThe hierarchy of command and obedience in the armed forces puts a strain on the local cultural repertoire and the means of sociability in the communities,\u201d she says. When investigating shelters in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro after major storms in 2011 left more than 900 people dead, CEMADEN sociologist Victor Marchezini observed that curfews and the presence of armed police made the homeless feel unsafe, especially women, who feared sexual harassment. Marchezini led a study on civil defense in 1,993 Brazilian municipalities, identifying the precarious nature of the financial and human resources that supported these institutions. \u201cThrough our research we found that less than 10% of civil defense agencies had community centers and that 80% of their agents were male,\u201d says the sociologist. Marchezini maintains that working closely with communities is fundamental to the interpretation of meteorological data, which need to be contextualized within different local situations.<\/p>\n Projects<\/strong> Scientific articles<\/strong> Books<\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-chuva-sao-sebastiao-2023-04-site-1140.jpg\")
\n <\/picture>Rodrigo Cunha \/ Pesquisa Fapesp <\/span><\/div>
\nDespite recognizing that the delay in creating adaptation plans is common worldwide, USP economist and sociologist Pedro Roberto Jacobi believes Brazil lacks a culture of prevention. \u201cBrazilian municipalities in vulnerable regions should invest in alert systems, for example, as a way of anticipating the occurrence of extreme events,\u201d argues Jacobi, who is also president of ICLEI for South America. He mentions that other places in the Global South are also dealing with the effects of the climate crisis, such as Bangladesh, where storms periodically \u201cmake half the country disappear under water.\u201d Sociologist Pedro Henrique Campello Torres, who is carrying out postdoctoral research at IEA-USP with funding from FAPESP, explains that cyclones and storms passing through the South Asian country used to cause a high number of deaths, such as Cyclone Bhola, which resulted in more than 300,000 deaths in 1970. Since then, the nation has invested in risk and disaster prevention and reduction, and the number of deaths has been reduced 100-fold.<\/p>\n
\n1.<\/strong> Environmental governance of the S\u00e3o Paulo macro-metropolis in response to climate variability (n\u00ba 15\/03804-9<\/a>); Grant Mechanism <\/strong>Global Climate Change Research Program; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Pedro Roberto Jacobi (USP); Investment <\/strong>R$5,687,318.22.
\n2.<\/strong> New methods of scientific cooperation for innovation in socio-environmental governance in the S\u00e3o Paulo macro-metropolis (n\u00ba 18\/06685-9<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Postdoctoral Fellowship; Supervisor<\/strong> Pedro Roberto Jacobi (USP); Beneficiary<\/strong> Pedro Henrique Campello Torres; Investment <\/strong>R$668,947.23.
\n3.<\/strong> Biota S\u00edntese \u2012 Center for analysis and synthesis of nature-based solutions (n\u00ba 20\/06694-8<\/a>); Grant Mechanism <\/strong>Biota Program \u2012 Problem-oriented research centers in S\u00e3o Paulo; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Jean Paul Walter Metzger (USP); Investment<\/strong> R$3,656,164.10.
\n4.<\/strong> Multidisciplinary research methods in risk and disaster scenarios: Subsidies for the formulation of warning systems centered on people and multi-threats (n\u00ba 18\/06093-4<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Postdoctoral Fellowship; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Victor Marchezini (CEMADEN); Investment<\/strong> R$247,301.50.
\n5.<\/strong> Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in the context of disaster response (CODeS): Computational tools in integrated data analysis (n\u00ba 22\/09136-1<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Regular Research Grant \u2012 eScience and Data Science Program; Principal Investigator <\/strong>Norma Felicidade Lopes da Silva Valencio (UFSCar); Investment<\/strong> R$102,617.59.<\/p>\n
\nCOUTINHO, S. M. V. et al<\/em>. Adapta\u00e7\u00e3o \u00e0s mudan\u00e7as clim\u00e1ticas no Brasil: Complexidade, incertezas e estrat\u00e9gias existentes<\/a>. Revista ClimaCom. <\/strong>8, 20. 2021.
\nDI GIULIO, G. et al<\/em>. Bridging the gap between will and action on climate change adaptation in large cities in Brazil<\/a>. Regional Environmental Change.<\/strong> 19, pp. 2491\u2013502. 2019.<\/p>\n
\nTORRES, P. H. C & JACOBI, P. R. (eds.). Towards a just climate change resilience<\/strong>. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
\nMARCHEZINI, V. (org.). Diagn\u00f3stico de capacidades e necessidade municipais em prote\u00e7\u00e3o e defesa civil<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> Bras\u00edlia: Ministry of Regional Development, 2021.
\nVALENIO, N. et al.<\/em> Abandonados nos desastres: Uma an\u00e1lise sociol\u00f3gica de dimens\u00f5es objetivas e simb\u00f3licas de afeta\u00e7\u00e3o de grupos sociais desabrigados e desalojados<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> Bras\u00edlia: Conselho Federal de Psicologia, 2011.<\/p>\n