Tragedy announced on the shoreline of inequality – 02/24/2023 – Sou Ciência

The tragedy of the rains that occurred on the north coast of São Paulo is not just a climatic effect. It cruelly teaches the social, environmental and economic cost of predatory, unequal urbanization with low regulation and public action. Apart from economic losses, there are the dozens of lives lost, which are the most important and the most to be regretted. At this moment, urban planners, geographers, climatologists and other scientists are called by the press to explain the causes of the tragedy and the context that produced this situation. However, the participation of researchers unfortunately ends there, even in the face of the constant willingness to support the authorities in preventing “natural” disasters – which are caused, above all, by the uncontrolled action of the private interest in the region and the absence of public planning to include everyone in safe housing and living conditions.

The north coast of São Paulo began to be “explored” by the real estate market for large-scale summer residences with the opening of the Rio-Santos road, begun in 1969, during the Military Regime, with the nickname “Tourism Road”. In search of jobs, thousands of workers and their families came to build the road, summer houses, gated communities, marinas and other resorts. The contrast between the informal “camps” of workers, which were consolidated as precarious housing for service providers, and the luxury residences where they work is one of the social hallmarks of this stretch of coastline, which is one of the most unequal in the country.

Over these decades, areas of no real estate interest and of greater geological and environmental risk have been occupied or destined for workers. Municipalities in the region, even benefiting from income and taxes on land use and tourism (and oil, like São Sebastião), invested little in housing, sanitation, drainage, containment and infrastructure projects.

Owners and tourists, on the other hand, ignore where the workers who serve them go, as if, when they leave their sight, they dematerialize. It is the phenomenon of the invisibilization of workers after working hours, when their material living conditions are socially forgotten (or erased), without social protection, public and private investments and the guarantee of rights that would be due.

Added to this is the fact that, for years, researchers have pointed out that the accelerated urbanization of the north coast of São Paulo, in an area with fragile soils and heavy rainfall typical of the humid tropics, would produce increasingly serious risk situations, despised by entrepreneurs and by the authorities.

This context is not unique in Brazil, on the contrary, it is closer to the rule. Unequal and predatory urbanization concentrates wealth and externalizes risks, exposing the poorest to precarious housing in hills, floodplains, swamps and more environmentally fragile areas. It is not by chance that luxury homes are exposed to flooding on rare occasions. The situation on the coast of São Paulo was so serious that even they were affected.

In addition to issues of uneven urbanization and land predatory, it is important to highlight that we are increasingly exposed to extreme weather events – amplifying risks for the most vulnerable. Again, decades ago, scientists began to warn authorities around the world about the consequences of accelerating climate change, having as their main reference the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Predictions indicate that if we continue at the pace of environmental degradation and atmospheric emissions, extreme weather events will be more intense and more frequent. On the north coast, torrential rains broke historical records.

But, as we explained, the tragedy we observe is not just a question of the amount of rain. Overly simple explanations, such as “climate change is to blame” or “houses shouldn’t be built on the slopes” do not adequately understand the situation and prevent new disasters. It is necessary to know how to connect the different dimensions and interpret how they are related.

Certain political-economic decisions taken by the authorities without listening to scientists and the communities involved, can represent the death of countless people. This pattern of socio-environmental risk transferred to the poorest is recurrent in several countries. We need to reverse this situation of socio-environmental injustice, with public policies that are based on scientific research that warn of risks and guide the actions that must be taken. It is also necessary for municipalities to better understand their context in environmental and climate change in order to structure and apply prevention and contingency plans in extreme natural events.

Scientists in Brazil are prepared to play this role. But, are the elites, who were stranded in their luxury homes and went through a squeeze in this carnival, willing to review their development model, unequal and perverse urbanization? Will they assume that they are also co-responsible for the tragedy and will they help public authorities to find the path towards sustainable development in the region, starting by protecting the communities of workers who serve them?

We researchers have already produced several analyses, results and recommendations that can contribute to local, regional and national authorities. A huge part of these results were generated in public universities with the support of taxes paid by all taxpayers and are available to be integrated into the political, urban, environmental and economic agenda of the country.

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