President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) visited on Monday (20) the regions most affected by the rain on the northern coast of São Paulo. The region registered 682 millimeters of rain between Saturday (18) and Sunday (19), a record never reached in the country's history.
At least 44 deaths have already been registered. 43 of them in São Sebastião, including a nine-month-old baby, and a 7-year-old child in Ubatuba.
Sobrevoando a região atingida pelas chuvas na chegada em São Sebastião. Me reúno agora com o governador @tarcisiogdf, o prefeito @prefeitoFA e ministros do nosso governo para trabalharmos juntos no enfrentamento dessa crise.
— Lula (@LulaOficial) February 20, 2023
🎥: @ricardostuckert pic.twitter.com/xMqPb1RRkY
Tweet: “Flying over the region affected by the rains on arrival in São Sebastião. I'm meeting now with the governor @tarcisiogdf, the mayor @prefeitoFA and ministers of our government to work together in facing this crisis.”
In a joint statement after a meeting in São Sebastião, President Lula and Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) announced measures for the region affected by last weekend's heavy rains.
This is the second time Lula and Tarcísio have met this year. The first time was during the President of the Republic's meeting with all the governors and representatives of the other branches of government after the attempted coup promoted by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) in Brasilia. This approach is read as a further reinforcement of the isolation of the former resident of the Alvorada Palace.
The mayor of São Sebastião thanked “the support and respect” of the president with the city, one of the most affected. Felipe Augusto was elected by Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB, in Portuguese) and supported Bolsonaro in the run-off of the 2022 presidential elections.
Tweet: “I cannot describe in words the feeling that is inside me right now. The support and respect of @LulaOficial to the city of São Sebastião/SP comes as fuel for us to fight until the last minute in search of lives within this devastating scenario we are facing!”
Lula extolled the collaboration among the three spheres of power - Union, state and municipal governments - to overcome the tragedy. “We are together, the election is over. He has the obligation to govern the state of São Paulo, he the city of São Sebastião, and I the obligation to govern the country. If each one of us works alone, our performance capacity is much lower, that's why we need to be together, to share the good and the bad things. Together, we will be stronger and San Sebastião will be recovered.”
“A governor, a president and a mayor, sitting at a table, with a microphone, in function of a common thing, that affects all of us. It is a demonstration that it is possible to exercise our function in democracy, even when we think differently ideologically, the common good of the people is more important than our differences,” added Lula.
Lula committed himself to recovering the main access road to the city, which was invaded by mud and has several stretches blocked. “I made a point of coming here and bringing a group of ministers to make a government commitment to São Sebastião. We are going to recover the Rio-Santos road. And we can no longer build houses in risky places. We will work together with the city hall”, he said.
Budget cuts in disaster prevention
The years of former president Jair Bolsonaro's administration represented a significant drop in funding for actions to prevent and respond to natural disasters. During the administration of the right-winger, Brazil had the lowest budget forecasts for the matter since 2010.
Data from the Contas Abertas initiative show that between 2013 and 2014, the amounts allocated for actions of this nature exceeded $580 million. In 2018, the last year in which Michel Temer (Brazilian Democractic Movement) occupied the Presidential Palace after the coup against former President Dilma Rousseff (Workers' Party), the allocation fell to $310 million. Bolsonarism followed the same pattern and dehydrated the sector even more.
In the first year in which he was in charge of the budget, Bolsonaro defined that the investment to prevent major natural disasters and to help municipalities in emergency situations would be $230 million. In 2021, the amount dropped to $210 million, the worst investment forecast in more than a decade.
Hundreds of people are displaced and homeless in the city of São Sebastião, northern coast of São Paulo / Defesa Civil de SP
In the Budget Bill that was left for 2023, still under Jair Bolsonaro's command, the investment for disaster reduction was cut by 95%. There was also a 94% cut in the amounts destined to the execution of projects and works to contain slopes in urban areas.
Member of the national coordination of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), Francisco Kelvim, says that while the funding decreased, the number of victims increased.
“One can affirm that there is a direct correlation between the lack of investment or the decrease in investment in works destined for flood protection projects, disaster prevention, actions for municipal rainwater management in the municipalities, and the increase in the amount of people affected by these disasters and also the increase in the number of fatal victims.”
A survey by the Natural Disasters Observatory of the National Council of Municipalities (CNM, in Portuguese) shows that the sum of people affected by natural disasters between 2013 and 2022 exceeds 340 million. More than 160 million in the first three years of Jair Bolsonaro's government alone. “The number greater than the number of the Brazilian population means that several municipalities had people affected recurrently over the course of these years,” Kelvim explains.
Inequality intensifies the impact of the rains
Beyond prevention or measures to contain the impacts, it is certain that the rains come to highlight the lack of rights to decent housing, to basic sanitation, to life, and many others.
For Kelvim, there is also a social and economic process of exclusion that makes the great victims of natural disasters the families with less economic power. “A very large number of the population has been living in hillside regions, regions of permanent protection areas, regions classified as risk regions, which have a much higher risk of being affected by the effects of climate change in the coming years in Brazil. Not only because they are in these regions, but also because, historically, there is a process in Brazil, especially in large cities, that the peripheral populations do not have access to water, basic sanitation, live in regions unprivileged from works to contain these floods”.
To mitigate the effects of climate change in the coming years, the specialist advocates the creation of a fund for this purpose, foreseeing resources for population relocation, structural works, environmental education and investment in basic sanitation and water management.
Edited by: Flávia Chacon
