The city of São Paulo does not have a risk management plan to deal with possible tragedies generated by the climate crisis.
The creation of a document to guide the government and help prevent storms, landslides, and floods is a requirement of the Master Plan, sanctioned in 2014.
The current rainy season, which began in November and runs through April, has already left six people dead in the city.
São Paulo currently has 181,889 homes built in areas at risk of landslides and erosion along the banks of streams.
According to the Master Plan, it is up to the City Hall to create a risk management plan, gathering information such as the location of flooding areas, the number of families living in such areas, and proposals for regularizing irregular subdivisions.
However, the four mayors of the city in the last nine years – the PT member Fernando Haddad (from 2012 to 2016), the PSDB members João Doria (2017 and 2018) and Bruno Covas (2018 to 2021), and the MDB member Ricardo Nunes (in office since 2021) – all failed to draw up the document.
Translated by Cassy Dias