New climate normal establishes the routine of tragedies in the state of Rio Grande do Sul – by Carlos Wagner

For those who don’t believe in climate change. The rains of the first week of May left, until this Friday (3/5), a toll of 32 deaths, 60 missing and 204 municipalities affected (out of a total of 496). On Thursday (2), the dam at the 14 de Julho Hydroelectric Plant, located between Cotiporã and Bento Gonçalves, partially broke and others are at risk of suffering damage to their structure.

In the last 10 months, this is the fourth flood to hit the people of Rio Grande do Sul, resulting in more than 100 deaths. Last year, there were three floods with 72 deaths. Currently, hundreds of people are isolated throughout the state waiting for help.

On Thursday (2), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and some of his ministers were in Santa Maria, a medium-sized city in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, talking with the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite ( PSDB). Meteorologists predict that rain will continue in the state for the next week.

What I described is the context, or background as the old journalists said at the time of noisy typewriters in newsrooms. The local and national press is providing good and detailed coverage of the Rio Grande do Sul tragedy, updating information minute by minute. I chose for our conversation one of the angles of the tragedy that I consider important, which is the following.

The Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre, made up of 14 municipalities where 4.3 million inhabitants live, almost half of the population of Rio Grande do Sul, was isolated by the rains from the rest of the State. The main federal highways that connect the Capital to the interior, such as BR-386 (which runs to the west of Santa Catarina) and BR-290 (towards the border with Uruguay and Argentina), were interrupted by the floods. And several state and municipal highways were underwater and had bridges destroyed.

I’m a 73-year-old old reporter, 40-something by profession, who has always traveled a lot through the backlands of Brazil and neighboring countries reporting. I don’t remember another occasion when the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre was isolated by floods. There was always a highway left to maintain connections with the interior.

What happened this time? The press was more efficient in covering the damage caused to roads than in previous floods, such as those that occurred in September and November last year. However, I will not compare the numbers of these tragedies. I’m going to talk about changes in journalistic coverage. Contrary to what journalism theorists and newsroom directors think, changes in the approach to issues in newspapers are born, prosper or disappear among reporters.

I remember that when I started reporting, in 1979, even though coverage of climate-related tragedies was common in the press in the United States and European countries, in Brazil the subject was treated in a bureaucratic manner. It was with the growth of the environmental movement against the use of pesticides in soybean crops and the felling of the Amazon Forest and the Cerrado to implement agricultural frontiers (plantations and livestock farming) that the press began to relate climate events, such as floods and droughts, with the destruction of nature.

At the beginning, in the 1980s, issues related to the environment were covered almost exclusively in special reports. In daily coverage, the relationship between climate disturbances and environmental destruction took shape and was structured with new communication technologies, which facilitated access to high-quality information.

In the 80s and 90s, reporters needed to travel with a suitcase full of books and documents to support and give consistency to their stories. Nowadays, he only needs to press a button on his cell phone to access the best sources of information around the world. That makes all the difference.

A clarification that I consider important. I’m not just talking about increasing the efficiency of the Rio Grande do Sul press in covering climate tragedies. But of all the major newspapers in Brazil. This efficiency is related to the increased demand for this type of information from the reader. It is no longer enough to just warn that a certain road has once again been underwater. We have to explain the reasons why the situation happened again.

The explanation cannot be a treaty. Two or three direct sentences on the subject may be enough. I remember the following. Brazil is a country in which more than 90% of its cargo and passenger transport is by road. Therefore, any major highway that becomes blocked causes enormous inconvenience and a lot of damage.

Within this reality, it becomes a priority to know exactly what happened to the road. The Brazilian road structure is old and has not been adapted to new times. This is one of the reasons why so many bridges have been destroyed by river floods, which in turn are silted up, increasing the speed and strength of the current.

Here’s the thing. In other words, while the structure of bridges and roads has been the same for more than half a century, vehicles have increased their capacity to carry weight, in the same way that the volume and speed of water in a flood has increased. The sum of all this can only be a huge mess.

What we call the “new normal” of the climate, which includes constant storms that destroy road infrastructure and other services, will require the emergence of reporters specialized in the subject in newsrooms. Monitoring the flow of traffic in cities and highways has become a priority need for people’s daily lives.

It is not an easy task for a reporter, because it requires a solid background, especially in history, to know how a region was populated. Fundamental knowledge to understand why things happen the way they do in that place. In Brazil, particularly in the southern states, settlement began with small villages on the banks of rivers, which, in the absence of roads, were then the only alternatives for transporting people and goods. The villages turned into cities and nowadays the riverside floodplains are densely populated areas, through which large highways run. And because they are valued areas, real estate speculation is intense.

I remember that regions that before the new normal had a huge market value, today have lost price. It is within this reality that the reporter needs to move. And everywhere there is a banana peel waiting for the foot of an unsuspecting reporter. Within this context, there is little care to avoid writing nonsense.

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The text above, reproduced with permission from the author, was originally published on the blog “Histórias Mal Contadas”, by the journalistCarlos Wagner

. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carlos Wagner