Floods in Rio Grande do Sul: the 2015 federal program that predicted floods and was shelved

Since the situation in the south of the country began to attract the attention of Brazil and the world, environmentalists have been associating the tragedy with climate change. But Unterstell has one more reason to regret.

From 2013 to 2015, she participated in a program commissioned by the federal government, then the Dilma Rousseff government (2010-2016), with the objective of projecting the impacts of climate change in Brazil until 2040 and designing adaptation measures to them.

The “Brazil 2040” program cost, at the time, R$3.5 million.

The mathematical models used by the study projected a climate scenario very similar to what is seen in Brazil almost 10 years later: lack of rain in the North and above-normal rainfall in the South of the country.

Despite this, the program was abruptly terminated in 2015. It was, according to Unterstell, something like the embryo of a public policy for the country’s climate adaptation.

According to experts, although Brazil has had a National Climate Change Adaptation Plan since 2016, the document would never have come to fruition.

BBC News Brasil sent questions to Palácio do Planalto, the Ministry of the Environment (MMA), and the Civil House about the end of the program. In a statement, the MMA said it intends to update “Brazil 2040” (read more about folder’s answer below).

When contacted, former president Dilma Rousseff’s press office said it would comment on the matter after the report was published.

At the time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned: in its most pessimistic estimate, by 2100 the planet’s temperature would rise by up to 5°C, causing significant changes in the planet’s climate and forcing countries to implement measures to adapt to the effects. of climate change.

That was when the federal government determined the preparation of regionalized studies on the effects of climate change in Brazil and what measures could be taken to adapt the country to this new reality.

In total, seven study groups were created with different themes. One of them, called “Brazil 2040”, was in which Natalie Unterstell acted. The name refers to the year 2040, one of the horizons that scholars were working with.

“It was a study program that aimed to formulate a public adaptation policy [às mudanças climáticas]”, Unterstell tells BBC News Brasil.

She served as one of the program coordinators.

The scientist also spoke about the program on the podcast “Tempo Quente”, produced by journalist Giovana Girardi for Rádio Novelo, in 2022.

“There were seven teams of the best Brazilian researchers… from IME (Army Military Institute) to ITA (Aeronautical Technological Institute), to Inpe (National Institute for Space Research)”, details the environmentalist, who today presides over the Talanoa Institute (an organization without non-profit focused on the implementation of public policies in the environmental area).

The program was commissioned by the now-defunct Secretariat for Strategic Affairs (SAE), which was linked to the Presidency of the Republic. At the time, the secretariat was headed by economist Marcelo Neri.

Unterstell says that the studies used climatological models to estimate the possible impacts of climate change in various areas of the Brazilian economy and society, such as agriculture, urban infrastructure, transport, water resources, among others.

She says that the studies had already passed the diagnostic phase and were heading towards the stage where recommendations for adaptation would be made — when the program was interrupted.

The program was interrupted during the SAE change of command. Marcelo Neri left and Harvard University professor Mangabeira Unger entered.

Untersell says he has not received any official explanation about the end of the program, but relates the fact to preliminary conclusions. According to her, the data questioned the viability of hydroelectric plants.

“The results of the studies called into question the viability of hydroelectric plants in the North region, such as Belo Monte [no Pará], given that the modeling and assessment of impacts on water and energy projected a significant reduction in river flows in the region. That was scary,” he says.

BBC News Brasil tried to contact Marcelo Neri and Mangabeira Unger.

Neri said that the episode happened a long time ago and that he could not respond to the report.

Through text messages, Unger responded that he would not have handled the program nor would he have deactivated it. Their initial responses, however, mentioned an alleged program that had taken place earlier, during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (PT) second term.

Then, asked in detail about his participation in the “Brazil 2040” program, which ran between 2013 and 2015, he replied: “That’s something else. It wasn’t climate. It was the long-term development project.”

The heavy rains that have hit the State since last week have already caused more than 107 deaths and affected 428 of the 497 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul.

Porto Alegre was especially hit due to the overflow of Lake Guaíba, whose level reached more than 5 meters, according to the city’s Integrated Service Coordination Center.

One of the conclusions of the program was that the extreme south would suffer from above-normal rainfall in the coming years. At the same time, the models predicted more severe droughts in the Northeast and Central-West regions.

“The ETA model forced by MIROC5 signals an increase in flows (of rivers, the effect of more or less rainfall) in the extreme south of Brazil, greater than 10% in relation to the historical average between 2011 and 2040 and greater than 30% between 2071 and 2099, associated with reductions in the Northeast and Central-West regions”, says an excerpt from one of the studies carried out by the program.

The terms ETA and MIROC5 refer to the mathematical models used by scientists to make long-term projections.

Natalie Unterstell says that, at least since 2021, she has been observing the similarities between climate events in Brazil and the projections she had access to between 2013 and 2015.

When she saw projections made more recently by MetSul, a meteorology company in Rio Grande do Sul, she was scared.

“In Rio Grande do Sul, the penny dropped as soon as I saw the MetSul maps, last week. They were visually similar to the projections made in the program [Brasil 2040]. It was scary,” reports Unterstell.

For experts interviewed by BBC News Brasil, the country wasted time with the shelving of the “Brazil 2040” program and the delay in adopting broad policies to adapt to climate change.

“The program brought important information, but which few people paid attention to, such as these scenarios in which the South would have a tendency to above-average rainfall and the North and Northeast would have water reduction”, says the coordinator of Public Policies at the Climate Observatory, Suely Araújo, to BBC News Brasil.

She is also former president of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

“We wasted time by not taking the necessary measures”, adds Araújo.

“The work was interrupted at the moment we went from diagnosis to adaptation measures. The studies were never published. They made an executive summary of the program with people who had no connection with the studies. It was a wasted business”, he laments Unterstell.

Suely Araújo explains that, in 2016, the Brazilian government established a National Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

The plan was launched on May 10, 2016, two days before Dilma Rousseff was removed from office amid the impeachment process in which she was the target.

Araújo says that, at the time, the plan was well designed, but it had yet to be implemented.

“It was a technically good document, but it remained on paper”, he states.

She says, however, that the lack of concern about adapting to climate change is not an isolated phenomenon.

“Of course, this gets worse in a denialist government like that of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), but the undervaluation of adaptation is the rule, regardless of the government”, he states.

A report prepared by the Ministry of the Environment in November 2021, during the Bolsonaro government, admitted the lack of resources to implement the plan.

“There were several challenges during the implementation of the PNA (National Adaptation Plan), of which we mention: the discontinuity of actions initiated by the sectors and the scarcity or lack of access to financial resources […] the lack of inter-ministerial and inter-sector articulation, integration and synergy; and the difficulties in implementing specific programs and policies, among others”, says an excerpt from the document to which BBC News Brasil had access.

Suely Araújo argues that, to deal with cases such as the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil needs a bold plan, with the forecast of investments of large sums of money.

“Adaptation requires resources and there is no way to imagine that already vulnerable municipalities could go into debt to carry out works to prepare for the effects of climate change. It has to be non-refundable money, because the cost of rebuilding is much higher than the cost of preventing “, points out Araújo.

For climatologist Carlos Nobre, who spent his career at Inpe and participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations (UN), governments have not been adopting the necessary measures to adapt cities to the effects of climate change.

“These extreme events are here to stay. They will not decrease. On the contrary, they will increase. And governments, unfortunately, are not making the necessary investments. Adaptation is not just about warning of a tragedy. It is also about permanently removing people in areas at risk. And that demands money”, explains Nobre to BBC News Brasil.

The report sent questions about the update of the National Adaptation Plan to climate change and the resources allocated to its implementation to the Ministries of the Environment (MMA), the Civil House and the Presidency of the Republic.

Only the MMA responded to the questions.

In a note, the ministry said that the government intends to update the “Brazil 2040” program.

“Brazil 2040 is expected to be updated to strengthen the adaptation policy database, in addition to reinforcing decision-making within the scope of the Climate Plan,” the ministry told BBC News Brasil.

No deadline was given for this update to be made.

The note also said that the results of “Brazil 2040” were “shared with government bodies related to the sectors covered”.

Regarding the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan, established in 2016, the ministry said that it was “virtually paralyzed during the last government” and that the review scheduled for 2020 would not have been carried out.

The MMA said that the government has already started the review of the “Climate-Adaptation Plan” (term used by the current administration), but did not inform the expected date for completing the document.

According to information on the department’s website, the “Climate-Adaptation Plan” has as one of its objectives “to increase the country’s resilience to climate change”.

The ministry also stated that the government is working on a project to “improve the institutional capacity” of states and municipalities to deal with climate change and that it should begin later this year.

The forecast is that 260 local adaptation plans will be drawn up for municipalities considered critical.

The note also cited a contribution of R$10.4 billion to the Climate Fund. According to the MMA, these resources will finance initiatives for the energy transition in the country. According to the ministry, the value would be 26 times greater than what the fund had available in 2022.

The Climate Fund was created by the federal government in 2009 with the aim of guaranteeing resources for projects, studies and financing to mitigate climate change.