Disasters & Accidents

‘Jardim Pantanal’: the Brazilian neighborhood mobilizing against ‘environmental racism’

By Laura RodríguezSão Paulo, Brazil, Feb 27 (EFE).- Nearly 10 million Brazilians, like the residents of Jardim Pantanal in São Paulo, live in environmental disaster zones. Exhausted by the constant threat of flooding, they’ve mobilized against what they call “environmental racism.”

Located on the outskirts of the sprawling city, the neighborhood lies on the banks of the Tiete River. Due to its geography, water tends to collect in the streets, which until recently had no sewerage or waste management infrastructure.

With the impact of climate change, the situation has worsened for the more than 50,000 residents of Jardim Pantanal, including Reginaldo Pereira, a longtime resident who has witnessed a “radical” change in the climate over his 20 years in the neighborhood.

“The rain that once fell within a month is now falling in just a few minutes,” he says.

“Disasters like the ones we are witnessing now” have never happened before, he adds.

EMERGENCY SHELTERS IN SCHOOLS

Pereira highlights that while they are becoming better at dealing with flooding, there are times when they have to take shelter in schools and try to salvage what remains in their homes, a plight mirrored in many vulnerable regions across Brazil.

Vendrametto explains that the project doesn’t merely serve as an advocacy tool to prompt institutions to act in the area, but also “allows the community to participate in these decision-making spaces.”

In 2022, torrential rains and floods killed 457 people in Brazil, the highest number ever recorded by the National Confederation of Municipalities.

Leila Vendrametto, a member of the Alana Institute, denounces that “the mayor’s office only acted in times of extreme emergency.”

The Alana Institute has supported Jardim Pantanal since 1994, filling the gap left by local institutions that have neglected this community for years.

According to Vendrametto, the lack of protection of people’s basic rights in Jardim Pantanal is a clear case of what she calls “environmental racism,” where part of the institutional inaction is due to prejudice against the poorest and most socially vulnerable areas, which are populated by mostly Black people.

As the authorities have provided no solutions, residents have resorted to piling earth and rubble as a barricade to prevent water from entering their homes, where the water ends up below street level.

NEIGHBORS UNITE

The Alana Institute’s “Urbanise” project encouraged residents to organize and enabled a plan that included all their demands and needs to be developed.

Vendrametto explains that this project not only serves as an advocacy tool for the institutions operating in the area but also “allows the community to participate in decision-making spaces.”

In 2023, they managed to get the state-owned Basic Sanitation Company of São Paulo to carry out water and sanitation work in a large part of the neighborhood, the first step towards urban regulation.

For Pereira, who chairs the Association of Neighbours and Friends of Jardim Pantanal, this neighborhood work has been essential as “nobody can achieve anything alone.”

There is still a lot of work to do, he admits: “We need a kindergarten, a school closer to us, we also need transport.”

Vendrametto advocates the need to use sustainable solutions “based on nature,” such as gardens that absorb rainwater and tanks that collect water for other uses.

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