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Germán Poveda, who participated in reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently published a paper in the company of other scientists in which he collects evidence indicating that hurricanes and storms will be increasingly intense in Latin America. The only way out, which they had already noticed years ago, is to make good adaptation plans, but few countries have them.
Colombian professor Germán Poveda needs no introduction. His name often appears in extensive reports published since 1990 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, known by its famous acronym IPCC. He is a civil engineer and a PhD in hydraulic resources, and frequently appears in different contexts trying to divulge the long list of consequences of global warming. After the tragedy of Providencia, of La Dabeiba (Antioquia) and that of various points of Magdalena and Chocó, his reflection on what happened sums it up in one sentence: “This is tragic. I feel like a broken record. We are narrating chronicles of an announced disaster ”. (Read In Providencia, Hurricane Iota forced some residents to take refuge in water tanks)
What Poveda is referring to is that for several years science has been sending clear signals to rulers to prevent these events from having such tragic outcomes. “We don’t seem to be learning anything from past experiences,” he says. What happened with the 2010-2011 La Niña phenomenon in Colombia is a good example.
“After those years,” he says, “measures were taken, but adaptation plans focused on reactive actions; not preventive. And while they looked great on paper, the implementation was very precarious. They have been solutions that are not convenient, based on a “hard adaptation”, ie the construction of more concrete infrastructures such as walls and embankments. We forget the ‘soft adaptation’ and the green, which are strategies designed with respect for nature. They were very small solutions to a profound structural problem ”.
For Poveda who created difficulties that were in evidence in a weekend when luck was not on the Colombian side. The ingredients of a “perfect storm” have been mixed: the usual rainy season; the La Niña phenomenon, which exacerbates the rains; and the passage of Hurricane Iota through Colombia in a year that now holds the record for the most tropical cyclones in the Atlantic: 30.
Poveda, in fact, had published a document last June in which he warned about the consequences that hurricanes could generate. The text is part of the report Adapting to the risks of climate change in Ibero-American countries, a book of over 750 pages in which a large group of scientists summarized the available evidence and evaluated the adaptation plans of some countries to climate change from Latin America , as well as Spain, Portugal and Andorra. Poveda was in charge of the “Storms and hurricanes” section, together with Jorge Amador (Costa Rica), Tercio Ambrizzi (Brazil), Juan Bazo (Peru), Eduardo Robelo-González (Mexico), José Rubiera (Cuba) and Sergio M. Vicente -Serrano (Spain).
The consequences of not having adaptation plans
While it is true that it is still difficult to predict the trajectory of hurricanes well in advance and the precise moment at which they will be most intense, there is one point that scientists have emphasized year after year: climate change will intensify those of the highest category (3 , 4 and 5) and will generate more and more extreme storms. But there is a way to avoid disasters like those in Providencia: invest in adaptation plans.
It’s hard to summarize everything that one of these strategies covers, but the chart below summarizes the main points you should have:
In assessing the situation of these plans in Latin American countries, Poveda and his colleagues found very dissimilar things. “Adaptation plans, policies and actions in the countries of the Ibero-American Network of Climate Change Offices show great disparity in terms of content and actual implementation,” they wrote. “It seems necessary to establish precise action programs with binding commitments for all countries in the region.”
The document also highlighted the delay in the region. “Little progress has been made in terms of adaptation programs based explicitly on the three adaptation approaches: 1, community-based adaptation; 2, ecosystem-based adaptation, which integrates the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services; 3, infrastructure-based adaptation ”.
“There is severe weakness in most countries related to a lack of investment in scientific research and technological capabilities for monitoring and forecasting intense storms and hurricanes,” the authors wrote.
This is a huge problem in the region for one simple reason. As pointed out in the document, this part of the continent has been identified as “very vulnerable” to the impacts of global warming. Central America, in particular, will be in serious trouble. “It is the second most vulnerable region on the planet to climate risks”.
A compendium of figures supports their arguments: between 1970 and 2010, 70 natural disasters of climatological origin occurred in the region. 31 were presented in Central America and Mexico; 16 in South America and 23 in the Caribbean. Of these, 40 were caused by storms and hurricanes (another 14 by the El Niño phenomenon and three by La Niña).
The consequences were devastating. Disasters generated by hurricanes and storms caused 50.2% of deaths, 41.29% of damage and 38.4% of total losses. They were also responsible for 37.3% of the population affected by weather disasters.
The price, if you want to analyze it in monetary terms, has many zeros: “The costs of damage and losses caused by these climate disasters have been estimated at 106.427 million dollars, of which 21.012 million dollars correspond to hurricanes and storms in the Caribbean “.
The best example of the changes that climate change brought about when it comes to hurricane talk was Hurricane Maria in 2017. It produced heavier rainfall than 129 other hurricanes in the Caribbean. Iota also seems to be a good example. “It was a historic hurricane because of its speed of development and the impact it had. We were on the edge of the hurricane’s eye. That’s why it was so devastating, due to the speed of evolution, “said Yolanda González, director of Ideam yesterday.
By not adopting forceful measures, the Latin American countries are exposing themselves to a very serious problem. The list of hurricane threats in the region is long: very intense and prolonged storms, storm surges and extreme winds, loss of life, more climate refugees, destruction of infrastructure, paralysis in the provision of essential public services, contamination of bodies of water, destruction of crops and animal lives and intensification of various types of vector and rodent-borne diseases and destruction of cultural heritage. The loss of coral reefs and mangroves and the destruction of marine biodiversity could also occur.
It should also be added that there are special conditions of vulnerability in Latin America which intensify the risks of hurricanes. The disorderly settlement of coastal areas; accelerated urbanization and uncontrolled occupation of river beds; inequality and marginality; the deforestation of 96 million hectares of forest in the past 15 years; poor governance and a poor risk insurance culture are some of the factors cited.
The cost, in economic terms, of not establishing adaptation plans will therefore be very high. Poveda and his group summarize it with a figure: “the impacts of climate change in the face of a 2.5 ° C increase in Latin America and the Caribbean could cost between 1.5% and 4.3% of GDP , while the costs of adaptation would not exceed 0.5% of regional GDP ”.
Have Colombia and the coastal territories implemented one of these measures to ensure that a tragedy like that of Providencia does not happen again? Poveda prefers to be cautious, but believes that very few have been implemented. “We should learn from Cuba, which is by far the country that has the best early warning and adaptation system,” he says. “We have a lot to do in terms of prevention. We have to stop being a two-headed country: making very beautiful projects on paper, but in words you do the opposite ”.
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