Disaster Profile and Risk Management System: Brazil

Disaster Profile and Risk Management System: Brazil

University of Delaware School of Public Policy & Administration PhD Program in Disaster Science and Management International Aspects of Disasters (DISA6510) Author: Flavio Lopes Ribeiro

1. Brazil in a Nutshell Brazil is located in South America and is the biggest country in the Southern Hemisphere (CIA, 2016). Its entire coastline faces the Atlantic Ocean and by land Brazil borders Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, French Guyana, Suriname and Guyana. It is also the fifth biggest economy in the world and has a great diversity of natural resources, like for example “bauxite, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, platinum, tin, rare earth elements, uranium, petroleum, hydropower and timber” (CIA, 2016). Regarding freshwater, it is richer in the world (Holden, 2014). Politically, Brazil is a Federative Republic, divided into 26 states and 1 federal district. It has six welldefined regions divided accordingly to geographical location, but also regarding predominant natural ecosystems and cultures formed around them, as shown in the map below.

In terms of history, Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the year 1500 to 1822, when gained its independency without war or any other violent means. It kept the monarchical system of government until the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the subsequent proclamation of a republic by the military in 1889. From 1964 to 1985, Brazil underwent a military dictatorial government supported by the US. It was a period of social conflicts, violence and civil oppression like most of the dictatorial governments in Latin American. However, the military regime peacefully ceded power to civilian rulers and in 1989 the country had its first democratic election in more than half of a century. The total population of Brazil is estimated in 204,259,812 people (July, 215), being white 47.7%, mulatto (mixed white and black) 43.1%, black 7.6%, Asian 1.1%, indigenous 0.4% (2010 est.) (CIA, 2

2016). It has a high literacy rate, reaching more than 92% of the total population, with a school life expectancy around 14 years (UNDP, 2014). Religion is a very important aspect of Brazilian society and the great majority declares themselves as Roman Catholic 64.6%, other Catholic 0.4%, Protestant 22.2%, other Christian 0.7%, Spiritist 2.2%, other 1.4%, none 8%, unspecified 0.4% (CIA, 2016.), although in practice there is a great syncretism. The major urban center are São Paulo (21.066 million); Rio de Janeiro (12.902 million); Belo Horizonte (5.716 million); Brasília (capital - 4.155 million); Fortaleza (3.88 million) and Recife (3.739 million). From all of those cities, only Belo Horizonte and São Paulo are not coastal cities, but São Palo is less 30 miles from the coast line. The GDP composed by sector of origin is as follow: agriculture (5.9%); industry (22.2%) and services (71.9%) (CIA, 2016). From all the millennium development goals (MDGs) established by the UN, which also serve as indicators of development, Brazil achieved (UNSD, 2016)1: 1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; 2) Achieve universal primary education; 3)Promote gender equality and empower women; 4)Reduce child mortality; 5)Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Did not achieve: 6) Improve maternal health; 7) Ensure Environmental sustainability; 8) Develop a global partnership for development. In this scenario, hazards and vulnerabilities meet and create permanent links that influences the levels of risk in the country and contribute directly to the increasing number of disaster, as presented in the next sessions. 2. Natural and Technological Hazards Brazil doesn’t have active volcanos, never experienced a significative earthquake nor tsunamis hitting its coast line. Since disasters started to be recorded and classified in Brazil, only one hurricane was registered in the south of Brazil in 2004 (CEPED, 2010). This fact becomes more impressive when we think of the size of Brazil. It is the fifth largest country in area in the world, with 8.515.767 km2 and 5.570 municipalities, considered one of the most biodiverse nations with an estimated 20% of the Earth’s biodiversity spread into 6 completely different ecosystems, or biomes2 (SECOM, 2012). Even though Brazil has none of those extremely devastating natural hazards mentioned above, it still has a very significative risk of disasters due to its great vulnerabilities in relation to natural and technological hazards found all over the country.

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http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx

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Over the past 22 years (1988 – 2010), Brazil registered 31,909 disasters, which gives an average of 1,363 disasters per year, with more than 90 million people directly affected (CEPED, 2010). In 2009 there was a significative increase in this numbers, and disasters beat a new national record reaching almost 3,000 declarations of “emergency” or “state of calamity” (CENAD, 2014). The most frequent and important natural hazards registered by the National Centre of Disaster Risk Management (2014) and the National Atlas of Natural Disasters (2010) are: Droughts; flashfloods; floods; hailstorms; cyclones and whirlwinds; wild fires; mass movement; soil erosion; fluvial erosion; and marine erosion (coastal erosion). Although there has been a general increase in all kinds of disasters during the last 20 years, landslides had the greatest variation among them all, “with an increase of 21.7 times, in contrast to the general annual average of 6 times” (CEPED, 2010). Most of these landslides occurred in the Southeast region of Brazil, the most populated and wealthiest in the country. Despite the growth of landslides, the leadership on the ranking of disasters belongs to drought, representing 50.34% of total disasters reported from 1988 to 2010 (CEPED, 2010). Nevertheless, flashfloods were the deadliest events, accounting for almost 30% of total fatalities (CEPED, 2010). More recently, the National Centre of Disaster Risk Management (CENAD) published data on the impact of disasters in the year 2013. In that year, more than 18,5 million people were directly impacted by disasters (CENAD, 2014). The number of people affected by droughts increased significantly, reaching 70% of total affected population. Droughts are historically recurrent in the semiarid region of Brazil, characterized by reduced water availability and very limited storage capacity of rivers (CENAD, 2013), it is also the poorest region. However, droughts are now becoming more common on the South and Southeast of Brazil, with direct impact on agriculture and industry sectors. Individuals at the household level are also dealing with recurrent water scarcity in the poorest neighborhoods in urban centers like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In the years 2014-2015, there was a serious water crisis in the São Paulo, “when it rained 72% below normal. In January and February, the average was 66% and 64% lower, respectively. It was the most intense drought recorded since 1930” (BBC, 2014)3. This drought on the Southeast region also magnified political, economic and social vulnerabilities that will be discussed in the next session. As reported by the World Bank (2016) referring to this particular water crisis: “Due to a prolonged drought, there is risk of water and electricity rationing in parts of the country, which would have consequences for economic activity and prices, posing risks to real incomes, especially those of the

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http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2014/03/140321_seca_saopaulo_rb

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poor”. Even the Amazon region is now more constantly affected by droughts. On March, 2016, many municipalities of the South Amazon Region declared “State of Emergency” due to the low levels of water in rivers that should be full by that time of the year, affecting 50,000 people (Acritica, 2016). The deadliest hazard in 2013 were landslides, responsible for 22,4% of total deaths, followed close by flashfloods (20,77%). More than 90% of all those fatalities happened in the coast of Brazil, with higher concentration (86%) in the Southeast region. The total number of homeless people due to disasters in 2013 were 175,609 and evacuees in shelter were 516,405 people. Floods are also a recurring extensive disaster in Brazil. Only between 2008 and 2012, floods hit 1,543 municipalities (27.7% of Brazilian municipalities) leaving 1.4 million homeless or displaced people (IBGE, 2013). The region which recorded the highest proportions of flooding by municipality were the North Region, which comprises the Amazon biome and the greatest number of rivers in Brazil, and the Southeast and the South regions respectively, which are the most densely populated regions (IBGE, 2013). It is noteworthy to mention that many floods of small proportions, especially affecting poor communities, are not reported even though they account for great damages and losses for households and local communities. To have an economic dimension of the impact of disasters in this same period (2008-2012), the World Bank estimates a loss of over $ 15 billion to the public and private sectors, considering only the four major disasters during this period of time. While natural hazards have greater visibility and receive more attention by the mass media, technological hazards also pose great danger for human and natural environments in Brazil. Forest depletion, water and air pollution associated with large urban centers, severe oil spills, sea water pollution and reef degradation (CIA, 2016) are only a few examples of technological hazards found all over the country. The two Brazilian Nuclear Power Plants (Angra 1 and Angra 2), located in the coast line in the State of Rio de Janeiro, are also seeing by local population as potential treats. However, as found in O’Keefe et al (1976) “disasters are more a consequence of social-economic than natural factors” or, as in Alexender (2006) “vulnerability is a greater determinant of disaster risk than hazards themselves”, meaning that disasters can only be fully understood if also considering social, economic, political and cultural processes that create and maintain vulnerabilities at the first place (Wisner, 2004; Lavell, 2013). The next session is dedicated to analyzing some of these process, how are they interconnected and why they contribute to create and maintain vulnerabilities to disasters.

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3. Sources of Vulnerability By any means disasters in Brazil can be considered “special events that deserve their own special focus” (Wiesner, 2004), but rather frequent events that show structural vulnerabilities created by historical processes, social dynamics, national and international economy and political decisions. It is a complex scenario that gets exposed and magnified every time it is hit by droughts, floods, storms or any other natural or technological hazard. Since there are no official data nor publications specialized on national vulnerabilities to disasters, it gets hard to link specific vulnerabilities to the main disasters in Brazil, or rank the most significative vulnerabilities found in the country. As in Lavell (2000) “[R]isk, as a product of the interconnectedness of hazards and vulnerabilities, is a dynamic and ever changing social construction, which can be found and experienced differently in terms of territoriality and social conditions”, making the vulnerabilities mentioned here especially related to some specific and social groups, mainly because of great social and economic inequalities. In 2013, Brazil’s GINI coefficient (Global Inequality Index) score of 0.55 reflecting the country’s uneven income distribution (World Bank, 2016). Also, most of all publications on disasters like, for example, the Yearbooks of Natural Disasters (2013) and the National Atlas of Natural Disasters (2010) are focused only on natural hazards and the impact of disasters itself. This lack of information and studies on vulnerabilities is an important data that gives us a clue on how disasters and risk are managed in the country. So, to explore the sources of vulnerability in Brazil it is necessary to rely on sectorial data from different public agencies, international organizations, private sector, civil society and the academia to construct a plausible explanation for such high numbers of losses and damages caused by disasters. Starting from a macro-economy perspective, Brazil has the largest economy in South and Central America (World Bank, 2016). However, it is still considered a developing country because of some other indicators like low living standards, social inequality, GDP per capita4 and life expectancy5 (dePersio, 2016). According to the CIA World Factbook6 (2016) Brazil has 21,4% of its total

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GDP per capita in Brazil is at $11,530, a little lower than the $12,000 required to be considered a developed country. 5 6

The life expectancy in Brazil is 74 years old, lower than the 80 years old found in developed countries. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html

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population living below the country’s poverty line, from which approximately 4% of the population are below the "extreme" poverty line, which means more than 8 million people. The economic sector in Brazil is highly diversified and integrated into global markets, alleviating internal impacts of global economic crisis and also reducing dependency on international markets. It can be seen much more as a resilience factor than an economic vulnerability, as in the case of small islands, where “integration into global markets make them especially open to the vicissitudes of economic globalization” (Pelling, 2001 apud Fairburn, 1999), mainly because the lack of diversity in production and inequality in the distribution of economic. Brazil is the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, sugar, poultry and one of the biggest exporters of coffee, wheat, rice, corn, cocoa, citrus, beef, and manufactured products as vehicles and aircraft including helicopters, airplanes, and spacecraft (OEC, 2016). However, if this globalized and diversified economy serves to provide internal economic stability, on the other hand it causes great internal pressures on natural resources and infrastructure. For example, as the largest producer of iron ore in the world, Brazil exports this highly prized product to major manufacturing nations, especially China. Not by coincidence, the worst environmental disaster in the history of Brazil happened last year, when “the disruption of a dam, located in the historic city of Mariana (MG), was responsible for launching on the environment 34 million cubic meters of mud resulting from iron ore production” (Portal Brasil, 2015)7. According to the Brazilian Government, toxic mud contaminated 663 km of rivers and streams, as well as 1,469 hectares of vegetation, burying 207 of the 251 buildings in the city of Bento Rodrigues (Portal Brasil, 2015). This disaster left more than 600 homeless families, 17 confirmed causalities, and countless people without access to clean water and primary livelihoods. In the energy sector, a very similar situation can be verified: “Thanks to the development of offshore fields, the nation has become self-sufficient in oil, ending decades of dependence on foreign producers” (BBC, 2016)8. But it comes with a price and on 2011 Brazil experienced its worst oil spill in its history: “The spill in the Frade field northeast of Rio de Janeiro leaked an estimated 4,600 barrels of oil into the ocean” (Reuter, 2014) affecting directly both tourism and fishery in the region. This kind of disasters sometimes generates new laws, regulations and surveillance. In this case, “Brazilian regulators are forcing Petrobras to shut production equipment more frequently for maintenance after the BP spill”, (Reuter, 2014). 7

http://www.brasil.gov.br/meio-ambiente/2015/12/entenda-o-acidente-de-mariana-e-suas-consequenciaspara-o-meio-ambiente 8 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18909529

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These examples make the relationship between disaster and development very evident, but also point out to a more complex dynamic relation between them, not always so easy to tackle. During the last decade, Brazil experienced an unprecedented progress “which over 26 million people were lifted out of poverty and inequality was reduced significantly” (World Bank, 2016). This change in social and economic factors altered the way power operates in Brazilian society with direct impacts in the way vulnerabilities manifest themselves at the local level. As expected for some scholars, during the last decade of rapid social and economic progress there were an increase of 73% in the total number of disaster (CEPED, 2010), which jumped from 8,671 events reported from 1990 to 2000 to 23,238 reported from 2000 to 2010. These numbers alone don’t allow us to conclude that disasters are just simply increasing. They could also represent, for example, that the Civil Protection System has been more effective in reporting and describing disasters at national level. However, it is undeniable that these numbers also show a trend in increased risk of disasters directly connected to the development options the country has been making. Brazil seems to be following a global tendency, as in Lavell (2013) where “mortality associated with floods, winds, drought and other hydro-meteorological events does seem to be trending downward. Improved development conditions are largely responsible for this reduction in mortality. (…) On the other hand, the economic and livelihood losses associated with damaged and destroyed housing, infrastructure, public buildings, businesses and agriculture have been rising at a rapid rate”. In other words, the progress Brazil has been made to achieve higher standards of living are also exposing the country to a higher risk of disasters. There aren’t enough data available to explore this fact with more detail and accuracy, but it worth mentioning some important social vulnerabilities that are certainly related to the high risk of disaster in the country. Extreme regional differences, especially in social indicators such as health, infant mortality and nutrition is one of the most important. The richer South and Southeast regions enjoy much better indicators than the North and Northeast (World Bank, 2016). These social-economic differences among regions make people migrate from poor rural and urban areas in search of better job opportunities and living conditions in the wealthier urban centers. This migration occurs mainly because of recurrent droughts in the Northeast region, associated with poor infrastructure and historical political factors. This situation is very similar to what Glantz (1994) called a creeping environmental phenomena, where “hazardous environmental conditions accumulate imperceptibly along until a full-blow crisis emerge”. Food security is also a huge problem

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in this context, but not because of suddenly decrease in food production caused by droughts, but mainly by policies, institution and process that directly affect livelihoods of poor families (Christoplos, 2012). This current internal migration process is where the timely separated root causes of vulnerabilities in Brazil, dated more than 300 years ago, can be visible and express itself at the present. This situation also links the two most recurrent and important disaster in Brazil: Droughts and Landslides. To explain this relation, it is important to come back to the period when Brazil was invaded by Portugal and became an exploitation colony, in 1500 DC. To work on sugarcane and coffee farms, Portugal used as its main work labor slaves brought from Portuguese colonies in Africa. “Of the 10.7m African slaves shipped across the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries, 4.9m landed in Brazil. Fewer than 400,000 went to the United States” (The Economist, 2012). In 1888 Brazil abolished slavery (the last country in America to do so) and those “free slaves” became the poorest social group of Brazil, marginalized and forced to occupy the most cheap rural lands and urban areas. In practice it meant that this population was pushed to the most unproductive lands and hazardous places, with no infrastructure nor access to basic services. After more than 120 years, these first settlements of free slaves grew in size and became what is known in Brazil as the “favelas” or slums. These communities are now home for the internal migrants mentioned above, that not only occupy these spaces but also expands them to even more hazardous areas. As fond in the National Research of Basic Municipal Information (IBGE, 2013) “The development process of cities and growing concentration of population in urban centers have increased tensions and environmental disequilibrium with serious consequences for human wellbeing”, mainly because of “low standards of territorial occupation and planning, soil impermeability of large areas with paved roads and concreted surfaces, or impediments to water runoff, as poor drainage systems” (IBGE, 2013). The rapid social-economic development of the last decade in Brazil increased the distribution of resources and attracted more people to economic centers. With more resources, people felt encourage to retrofit their houses and other structures in hazardous place and occupy dangerous locations, creating even more unsafe conditions, since the resources invested in infrastructure are still not sufficient to eliminate or even minimize the local risk.

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Also, let’s do not forget that this is a very specific social group. According to The Economist (2012)9 “[O]n average, the income of whites is slightly more than double that of black or brown Brazilians, according to IPEA, a government-linked think-tank. It finds that blacks are relatively disadvantaged in their level of education and in their access to health and other services. For example, more than half the people in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (slums) are black. The comparable figure in the city's richer districts is just 7%”. Another important issue that can be directly linked to disasters in Brazil is forest depletion and ecosystem degradation. “As one of the leading nations on climate negotiations, Brazil has committed voluntarily to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1% and 38.9% until 2020 and should achieve this goal early” (World Bank, 2016). These climate change mitigation actions are undoubtedly good news, however, as found in Mercer, climate change mitigation is closer to science than to communities and more relevant to specific climate related hazards while “disaster risk reduction if implemented correctly, would in turn reduce community vulnerability to climate change”. Today, all main ecosystems in Brazil are under huge pressure, getting smaller every year and influencing the frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, landslides, flashfloods, soil erosion and other hazards. Let’s take as an example the Atlantic Forest Ecosystem. This biome is characterized by an abundance of species of flora and fauna (SECOM, 2012).). “In the 1990s researchers from the New York Botanical Garden counted 458 tree species in 2.5 acres – more than double the number of tree species in the entire U.S. eastern seaboard” (The Nature Conservancy, 2015). However, at the present time, only 12% of the biome remains preserved (SECOM, 2012), mostly because the Atlantic Forest runs through the coast line, where the biggest and more important economic urban centers are located. The geological characteristics of the mountains in Atlantic Forest (rocky mountains covered by dense moisture forest) makes it extremely prone to landslides, especially when these mountains are occupied by poor structured human settlements, or the ‘favelas’ (slums). As found in Fernandes et al (2003) “Landslides are common features in the Serra do Mar [Atlantic Forest], located along the southeastern Brazilian coast, most of them associated with intense summer storms, especially on the soil-mantled steep hillslopes around Rio de Janeiro city, where the favelas (slums) proliferated during the last few decades”.

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http://www.economist.com/node/21543494

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Due to poverty, power struggles and global markets, other important ecosystems are being systematically depleted contributing to increase disaster risk in the country. The deforestation of the natural fauna of the semiarid region, for example, which is closely monitored by the Department of Remote Sensing of the National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE, 2005), has shown “an explicit expansion of spatial heterogeneity of the desertification landscapes during the last years” (INPE, 2005). While the degradation of the Cerrado, one of the main ecosystems of Brazil, is directly responsible for droughts in the South and Southeast region, as well as more intensive droughts in the semiarid region, as Dr. Altair Barbosa (2014), one of the main specialists is drought in the country explains: “On average, ten small rivers in the Cerrado disappear each year. These little rivers are major rivers feeders, which, because of that, also have a reduced flow and do not feed tanks and other rivers that are tributaries. Thus, the river that forms the watershed also sees its volume decreasing, since it is not sufficiently stocked. Over time, the waters are disappearing from the Cerrado area and ceasing to feed the water cycle in the heart of Brazil” (Barbosa, 2014). Many other important sources of vulnerability could be discussed here, like for example levels of education and access to health and sanitation. This paper didn’t left them out because they are less relevant, but to understand that these vulnerabilities are so common and obvious in developing countries that this limited space could be used to analyze other sources of vulnerabilities that are not generally explored as root causes of disasters, as for example slavery, internal migration and economic pressure on natural resources. 4. The National Civil Protection and Defense Management System This session is dedicated to summarize the history of the National Civil Protection and Defense System in Brazil, the key events associated with its creation and evolution along time, as well as major disaster related policies. All the information mentioned here was retrieved from the official website of the National Civil Protection and Defense, as well as from the National Policy of Civil Protection and other documents produced mainly by the government. It worth mentioning that little academic production was found on the structure and managing style of Brazilian Nation System of Civil Protection and Defense, representing a potential research area for further studies. The history of the Civil Protection and Defense in Brazil started in 1942, by the name of Anti-aircraft Passive Defense Service, created with the objective of protecting vulnerable population against possible air attacks during World War II. The federal government, concerned about the overall safety of the population, also established a mandatory passive-defense education in all public and private schools in the country. After one year, in 1943, this service changed the name to Civil Defense and

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got under the supervision of the Ministry Justice, being extinct three years later, in 1946, just after the end of the war. In 1966, as the result of great floods and landslides in the state of Rio de Janeiro, a State Civil Defense was put together and a Protection Master Plan was developed, both serving as basis to what would become the National Civil Defense in the next year. At this time, Brazil was under a Military Dictatorship and the newborn National Civil Defense was allocated under the authority of the also newly created Ministry of Interior, with the objective to assist populations affected by natural disasters all over the country. In other words, this structure was created to respond to disasters as they happen. It was a regional trend all over Latin America at that time, as found in Lavell (2014) “up until the early 1970s, civil defense organizations limited themselves to response activities supported by the military armed forces…”. Right after the end of the military dictatorship, Brazil developed its new Democratic Constitution, in 1988, which, among many other things, established the National System of Civil Defense (SINPEDEC). This act allowed the National Secretary of Civil Defense to have smaller secretariats inserted into existing ministries and departments such as agriculture, public work, planning and finance, education and health, both at state and municipal levels. Lavell (2013) described this particular structure of the National Civil Protection as another trend in disaster management among many countries in Latin America. He also evaluates it as “a positive sign of progress in focusing attention on risk in public sector activity and action throughout the region” (Lavell, 2013). In 1993, highly influenced by the International Conference on Environment and Development organized by the UN (Rio 92), the Civil Defense System was reorganized. Not by coincidence, it was updated again in 2005, on the same year as the Hyogo Conference on Risk Reduction. However, it was only in 2010 that the National Policy of Civil Defense was stablished as a national law. It happened after great landslides that killed more than 200 people in the State of Rio de Janeiro in 2009. A bigger landslide in the same region, which is considered the worst disaster in Brazil, happened two years later, in 2011, killing more than 1,500 people and putting the recently approved law in check. After this disaster, the law was discussed again and many adjustments were made until it reached the format it is today. The new law was then approved on April 2012 (National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense n° 12,608 of 2012), including in the National System of Civil Protection10 and Defense not only entities of the federal, state and municipal governments, but private entities and civil society organizations

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Protection was a word added by the National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense n. 12,608 of 2012.

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with significant role in civil protection. The objective is of “contributing to the planning process, articulation, coordination and implementation of programs, projects and actions to reduce risk [bold by the author] and respond to disasters” (National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense, 2012). Also, each State of the Federation is now required by law to have its own Civil Protection Organization. For the Municipalities it is not mandatory, but they cannot have access to federal funds for disasters without an active Municipal Civil Protection and Defense. The central organization of the National System of Civil Protection and Defense is the National Secretariat of Civil Protection and Defense - SEDEC, located under the Ministry of National Integration. SEDEC is responsible to take actions to “prevent, mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from disasters” (National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense, 2012) and integrate disaster risk reduction measures on “planning policies, urban development, health, environment, climate change, water management, geology, infrastructure, education, science and technology and other sectoral policies to promote sustainable development” (National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense, 2012). In this context, it is also responsibility of SEDEC to update the National Policy and manage the National Council of Civil Protection - CONDEC, which has the objective to assist in the formulation, implementation, execution and monitoring of the National Civil Protection Plan. Considering the size of Brazil and the average number of disasters per year, having a centralized system responsible for all disaster related actions at the national level can be considered a weakness. While researchers and practitioners point out the necessity and benefits of investing in mitigation and vulnerability reduction, SEDEC is allocating most of its resources in the response phase. This because, unlikely FEMA, SEDEC has low articulation with other Ministries and Secretaries at all levels and limited financial resources. In practice, it means that not only SEDEC, but the whole National Civil Protection and Defense System depends almost exclusively on its own resources. In terms of management style, the National System of Civil Protection and Defense is still a highly militarized organization, which follows a rigid hierarchy of command and information with some similarities with the Command Management System in the USA, which also tries to combine “hierarchy and network in the same structural form” (Moynihan, 2008). This new structure is slowly incorporating more civilians and civil society organization, as for example community centers and local associations. SEDEC is also partnering with international organizations like the UN (UNDP and UNISDR) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) mainly to provide training and capacity building related to international documents Brazil is a 13

signatory, as for example the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction. The academia is also receiving support to create and maintain Disaster Research Centers in public and private universities, like for example the Center of Disaster Studies in the University of Santa Catarina (CEPED-SC). Even with these wide participation of different entities and organization under a new law that openly establishes risk management as a priority, the whole system is still immerse in the old structural paradigm of emergency management, making more difficult to promote a culture of prevention in the country. The great majority of publications and articles are focused in the response phase of disasters and most of the resources (technical and economic) are spent in this particular phase. An institutional diagnosis made by UNDP collected data on technical capacities of all Civil Protections at the state level and some at the municipal level, revealing that “regardless of the structure of Civil Protection and Defense in the states and municipalities, the existing capacity acts mainly on the response phase of disasters rather than prevention. The justification is the lack of resources to develop projects in prevention and recovery. According to the information collected in surveys, interviews and workshops, resources exist only to respond” (UNDP, 2013). On the other hand, years and years of experience responding to disaster made the National Civil Protection and Defense an specialist in such operations. Also, the way that the National System of Civil Protection and Defense is now established, brought the municipal agent of civil protection much closer to the most vulnerable communities and aware of their most basic needs to elaborate better contingency plans. The local emergency manager (Municipal Civil Protection Agent) is now encouraged to be more proactive is building networks, connecting resources and working with different municipal secretaries to build up disaster reduction and contingency plans. However, this demonstrated to be a daunting task for two main reasons: First, the local emergency manager is not prepared nor has received training to perform these activities. Second because municipal resources are very limited and already compromised to basic services, which are still seen by politicians as disconnected from disaster related actions. Another issue related to local emergency managers is related to their approach with the community. As found in Valencio (2010) “the hierarchical relationship between civil protection agents and vulnerable population happens as if the affected public is composed mainly of disqualified people, devoid of knowledge and dignity, victims of their own ignorance, who adopt disregarded and irresponsible behaviors that would therefore require an external social control”. Valencio (2010) also critics what she calls an ‘illuminist’ approach of civil protection agents when implementing

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prevention recommendations, saying that disasters are “currently seen as the result of ignorance of the affected population when interacting with their environment”. Community participation is still very limited in risk reduction and emergency management action on local level also because of the lack of structural mechanisms to integrate local knowledge and to share new approaches. Lack of interest in community participation by decision makers adds some more difficulties to build a relationship of trust to reach a balance among local actions and decisions imposed by the public administration in the imminence of disasters, such early warning systems, evacuations, land use planning, and etc. To finish this session, it is worth mentioning that there is a glaring lack of data, records, publications and scientific articles in Brazil to support more in depth analysis and develop technical standards for monitoring the progress and effectiveness of the risk management and disaster response actions taken by the National Civil Protection ad Defense. The current databases are designed by different public and international organizations who generate their own data accordingly to their mandates and technical expertise, producing relevant data that ere are not integrated nor shared in national risk management plans and disaster response. 5. Conclusion Based in the documentation available on disaster risk reduction in Brazil, it is clear that the National System of Civil Protection and Defense is still dominated by the structural functionalism paradigm, in which disasters are understood as a unforeseen, unpredictable and natural phenomenon that randomly disrupt the “normal” social life. Is to say that the cause of a disaster is a exogenous factor (drought, landslide, flood and etc) that suddenly interrupts a normal and well-functioning community. This perspective is related to the “preparedness and response” paradigm, which reactively manages disasters and emergencies as they occur. Even though the law states very clearly that risk management should be a priority, the whole system is still, to be optimistic, in a transitional process. There are many reason for that. First, the law determine that funds and resources should obligatorily be transferred to states or municipalities in case of disasters, but only voluntarily (and with much more bureaucracy) for mitigation actions, making it easier for municipalities to wait disasters to happen to have access to funds. Adding to this, Brazil still have a militarized civil defense system that may be not feel comfortable in interfering on development issues, but rather doing what they have been trained to do with great expertise and skills, which is responding to disasters and rescuing people. 15

The great territorial extension and diversity in ecosystems also makes it harder to share experiences and successful actions from region to region. Communication among different actors of the National System of Civil Protection and Defense is flawed, inefficient and doesn’t contribute for an integrated Civil Protection and Defense at national level. Not even local Civil Protection and Defenses are capable yet in coordinating actions and support each other in local emergencies. However, Brazil has important vulnerabilities to overcome if the country wants to minimize its risk of both intensive and extensive disasters. Much of the causes of disasters are related to economic, infrastructure, political and environmental issues that are interconnected and interdependent and which demand more in depth studies to evaluate where to allocate resources to efficiently start to minimizing it. It is also evident that these actions call for a more proactive private sector, civil society organizations and the academia, which are not well articulated and engaged in disaster risk reduction measures either. 6. Bibliography BBC (2016). Brazil country profile. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america18909529 CENAD - Centro Nacional de Gerenciamento de Desastres (2014). Anuário Brasileiro de Desastres Naturais. Ministério da Integração Nacional & Secretaria Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Civil. Brasília, BR. CEPED - Centro Universitário de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Desastres (2012). Atlas Brasileiro de Desastres Naturais 1991 a 2010: volume Brasil. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Florianópolis, Brazil. Christoplos, I. (2012). Food Security and Disasters. Danish Institute for International Studies. Copenhagen, DE. CIA - Central Intelligence Agency (2011). The World Factbook – Brazil. Retrieved from: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html CPMR - Serviço Geológico do Brasil (2012). A Atuação do Serviço Geológico do Brasil – CPRM na Gestão de Riscos e Resposta a Desastres Naturais. VI Congresso CONSAD de Gestão Pública. Brasília, BR. Fernandes, N., Guimarães, R., Gomes, R., Viera, B., Montgomery, D., Greenberg, H. (2004). Topographic Controls of Landslides in Rio de Janeiro: Field evidence and modeling. Elsevier. Catena 55, pg. 163–181. Ganem, R.S., (2014). Estrutura Institucional da União Para a Gestão De Desastres Naturais. Câmara dos Deputados, Brasília, 2014. Glantz, M.H. (2012). Creeping Environmental Phenomena: Are Societies Equipped to Deal with Them? National Center for Atmospheric Research. Environmental and Societal Impact Group. Boulder, Colorado USA.

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Holden, J (2014). Water Resources: An Integral Approach. Routledge. New York, NY. IBGE - Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatísticas, (2013). National Research of Basic Municipal Information. Pesquisa de Informações Básicas Municipais. IBGE. Rio de Janeiro, BR. IBGE - Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatísticas (2015). Arranjos Populacionais e Concentrações Urbanas do Brasil. IBGE. Rio de Janeiro, BR. INPE – National Institute for Spatial Research (2005). Desertification Studies in the Brazilian Northeastern Areas With GIS Database. INPE. Anais XII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto. Goiânia, BR, p. 1053-1061. Instrução Normativa nº 01 of 2012, Ministério da Integração Nacional (2012). Jones, R. (1973). Landslides of Rio de Janeiro and the Serra das Araras Escarpment, Brazil .Geological Survey Professional Paper 697. United States Government Printing Office. Washington, US. Lavell, A. (2000). Sobre la Gestión del Riesgo: Apuntes hacía una Definición. Latin American Social Science Faculty (FLACSO) and The Network for the Social Study of Disaster Prevention in Latin America-LA RED. San Jose, Costa Rica. Lavell, A. & Maskrey, A. (2013). The Future of Disaster Risk Management. FLACSO (Latin American Social Science Faculty) and UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction). San José, Costa Rica. Li, W., Fu, R, Juárez,R., Fernandes, K. (2008). Observed Change of the Standardized Precipitation Index, its Potential Cause and Implications to Future Climate Change in the Amazon region. The Royal Society. Biological Sciences. Retrieved from: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/363/1498/1767.short Ministério da Integração Nacional (2010). A PNDR em dois tempos: A experiência apreendida e o olhar pós 2010. Secretaria de Políticas de Desenvolvimento Regional. Brasília, BR. National Policy of Civil Protection and Defense nº 12,608 of 2012, Presidência da República Casa Civil - Subchefia para Assuntos Jurídicos (2012). O’Keefe, P., Westagate, K. & Wisner, B. (1976). Taking the Naturalness out of Natural Disasters. Nature, Vol 260. Portal Brasil (2015). Entenda o acidente de Mariana e suas consequências para o meio ambiente. Retrived from: http://www.brasil.gov.br/meio-ambiente/2015/12/entenda-o-acidente-de-marianae-suas-consequencias-para-o-meio-ambiente PAHO - Pan American Health Organization (2015). Desastres Naturais e Saúde no Brasil. Fundação Oswaldo Cruz – Ministry of Health. Série Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Saúde 2. SECOM- The Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency of Brazil (2012). Biodiversity in Brazil. Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency of the Federative Republic of Brazil. United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity (COP11). Hyderabad, India. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2015). Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. 3rd World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction. Sendai, 2015. UNDP – United Nations Development Program (2013). Diagnóstico e Análise das Necessidades de Formação em Gestão de Risco de Desastres. Secretaria Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Civil & PNUD Brasil. Brasília, BR. 17

The Economist (2012). Affirming a divide: Black Brazilians are much worse off than they should be. But what is the best way to remedy that? Retrieved from: http://www.economist.com/node/21543494 UNDP (2012). MDG Country Progress Snapshot: Brazil. Data source: MDG global database. Retrieved from http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx Valencio, N. (2010). Disasters, Social Order and Civil Defense Planning: the Brazilian Context. Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas Sociais em Desastres (NEPED). Departamento de Sociologia da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar). São Carlos, BR. Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., & Davis, I. (2004). At Risk: Natural Hazards, People Vulnerability and Disasters. London: Routledge. World Bank (2012). Com gerenciamento de desastres, Brasil poderia economizar bilhões de reais. World Group Bank. Retrieved from: http://www.worldbank.org/pt/news/feature/2012/11/19/Brazil-natural-disaster-managementcosts-development World Bank (2016). Country Profile: Brazil. World Bank Group – IDRB – IDA. Retrieved from: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/brazil/overview#1

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