This week, the Tietê River in São Paulo,OverflowedThe river's flow reached more than twice the normal maximum limit, causing floods in the capital and inland areas.
In the city of São Paulo, a significant event is taking place, drawing global attention. The 2023 World Economic Forum, organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF), is gathering world leaders, business executives, and experts to discuss pressing global issues. This year's theme, "The Future of Sustainable Development," highlights the importance of addressing environmental and social challenges. The event promises to shape global agendas and foster collaboration among nations.Pantanal MarshlandIn the neighborhood historically affected by the floods of the Tietê River, the flooding terrified the residents due to the intensity and speed of the water, still in the early hours of the morning. "The rain came that didn't stop, it was incessant, strong rain [...], and it ended up filling the river. The river overflowing was even natural, because it happened slowly, but then came the pressure of the water, around 6 in the morning, very quickly [...]. It looked like a waterfall, those who were walking had to be supported by someone to not be carried away by the water. It was a rush, a shouting, to take the cars out and then, to remove the furniture," says Rafael Tavares, a resident of the neighborhood since 1994 and a journalist.
The floods in São Paulo, although a historical problem, have been intensifying due to climate change and the lack of adaptation of the cities. "This is the first time this has happened in September. Usually, it occurs in late December, January, February, rarely in March, but in September, it's the first time," Tavares remembers.
Despite the severity of the issue, thePublic AgencyIt has been revealed that the city's climate action plan, which provides guidelines on how the government should act to protect its citizens, still has generic action goals. And worse: it is being used almost as a copy-and-paste for another capital, Salvador, in Bahia.
Read São Paulo's climate action planHere: The text provided is already in English, so no translation is necessary. The exact same text will be returned as it is: "here".And that of Salvador,Here: The text provided is already in English, so no translation is necessary. The exact same text will be returned as it is: "here"..
According to (the)PublicBoth plans were developed by the same companies and partnerships, such as C40 (a global network of cities committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions), WayCarbon consultancy, and the international ICLEI association, and implemented by the same professionals. They are aligned with global metrics and financialized, targeting external agents rather than the local population.
These are the criticisms of Professor and researcher Paulo Zangalli from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), leader of the Collapse - Nature and Society Research Group and member of the Brazilian Association of Climatology's Executive Board. Zangalli researches climate capitalism and how the climate agenda has been incorporated into unequal practices, such as real estate speculation and urban space gentrification.
According to the researcher, Salvador's plan includes the same standardized guidelines as São Paulo's.
In both plans, the only land use directive for reducing vulnerability is the retrofit of old buildings. The principle itself is not a problem if we take buildings that can be recovered, for example, [...] removing people from risk areas and inserting them into a valuable area with some type of sociability and proximity to work locations. But in practice, in both São Paulo and Salvador, this means we will use climate to retrofit old buildings, recover them, make them more energy-efficient, install rainwater harvesting systems and other solutions - which are also included in the policies and actions of the plan, such as IPTU discounts - and evict the people who live there and are considered undesirable from the perspective of real estate incorporation.
Zangalli participated in Salvador's Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Plan, whose final version is from November 2020, and reports on the erosion of societal participation, from online meetings with muted microphones. "In fact, we were used for validation of documents produced by this strange consortium foreign to the territory."
He believes the document also revealed a lack of will to make structural changes. Adaptation - which has a real impact on people's lives - was timid and even lacked guaranteed financing, depending on financial market assets.
ThePublic (Noun)Here (aqui) the report also questioned the City Hall of São Paulo about what has been done to improve floods and flooding in Jardim Pantanal by the current administration and what are the practical goals for adaptation in the capital's climate plan. Through its Press Office, the city hall stated that "the region is receiving R$ 59.8 million in drainage, paving, and Tietê River containment works" and that "the São Paulo Climate Action Plan, revised in 2025, sets 36 specific adaptation goals. Direct actions related to preventing and reducing the impacts of floods and inundations include the implementation of 1,000 rain gardens by 2028, prioritizing areas with a history of flooding." Read the full response.Below (aqui) are the main excerpts from the interview with Paulo Zangalli:.
Can you first explain the context of creating Salvador's plan?Here (aqui).
Read below the key excerpts from the interview with Paulo Zangalli:
Can you explain the context of creating Salvador's plan?
The Salvador Climate Action Plan was produced within the C40 (global network of cities focused on climate), where the city signed, during the Paris Agreement, an intention target, along with this network, to neutralize carbon emissions by 2050. To do this, action plans needed to be produced.
This process began in 2015 with the production of the Urban Resilience Plan, which subsequently gave rise to the Climate Action Plan. It was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) and the Rockefeller Foundation, and coordinated by GIZ (the German cooperation agency), which contracted the WayCarbon consortium and ICLEI.
The plan is structured around four axes: Inclusive Salvador, Green-Blue, Resilient, and Low Carbon. This document, in fact, merely reproduces a number of goals and metrics, as it follows a common methodology used by C40, GIZ, and ICLEI for producing local climate action plans. It is therefore not disconnected from the Brazilian reality, as this consortium also produced the plan for Porto Alegre. C40 and ICLEI participated in the plan for São Paulo and other municipalities.
The document organizes actions to combat climate change, but what we notice is that these actions are disconnected from the city's climate reality. Even though they present a diagnosis, an emissions inventory, and a climate risk plan, this is not used as guidance and a parameter for solving problems.
Why?
Why is the Salvador plan disconnected from the city's reality? Because out of the 56 actions planned for the main climate problems, which are flooding and landslides, only 16 actions specifically address these issues, and absolutely none of them consider structural aspects, such as works or adaptation interventions that would actually prepare the city for future rainfall.
So, even if it highlights areas of susceptibility and vulnerability to climate risks in the index, the actions themselves are more focused on shifting the problem to the individual sphere and capacitating certain sectors to deal with disasters, rather than necessarily preventing them.
For example, when it comes to excessive heat, the Civil Defense itself stated that "heat is not part of their business," meaning it is not part of their responsibility, which is rainfall. Few actions in the plan are actually related to excessive heat, such as creating a heat island map and investing in tree planting. These are few actions that do not address the problem we are facing.
You spoke about a misalignment between mitigation and adaptation in the plan. How does this disconnect work?
Salvador's plan has an ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, as required by C40 and as a condition for attracting investments, which is its purpose. Adaptation, on the other hand, consists of the most necessary and coherent measures with Salvador's climate problems, such as floods, inundations, and landslides. Heat has also been a problem, but people tend to perceive it differently.
This misalignment has a logical explanation. Mitigation deals with the creditization and mercantilization of the climate, focusing on the atmosphere - it aims to reduce greenhouse gases and thus consider the atmospheric chemical composition. Adaptation, however, requires thinking about reality, space, urban policy, and territorial planning.
Salvador's plan, for instance, has a land use and planning axis, like other plans. All guidelines in Salvador's plan regarding land use and occupation are the same as those of São Paulo. There's just one difference. In São Paulo, there's an additional mechanism, calledwin-win, which Salvador did not incorporate. These mechanisms are the same as those in the financial market, following a flexible management logic implemented through companies.
It's a conflict management logic, where the state's role in planning is to ensure conflicts are resolved, not necessarily settled. Thewin-win mechanismThis strategy, in the context of this planning game with interests and conflicts, assumes that everyone can win, which makes no sense at all, right?
In comparing Salvador and São Paulo, the land use guidelines are the same. Both aim for vulnerability reduction. In Salvador's reality, which I know better, the components of vulnerability are lack of income, housing in the form of shanties – representing 48% of the mapped risk areas. What is needed is a job-focused plan to provide income, and a housing plan to ensure access to homes with some infrastructure.
Both plans only focus on retrofitting old buildings as a land use directive for vulnerability reduction. The principle itself is not the issue if we target buildings that can be recovered, such as those with outstanding IPTU or that are abandoned, as is the case with the historic centers of both cities, to provide affordable housing, removing people from risk areas and integrating them into a valued area with some sociability and proximity to work locations.
But in practice, in both São Paulo and Salvador, this means using the climate to retrofit old buildings, recover them, make them more energy-efficient, install rainwater harvesting systems, and other solutions – which are indeed part of the plan's policies, like IPTU discounts – and evict the people living there who are considered undesirable from the perspective of real estate development. In practice, this means expelling the population to a new round of real estate speculation in the centers of both cities.
Since the 1990s, there has been a round of expelling black and poor populations from the city for real estate development, particularly to attract investment in the tourism sector. And the population is aware of this. This is another attempt to say: "Let's reduce vulnerability by retrofitting old buildings." But in reality, it will mean a round of climate gentrification. As a result, vulnerability will increase, not decrease.
What does the marginalization of adaptation in the plan mean?
First, because it costs money. Second, because it's not profitable. All these policies are within the capital, and it's expected that those who execute them are not necessarily the state. It's even expected that the private sector will be interested in implementing them. Indeed, when we analyze the financing of the plans, adaptation did not have guaranteed funding and international partnerships were identified as necessary to attract resources.
You participated in the plan's development. What were the expectations and what actually materialized? What was a disappointment?
When I created the Salvador Climate Change Panel, we had been working since the beginning and had many debates about what it should be, how we would work, who would finance it, the executive secretariat. The idea was that local scientists, with their knowledge of the reality, could offer their expertise for the plan's formulation, along with the movements. But in reality, we were used for the validation of documents produced by this strange consortium outside the territory.
I realized what was happening early on, but the greatest disappointment for my colleagues was to realize that they were not doing their part, not critically evaluating the document or producing anything. We did some things that are in the plan's annex, but they were not incorporated; they were only used for validation.
There is a document from the Salvador Climate Forum, the popular organization that emerged from this movement, where we made this exact analysis that the meetings were validation meetings, with closed microphones, little participation, and no speaking power. The Academy, when invited, was only to validate, to say if it was right or wrong. And sometimes it was very wrong, like the risk of flooding in the highest areas of the city, with no sense at all.
In this context, are Brazilian plans today almost a "copy and paste" of each other?
Yes, they are plans made by the same groups, who will present the same guidelines, the same actions, with some territorialized changes, as there is also state participation, even in the creation of products.
You mentioned earlier that some of the mitigation goals set in the plan have already been achieved.
Yes, regarding emission reduction, which is the central goal. The medium-term goal has already been achieved, which was a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. When we talk about carbon sequestration, mitigation, reduction, we imagine someone is measuring it, but it's just an estimate spreadsheet of how much each sector emits. When a data point changes, the emission data changes. Public transportation was indicated in the inventory as a central emission element in Salvador. Increasing the electric fleet reduces emissions, but not necessarily, just in the metric being used.
The climate problem is produced from a spatial logic. We have already lived with climate change and lived differently. In our case, we produced a city that is indifferent to water. There is only an impact because there is spatial production, and if the plan is not aligned with this, it is not aligned with anything; it is just quantifying everything.
And how would a plan that addresses the spatial reality of cities look like?
A plan that arises from the most urgent needs of the population and incorporates existing technologies in these territories. The population already produces everyday adaptations because it suffers the impact. With every rain, every movement, it organizes to prevent recurrence, as waiting for the state is impossible. A popular plan emerges from this, either as an adaptation as a centrality or not, but it is the involved people, with population and academic engagement, who will decide.
What is the relationship between the reproduction of capital and the financialization of plans? How does climate capitalism operate in the elaboration of these documents?
The first point is through creditization, which demands the creation of real estate securities for financial market commercialization. This is the main element we have today. Plans will produce metric conditions for this financialization, identifying areas with credit potential and where this potential can be produced. Some measures are directly linked to this. For example, the incentive to use renewable energy, with discounts on energy bills, which are sold on the market, the green purchase of public power, attracting companies offering products within the financial logic. Today, these plans have the possibility of putting various sectors already profiting from climate change into dialogue.
Since the Stern Report in 2005, the market has changed the way it assesses climate change. British economist Sir Nicholas Stern of the World Bank produced a report showing how profits could be made from climate change. This shifts the logic, and financial logic begins to dominate the carbon credit market and financialization mechanisms of this process.
The Rockefeller Foundation, which comes from the oil company that is one of the main emitters of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over these years, has the same movement as the World Bank. At some point, the institution promised to change its entire production logic and stop producing oil. Obviously, it will never do this as long as oil remains profitable. So, it creates these foundations, which finance climate change action plans. It's a contradiction.
Plans clearly make progress by placing the climate agenda as an important element, but these advances are very limited. We need to understand that we don't need to reconfigure historical struggles to talk about climate. In our case, housing is a central element in producing climate impact, and the fight for housing is also central to social movements, which have technology and knowledge about it, but these are not incorporated - obviously, and it wouldn't make sense within the logic the plans are based on.