Scientists urge end to fossil fuels to curb deadly floods in Brazil’s coffee heartland

The record floods that have brought death and destruction to Brazil’s coffee heartland are expected to intensify if people continue to burn fossil fuels. Dozens of residents in Minas Gerais have been buried alive in landslides or swept away as roads turned into rivers over the past month, and thousands more have been forced to evacuate.

Juiz de Fora was among the hardest hit, enduring its wettest February on record with more than 750mm of rainfall — three times the expected amount for that period and 65% more than the previous record of 456mm set in 1988, the latest study by the World Weather Attribution group found.

The international team said a primary cause of the deaths was inequality and inadequate urban planning, which created landslide vulnerabilities for poor communities on steep, deforested and poorly drained hill slopes. Juiz de Fora is one of the 10 riskiest cities in Brazil in terms of the proportion of residents living in such danger zones.

Brazil, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais

brazil, minas gerais, juiz de, floods, landslides, rainfall, fossil fuels, climate change, urban planning, inequality