Brazil stands out in disaster prevention, UN says
Brazil is the country with the largest number of resilient cities in the world, according to the UN. With 282 Brazilian cities enrolled, the Making Cities Resilient program aims to prepare urban areas around the world to prevent impact caused by disasters.
The word “resilient” was borrowed from Physics and is used to define the ability of some materials to recover from deformation. The UN uses it to describe the cities that partner with the organization to maintain programs that can help them resist, absorb, and recover from disaster.
Viaduct Guararapes that collapsed en Belo Horizonte last july
Sidnei Furtado, who promotes the campaign in Brazil, explained that the local governments of participating cities signed a commitment with the UN whereby they promise to take action to reduce the impact of disasters. “[Once the cities join the program], they are required to follow a set of steps towards resilience, like mapping risk areas and restricting construction in those places,” he said.
According to him, one major gain is that the local governments learn to act more preventively. “Our goal is precisely to look out for cities that have a track record [of disaster], such as Rio de Janeiro, and begin to change Brazil's [reactive] model to one of disaster prevention.”
The UN representative mentioned Belo Horizonte among the Brazilian cities that provide a role model in preventive action. There, local Emergency Response coordinator Alexandre Alves says the guidelines established by the United Nations have been instrumental. “They have helped us respond more quickly to the needs of the population in a recent viaduct disaster, for example,” he said, referring an overpass that collapsed in the city last July.
Translated by Mayra Borges
Fonte: Brazil stands out in disaster prevention, UN says
