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Unprecedented rain that has hammered Colombia over the past
year has affected three million people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
In March, I spent three weeks traveling across the Caribbean region visiting
families displaced by the floods. The alarming conditions I encountered more
than three months since President Santos declared a state of emergency are
described in a report released today by Refugees International entitled,
“Surviving Alone: Improving Assistance to Colombia’s Flood Victims [1].”
In the town of Manatí in Atlántico Department I was greeted by the Iraida, an
Afro-Colombian mother of four who leads a local women’s organization. “Today we
don’t have a glass of water to drink,” Iraida tells me. “The water truck has
not come to distribute water. It comes every eight days.” She explains that
water rations are not sufficient to allow her to bathe her baby and provide
enough water for the other four members of her family.
Watch a personal account from Iraida and her husband [2].
She leads me down the main street where the high water mark is still visible on
the buildings, past city hall and around a corner where we are confronted by
the water. Three months since the breach of the Dique Canal in December and
half of the town is still underwater, and is likely to remain so for months to
come. We get into wooden boats and silently paddle out into the green, stagnant
waters. Street by street the water grows deeper, until all that is visible are
rooftops and tree branches. Remnants of people’s lives – a mattress, a suitcase
– loom just below the surface.
Iraida points to her house, which is submerged except for the tops of the
windows and roof. “We had a store, a business. We took out a loan and now we
are unable to pay the bank. We need food, water, clothes – yes, even clothes
because we have lost everything.”
Tragically, her story was similar to dozens of others I heard in Atlántico,
Córdoba, Bolívar, Sucre and Magdelana Departments. Flood victims received some
basic aid during the height of the floods in December; many had been encouraged
by news that the government had launched a multi-media campaign to raise flood
aid. But more than three months later, what little assistance they had received
was tapering off leaving them to survive on their own. As described in the
report, an uncoordinated, bureaucratic process set up by the Colombian
government to distribute millions of dollars in flood relief was severely
hindering the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. According to a
recent report by the Colombian General Accountability Office, only half of the
flood aid has been distributed to date.
At the center of town, displaced families have constructed make-shift shelters
in a small open-air stadium. Using plastic sheeting and wood, each family has
neatly marked off areas for sleeping and cooking. As we walk by, a man sitting
within his family along side of his make-shift shelter shouts out to me, “I
don’t want charity; I just want my house back!” Iraida introduces a friend who
shows us inside her little section where she has neatly stored the few pieces
of furniture, pots and other belongings she was able to salvage from her
flooded home. I am moved by her efforts to construct a semblance of dignity in
all the chaos and ruin, and reminded of similar instances of extraordinary human
resilience I have witnessed not only in Colombia, but in the wake of the
Pakistan floods [3] as well.
In 2010 alone, 300 million people across the globe were affected by natural
disasters, the majority of which were climate-related, including 182 floods
that affected 180 million people – almost double the annual average for the
last decade.
As I write this blog two months after visiting Manatí, persistent rains and
ongoing flooding in Colombia continue to displace hundreds of thousands of
people, and record-breaking flooding along areas of the Mississippi River
inundate vast swaths of land in the southeast United States. In all the debate
over whether the increase in the frequency and force of climate-related
disasters is a portent of things to come or evidence that climate change
already is occurring, I am left wondering whether policy makers, in their quest
for scientific certainty, have missed the point. Not surprisingly, in Colombia,
as was the case with the floods in Pakistan as well, it was the poorest and
most vulnerable sectors of society that received the least amount of aid, and
who are most likely to remain displaced over the long-term.
I am left questioning the wisdom of continuing to view today’s extreme events
as unforeseen occurrences for which no one is responsible, as acts of God or
nature, as risks that cannot be managed. It is starkly evident that neither
national governments nor the humanitarian community is prepared to respond to
the increasing pressure that climate variability is bringing to bear not only
on some of the world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries but also on a
humanitarian system that is already over-stressed and woefully underfunded. The
discussion must therefore focus on prevention, protection, and the underlying
factors that render people vulnerable to begin with like poverty, weak social
protection networks, lack of preparedness and the weak capacity of local
governments to respond quickly and in an accountable manner.