Territory management systems can be updated, prioritizing prevention and alerting citizens against a new threat. Here we have also missed a substantial improvement in logistical tasks.
Science is far from being a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s simply the best we have"
The response of the administrations to the DANA crisis, in particular that of the Generalitat Valenciana, deserves attention that goes beyond the proposal of this writing. Let us listen, among others, to those who are committed to overcoming supposed governance imbalances, since it is absolutely essential that a new catastrophe does not catch us arguing again about who and how they should be in charge of the ship, even though the legal framework appears sufficiently clear.
Let us thank the people, volunteers, support services and collaboration who, despite the organizational problems, are helping to mitigate the pain and precariousness.
Now I think it is also interesting to know what has happened in the physical environment. What has been the specificity of the rains, what part of the territory has received them and how and by what routes the waters have passed until they reach where they have caused so much human and material destruction. What obstacles, if any, have aggravated the situation.
Every year, when the month of October arrived, in Valencia we had been wondering how the plan known as Plan Sur would respond in the event of rains similar to or greater than those of the Turia flood of 1957. In my opinion, the most logical answers were in the “we don’t know” line. Well, the profound transformations caused in recent decades – agrarian, urban growth, public works – raised doubts about whether the waters would docilely submit to transit through where that great drainage channel was, a project that would be impossible to propose in the current legal framework and that has now regained particular prominence. The sterile conflicts of the “if we had…” style now contribute little.
That plan, and other subsequent decisions, have conditioned the growth of the metropolitan area over the years, relegating the southern area to a clearly subordinate role that now, with DANA, once again pays a very high price. Time will have to clarify what the role of the river diversion has ultimately been in this crisis.
1957-2024. Changes in environmental culture
Since then there has been a profound change in the environmental culture directed by the scientific world. The publication in 1972 of the famous report ‘The Limits to Growth’ contributed to laying the foundations of a new environmental scenario, now presided over by the fight against Climate Change. Later we witnessed the formulation of the New Water Culture: considering rivers as natural ecosystems to be protected, as stated in the European Framework Directive of 2000. The subsequent directive of 2007 refers to the evaluation and management of flood risks. At that time it was remembered that, between 1998 and 2004, Europe had suffered more than one hundred serious floods with thousands of people displaced and a high economic cost in losses. The Vallés floods in September 1962 (Llobregat and Besós rivers) caused between 600 and 1,000 victims and million-dollar losses.
There is another difference between 1957 and 2024. Then, with hardly any vehicles, we calculated the width of the avenues by the height reached in our houses. Today it is cars that overwhelmingly establish ‘the measure of all things’, in addition to being an added obstacle in these catastrophes.
Against the social and political current that denies these innovations, those responsible for democratic governments are obliged to incorporate them into public policies, since legislation has assumed a good part of these changes. “Politicians knowing, as they do, that Climate Change puts absolutely everything in danger, doing nothing is similar to a crime. The world has limits, but they play at unlimited growth…” This is how the naturalist Joaquín Araujo expressed himself bluntly in 2019 in the newspaper The Vanguard.
Let’s return to our territory. To know how the physical environment has responded to the waterspout, we need to have rigorous studies that help us clear up doubts, knowing, as we have seen, that the technical and scientific knowledge available is no longer the same, nor is the biophysical framework , nor the normative one. For this task, the concurrence of various specialties is needed. In addition, we have instruments such as green infrastructure to address the climate crisis and hydrological regulation, stopping soil erosion: an interconnected system of natural elements, very different from the gray infrastructure of the concrete.
With all this, researchers and specialists will know how to monitor what happened and provide new guidelines for action from now on. Territory management systems can be updated, prioritizing prevention and alerting citizens against a new threat. Here too we have missed a substantial improvement in logistical tasks.
In short, think and put the necessary resources to adapt to the changes that have already begun to show themselves in an alarming way due to the climate responses. We are behind schedule, since the aforementioned advances have barely been reflected in public policies in our country, committed to projects from other times that detract from public resources, now essential, for the reconstruction that awaits us. The myth of growth, so established, is very difficult to combat.
Let us hope that our public universities and research centers contribute their knowledge to provide reliable answers to the question that heads this text. We will be attentive.
#Valencia #happened
