In the middle of South America, pinched between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, lies Paraguay. Many people could not identify Paraguay on a blank map, lying in the shadow of its larger neighbours.
Outside of South America, I’m willing to bet many people don’t know that Paraguay has spent months underwater, suffering the effects of El Niño combined with its flat topography that means water is slow to drain away. I would place even larger sums on bets that few people are aware that Paraguay has suffered numerous environmental emergencies, such as toxic fires at storage sites for old transformers, river contamination with agricultural chemicals and an ongoing risk of possible poisoning of the river Paraguay on which a significant part of the population of the capital depends for fishing and even drinking.
Mixing all these elements together can produce a bitter cocktail.
Along the length of the river Paraguay there have been serious floods for the last few months. Rains are expected to pick up again this month, very likely taking the total number of affected people to over 200,000. In the capital, Asuncion, there are already over 120 shelters, some numbering a few families and many numbering hundreds.
I have been deployed as the environmental emergencies delegate on a UN disasters and coordination team in Paraguay. The UN is not prepared to wait for the worst to happen, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) aims to support Paraguay to ensure that the environmental risks are taken into account. People might assume that UNEP is all about ecosystems and reforestation. However, the purpose here is to ensure that people are not inadvertently relocated into an area of environmental risk. Because “out of the frying pan and into the fire” is all too real a possibility.
This is one of few occasions where an environmental emergencies delegate is part of an emergency response team from the start of the mission. The more we demand of natural resources and industry at lower prices, the greater the risks of different kinds of environmental emergencies. Climate change will increase the impact of natural hazards on communities and the industry around them. I suspect that this kind of mission will become ever more frequent.
Many people in urban Paraguay make their livelihoods through recycling. They salvage for rubbish the different elements that can be recycled like cans and plastic. But this results in constant contact between people and rubbish, where chemical, industrial and electronic waste is often not separated out from the household waste. One of the big challenges of this emergency is how to protect people from public health risks without undermining one of the few economic opportunities open to them. That’s something to think about next time you leave your box of plastic bottles on the step or take your newspaper to the recycling bin.
Close to 80% of the affected people are in Asuncion, which lies on a bend in the river Paraguay. Population growth has pushed the poorest into slums on the banks of the river. But they are not the only ones. Rural areas and small towns lying along the banks of the river Paraguay from north to south are underwater. We have just received word that we will not be able to visit some places, since even their grass airstrips are under water. We will be assessing people’s needs by phone to try to help the government get a clearer picture of what is going on and organise the response of the humanitarian community. We will be taking account of all the different industries, storage depots, dump sites, shipyards, power plants, slaughterhouses and oil refineries. I will be working with the environment ministry and other humanitarian agencies to get more information on the environmental risks people are facing, so that we can do our best to take account of environmental risks as we respond to the flooding in Paraguay. After all, it is bad enough to have your house under water. But to then return home with your children once the flood has receded to a house that might have been contaminated by toxic material and have them exposed to that — it sounds like any parent’s worst nightmare.
At the United Nations Environment Assembly taking place in Nairobi from 23–27 May, UNEP will host a high-level panel on environment and displacement. This will be a critical opportunity to get the international environmental community to think about these issues. The scale of the global disasters, both now and in future, demands that we all play a role in finding humane and effective solutions that enable people to live in dignity and safety.
Dan Stothart is the UN Environment Programme’s Regional Humanitarian Affairs Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean and a member of the UN’s UNDAC team.
