Trying to Learn Lessons for Response to Extreme Events: Paradigm Shifts Affecting Civil Defense in the Trinational Region of Southwestern Amazonia

Abstract:

The last ten years have seen several extreme climate events in southwestern Amazonia with historic impacts. The City of Rio Branco, Capital of Acre, Brazil´s westernmost State, suffered its seventh consecutive annual flooding and its worst in March 2015. The city of Tarauacá, also in Acre, registered 12 flooding events between November 2014 and April 2015. The most recent flood of the trinational Acre River in 2015 set historic records for flood stage and number of displaced persons in Cobija, the Capital of Pando, Bolivia. From February to April 2014, floods of the Madeira River disrupted the one highway between Acre and southern Brazil. Puerto Maldonado, the capital in Madre de Dios Region of Peru had its worst flood in 50 years during 2014. In 2005 and 2010, prolonged droughts combined with ignition sources resulted in tens to hundreds of thousands of hectares of fire-damaged rainforests in the Madre de Dios, Acre and Pando (MAP) Region. The Civil Defenses in these three contiguous political units faced several abrupt paradigm shifts that affected their responses: 1) The drought of 2005 showed dramatically that regional rainforests do burn; 2) The recent flooding history, particularly in 2012 and 2015, demolished the cultural icon of a nine-year recurrence interval; 3) What happens outside your territory can be devastating. The Madeira River flood impeded an estimated 200 million dollars from circulating in Acre; 4) The past can be a terrible guide. For Cobija and Rio Branco, the 2015 flood was on the order of a meter higher than any other. Many home dwellers did not evacuate in time because they used past floods as a guide; 5) A collapse in communication – cell phones, land lines, and Internet – can get worse. In 2012, such a collapse occurred in two border towns for 5 days, yet in 2015 it lasted more than 11 days. Research is needed to address how institutions linked to Civil Defense can shift paradigms in time to be more effective.