Floods in Houston and South Asia garnered most of the attention from the world media last week. Newspapers were quick to link the unusually heavy rains to the climate change and human behaviour.
The New York Times noted that the record rainfall and devastating floods were not limited to Houston, Texas, adding that flooding has killed more than 1,000 people in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Floods from heavy rainfall have also ripped through Britain, Ireland, Sudan and Uganda in Africa.
“Like the calamity in Texas, these unnatural rainfalls carry two messages. One is the risk of unregulated development. As in Houston, officials in India have paid little attention to the consequences of rapid urban growth in low-lying, watery environments with few natural defences against a deluge when it comes,” the paper said in an editorial.
“The second message is that unabated climate change does, indeed, exact a price…It does not have to be this bad the next time around. Cities around the world are taking steps to become more resilient, so they can better cope when exceptional weather events occur,” the Times said.
Washington Post blamed public officials’ ignorance for Houston’s misery. “Houston is an example of what happens when public officials ignore experts and refuse to take natural risks seriously. As the country’s fourth-largest city expanded, replacing prairie with impermeable surfaces such as pavement and concrete, the land was rendered less and less capable of absorbing floodwater. Without proper adaptive measures, this made an already flood-prone place more vulnerable. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found last year that those who have overseen Houston’s flooding issues discounted scientists’ warnings as ‘anti-development.” In the coming months and years, the city may pay a high price for such shortsightedness,” the Post said in its editorial.
Sydney Morning Herald said climate change was responsible for Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic impact and the flood toll in Bangladesh, India and Nepal during the region’s worst monsoon season in a decade.
“Climate scientists are reluctant to attribute any particular weather event to global warming, though in this case the signs are that human behaviour contributed to the formation and severity of the storm and its impact,” the paper said in an editorial. “As with America’s, Australia’s ongoing failure to deal with climate change carries practical and moral consequence…We cannot any longer afford to tolerate scientific myopia,” it added.
The Times of India said that Mumbai’s problem is not angry nature, but bad planning and absence of accountability.
“A single day of heavy showers – an entirely predictable event in a Mumbai monsoon – bringing the metropolis on its knees underscores poor urban planning and administrative failure in providing long-term solutions…Mangroves which would earlier absorb the city’s excess water have been displaced by haphazard expansion and land reclamation. The problem has been compounded by the Mithi river, one of the main rain drainage systems for the city, being filled with plastic and garbage, the paper said in an editorial. “What’s even more disturbing is that civic apathy is not just limited to Mumbai. The national capital has barely any drainage and the NCR area as well as Bengaluru have been plagued by waterlogging when it rains. We may talk of smart cities and showpiece urban centres, but they remain a distant dream,” the Times added.
The Hindu said the lessons from Mumbai are valuable for other cities as well, to prepare for a future where there will be more days of short but intense rain spells.
“Indian cities are poorly planned and managed, exposing them to cyclical weather havoc; it is imperative that civic bodies produce flood risk maps and restrict development in the areas. Given that monsoon flooding is inescapable, citizens and communities need to prepare... If there is a single priority that every city needs, it is to reopen the veins of natural drainage that have been callously built over. Mumbai this year and Chennai’s disastrous flood of 2015 underscore that lesson,” the Chennai-based paper said in an editorial.
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