PORT LOUIS, Mauritius, Jan 29 (IPS) – Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, PhD, Former President of the Republic of MauritiusThe Republic of Mauritius, an island nation, skilled its newest flash floods because the final unhealthy one in 2013. These floods resulted within the lack of lives and hefty payments for automobile insurers with over 3000 vehicles have been broken.
Sadly, we’ll undergo extra climate-related traumas as a result of as an island nation we’re sorely ill-prepared and we appear to be blithely oblivious to local weather challenges particularly when one takes a have a look at our improvement trajectory.
There may be an pressing must consider resilience of our infrastructure; our adaptation technique, using acceptable expertise to tell and educate our individuals for higher consciousness and preparedness. Once we have a look at latest tragedies, we can’t and should not put all the things on the again of a altering local weather, though I’m positive the temptation is nice to be able to absolve certainly one of his/her tasks. Pressing measures have to be put in place to counteract this new actuality and in addition handle our vulnerabilities.
There is no such thing as a doubt that we’ll expertise extra devastating cyclones and they’ll take our economies again a number of many years.
It’s the changing into more and more clear that the best way we urbanise, the resilience of our infrastructures, how ‘inexperienced’ we maintain our buildings and panorama will all underscore how properly we adapt to a altering local weather.
Domestically and in lots of components of the world, there’s a excessive proclivity to chop down large swath of forests, drain the ‘Ramsar-protected’ swamps that are the lungs the world; construct bungalows on sea fronts; sacrifice century-old timber within the identify of ‘improvement’; century-old drains which have survived the take a look at of time, at the moment are more and more seeped in cement!
In lots of surrounding islands together with Mauritius, buildings are seen popping up on the slopes of mountains. There’s additionally huge funding in infrastructure initiatives with no visibility on the ‘Surroundings Impression Assessments – EIA’ (absence of Freedom of Info Act in Mauritius prevents the general public from accessing to those crucial paperwork).
There’s additionally regionally, no visibility on the Flood-prone zones which indicate that individuals will maintain constructing in these areas with the surreal penalties we’ve got seen final week in Port Louis – vehicles piling up, flooded cemeteries reaching individuals’s houses, individuals being carried away by the sheer power of the water.
It’s changing into abundantly clear that climate-related occasions will recur and we, because the human race, we’ve got no alternative however to adapt to our new realities. Time and time once more, the rhetoric of ‘saving the planet’ is talked about. It must be introduced residence to all of us that Nature has existed earlier than our look 200.000 years in the past and can do properly after we’ve got gone. So allow us to not be presumptuous to even suppose that we are able to ‘tame’ or ‘save the planet’.. Our rhetoric should be couched in a the next language ‘how we save ourselves within the mild of the disaster we’ve got unleashed’!.. That might be extra acceptable and way more in line of this truism which is going through us.
A part of our adaptation realities demand a tradition of transparency, participatory-leadership, promote higher consciousness among the many common public on what’s at stake and extra importantly, there must be accountability from those that we vote to determine on our behalf. They can not out of the blue go mum when they’re questioned or move the buck to technical employees whose roles are, typically purely advisory, when issues begin going south. The private and materials loss for most of the people are just too painful to see when whole lifetime efforts and financial savings are washed away by the gushing waters.
I’m a resident of city known as Quatre Bornes and which obtained badly affected by the latest floods. I’m tempted to ask for this ‘confidential’ EIA report for the Quatre Bornes tram undertaking in order that we might be enlightened on the remedial actions going ahead?
Could also be those that had been on the helm in 2016 when the choice was taken to begin this mega undertaking can enlighten us ? No?
However that is the place “Actual politik” kicks in..
Those that had been vociferously in opposition to this undertaking throughout the electoral marketing campaign, after they had been within the Opposition (that was earlier than they switched facet and joined the successful occasion) at the moment are its best defenders.
A few of those that actioned the choices when in authorities at the moment are within the Opposition and are expressing outsized aspirations for increased posts ..hmm.. on the subsequent common elections??.
Actually?
Transparency, Justice and Accountability are the virtues that the general public calls for what we definitely DONOT want are empty rhetoric and guarantees … The survival of our kids and grandchildren depends upon it and we’ve got NO proper to sacrifice their future via our inaction.
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