Adaptação aos impactos das mudanças climáticas: uma reflexão com base no plano diretor 2018 da cidade do Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil

Abstract

The city of Recife, Pernambuco, has similar social and environmental vulnerabilities to other Brazilian metropolises, a scenario resulting from an exclusionary development model and the lack of investments in urban infrastructure. Strongly susceptible to the effects of climate change, this adverse scenario may be aggravated as the city is subject to sea level rise, increases in precipitation and temperature rise, and there may be a higher occurrence of inundation, floods, heat waves, landslides and coastal erosion. Adaptation of the city to climate change is therefore imperative, but there is still no consensus on how this issue should be addressed in urban planning, given the magnitude and intersectoriality of the problem. This paper discusses the concern of public authorities and society about the climate agenda in the 16th most vulnerable city on the planet, as classified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the limitations of urban planning in the face of increasingly pessimistic climate scenarios, whose threats are still invisible to the eyes of the majority of the population. It can be noticed how complex is the task of environmental management to define adaptation measures towards a range of pressing social, environmental and economic demands. Through an analysis of the review process of the Recife Master Plan, it can be seen that reducing social and environmental vulnerabilities implies conducting more consistent studies that may result in the implementation of structuring measures. In addition, environmental sustainability demands multilevel governance, with global, regional and local political reforms, difficult to implement in the short term, but necessary to reorganize climate policies and overcome the inability to provide resources for adequate infrastructure for city’s adaptation. The path to building a resilient city that provides a safer and more responsive environment for future generations depend on an inclusive development model that allows both improved urban conditions for a large population and minimizes the impacts of extreme weather events.