The recent catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain, have laid bare Europe’s glaring vulnerabilities in climate disaster preparedness. Climate change is directly linked with unusual precipitation patterns, which cause increasing floods, droughts and wildfires.
In early March, the European Environment Agency published its first ever European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA). The report confirmed that Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, foreshadowing that more climate-related catastrophes are to be expected in the near future. In addition, it highlighted that Europe’s policies and adaptation actions are not keeping pace with the rapidly growing risks occurring in the continent, especially in the Southern Europe region in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece. European infrastructure, funding mechanisms, and political responses remain woefully underprepared for the escalating climate crises.
As far as prevention measures go, infrastructure plays a crucial role in mitigating the damage of climate disasters. Critical services such as energy production and transmission, water, crop production and transport are vulnerable to interruption by extreme weather conditions. Europe’s old buildings are not resilient enough to endure intense flooding and related climate events.
But new buildings are no better. In Valencia’s case, around one third of buildings affected by the flood were constructed in floodable areas during the 2008/2009 Spanish real-estate bubble. This is especially dangerous if we take into account that cities nowadays are waterproof (by virtue of primarily concretised urban build-up), which strengthens the velocity of water circulating in the streets. A few adaptive measures include incorporating draining systems to sidewalks and redistributing water accumulated by rain outside the city into artificial swamps or ponds. European countries and cities must improve their spatial planning, building resilience and basic services to be able to face climate risks.
Beyond infrastructure, the question of funding reveals a similar dearth of preparedness. Without adequate resources, relief and recovery efforts fall short, often exacerbating the very inequalities that disasters amplify. Europe is equipped with a mechanism called the “EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF)”, which offers European States financial support after severe natural disasters and major health emergencies. However, the EUCRA pointed out that the viability of the fund is already critically threatened due to costly floods and wildfires in recent years. Low-income households are more vulnerable to climate catastrophes, since the gap created by private insurance reaffirms inequalities. Europe urgently needs public funding mechanisms to guarantee recovery support reaches all affected communities.
The public response stands out for its dramatic duality. People’s solidarity has been applauded, with a great number of volunteers gathering invaluable donations. This is no surprise from a conscientious society often subject to climate anxiety.
But why don’t our politicians mirror a similar commitment? Valencia’s local government ignored the State Meteorology Agency’s warnings first issued a week before the disaster. The day of the flood, the president of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, announced by midday that the heavy rains would soon stop. However, the worst was yet to come. It wasn’t until late afternoon that the authorities sent a regional warning encouraging people to stay home. The late notice produced hundreds of deaths that could have been prevented if people were informed earlier about the deathly potential of the rain. The post-disaster response was no better articulated. Mazón had previously dissolved Valencia’s Emergency Unit for considering it a “superfluous expense”. Consequently, the emergency personnel took days to be deployed in the most affected areas and those who did show up ended up being insufficient. A debate about the political responsibilities arose when both the local and central governments stayed silent for too long. Divided by ideologies, right and left wing parties alike weaponized the discourse of the emergency response against each other. Spain’s central government assigns competences to local administrations to deal with disaster operations in order to optimise delivery. Valencia’s negligent response should have called to action the central government to step in, which it didn’t.
A radicalised environment favoured the spreading of misinformation.Socialist party president of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, was pitted against Mazón's liberalists by the media and the dissatisfied population. People’s disappointment is entirely justified given the ample room for improvement of governmental bodies' political cooperation and expanded protocols to assist climate disasters in Spain.
Europe’s unreadiness is tangible across its climate disaster management. From prevention to post-recovery, infrastructure needs resilient improvement and funding capabilities ought to be expanded. Emergency services are not yet consolidated in governmental administrations, they lack political support and are constrained by slow bureaucratic processes not equipped to the fast-metastasising threats of a climate-changed Europe. A convulsed political climate redirects politician’s attention to party-level disputes, steering it away from what should be their main concern: people’s safety.
More than ever, we require standardised EU-wide protocols that can override localised delays and inefficiencies in times of crisis. If policymakers fail to act on the lessons from Valencia, climate disasters will cease to be exceptional and will instead define Europe’s future.
Image: Flickr/Danny Galvez
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