In informal territories, rising temperatures and intensifying rainfall are added to a historic scenario of state neglect and structural marginalisation.
In 2025, warning sirens sounded in informal settlements across every region of Brazil. Climate vulnerability has an address: according to research by Teto Brasil with Insper's Centre for City Studies, 86% of Brazilian favelas face extreme climate events at least once a year — and most of them have neither sanitation, drainage, emergency shelters nor risk-containment works.
The essay argues that the nature-based solutions celebrated in Paris, Copenhagen and Rotterdam were conceived by and for formally designed cities, and rarely translate to Brazilian informal settlements. Two factors get in the way: the social dynamics of territories their own residents built, and an urban form in which open space is a luxury. Adaptation there, Dallabrida argues, depends on three inseparable pillars — local knowledge treated as a mandatory technical stage rather than a democratic concession, interdisciplinary technical capacity, and sustained public financing.
Read the full essay at Caos Planejado ↗