Around 2,000 Brazilian municipalities are at risk of landslides and floods and the majority do not even have the basic instruments to protect themselves from disasters, according to research conducted at the National Center for Monitoring and Alerting of Natural Disasters. Here’s the (PDF -509 KB).
The results reveal that 75% of these cities have less than half of the mandatory plans and mappings and 91% still do not even have the necessary construction plan to reduce risks. The situation is worse in the Northeast, where city halls with fewer resources and structures to face calamities, increasingly frequent with climate change, are concentrated.
Published in Brazilian Geography Magazinescientific journal of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the study entitled “Organizational capabilities for risk management of geo-hydrological disasters in priority municipalities in Brazil” is part of the dossier Urban climate. Organizational capabilities are the set of human, financial, material, technological and political resources necessary for an organization to perform its functions and achieve its objectives.
The work was led by a master’s student from Cemaden and Fapesp linked to the project.
The priority municipalities for Geo-hydrological Disaster Risk Management were established after the establishment of the National Civil Protection and Defense Policy in 2012, when 821 municipalities were defined as priorities based on indicators of occurrence, vulnerability and susceptibility to disasters.
In recent years, the register of priority municipalities has been updated in accordance with the review and monitoring of indicators. In total, there are 2,086 municipalities that must have a municipal civil protection and defense body and certain DRM instruments, such as contingency plans and mapping of risk areas.
The study used the IBGE Basic Municipal Information Survey to identify the number of priority municipalities that have municipal civil defense and GRD instruments. The research revealed that, of the 267 priority municipalities, 13% do not have municipal defense.
On the other hand, municipalities have more instruments for flood risk than for landslide risk, with 63% having flood risk mapping and 45% having landslide risk mapping. More complex instruments, such as the implementation plan for works and services to reduce disaster risks, are scarce – less than 9% of priority municipalities have them.
“The results demonstrate that priority municipalities face many challenges in implementing DRM in practice”Cotting told the Cemaden Communications Office. “Updating the register of priority municipalities must be accompanied by initiatives that strengthen the capacity of these municipalities, so that they can implement disaster risk management instruments”these.
researcher at Cemaden and coordinator of the Cope Project, considers that the study led by Cotting has had an interesting impact. “We published the study in Portuguese and with free access. This allows public managers, formulators, deputies, senators and advisors to read it more easily, without waiting for another major disaster to mobilize”said the sociologist.
This text was originally published by , on May 21, 2026. The content is free for republication, citing the source, and was adapted to the standard of Poder360.
