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• https://law2.wlu.edu/mobile/notmobile.asp?url=https://xporno.cfd Sábado, 15 Octubre 2022 00:36

  By Jennifer Hattam
  
  ISTANBUL, Sept 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Mahmut Talic left
  his small hardware shop one summer evening, its displays of tools, insulation supplies and
  window frames were all neatly in their places.
  
  One hour later, floodwaters rampaged through the shop in the town of Dereli, near
  Turkey's Black Sea coast, smashing the glass storefront,
  filling the shop with mud and sweeping its contents into
  the street.
  
  "Everything is gone," Talic, 28, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
  "I couldn't get back to the shop that night because the rain was so heavy. But it's a good thing I didn't, or I'd be dead now."
  
  At least 11 people were killed when heavy rain, followed by flash floods and landslides, hit the
  province of Giresun last month.
  
  Environmentalists and engineers have been warning for years
  about poorly planned urban development in the Black Sea's coastal cities and
  in the thickly forested mountains that rise up steeply behind them.
  
  
  Combined with the effects of climate change, they say, this has left the rain-prone region with its population of more than 7
  million highly vulnerable to floods.
  
  Four people are still missing after the storm in Dereli, which washed out or blocked dozens of roads and damaged hundreds of buildings.
  
  
  "This is the first time I've seen such a flood," Turkish
  Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli
  said while visiting the area after the disaster.
  
  
  Just over a month earlier, six people had died in two days
  of storms further east in the region, in the provinces of Rize and Artvin.
  
  "These kinds of disasters cannot occur because of one mistake," said Mikdat Kadioglu, a meteorological engineer and disaster management expert at Istanbul Technical University.
  
  
  "All the activities that destroy the area's natural structure play a role."
  
  When Kadioglu was growing up in Macka, a mountain town in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, "the older people would tell the younger ones where to build their houses, the places where they would be safe from landslides or floods," he recalled.
  
  
  
  "But, once the government began constructing roads through the streambeds, where it was cheaper and easier to build, people started putting their houses there too."
  
  Neither the ministry of agriculture and forestry nor the ministry of
  environment and urbanisation responded to several requests for comment.
  
  
  RAPID DEVELOPMENT
  
  The Black Sea region began changing rapidly in the 1980s, a period of economic liberalisation in Turkey.
  
  
  Government subsidies were eliminated for agriculture and
  livestock husbandry, encouraging migration to the lowland urban centres.
  
  
  
  In 1987, construction began on a new 540-km (336-mile) coastal highway from the city of Samsun to the border with Georgia.
  
  
  
  Completed two decades later, the highway cut
  off access to the sea and facilitated additional development along the coast as well as on the streambeds leading inland up into the mountains.
  
  
  
  "Apartment buildings have been built in the yaylalar (upland mountain plateaus), with highways built up to them, covering the river valleys with asphalt and cement," said Onder Algedik, a mechanical engineer
  and independent climate consultant.
  
  While visiting Dereli after the floods in August, Forestry
  Minister Pakdemirli asserted that the government has
  "always said that we need to avoid building houses on streambeds."
  
  But Algedik said in a phone interview that "if people are still constructing buildings in the streambeds, that means there is no regulation, no monitoring, no effective government policy".
  
  
  One zoning amnesty for illegal construction announced prior to the country's 2018 general election drew more than 10 million applications
  nationwide, according to government data.
  
  "We are seeing much bigger storms because of climate change, and worse floods because all the asphalt and cement prevents water from being absorbed into the soil," said Algedik.
  
  
  MORE FREQUENT FLOODS
  
  According to a report by environmental group 350 Ankara, Turkey experienced 328 flood disasters in 2018, a sharp rise
  from 25 in 2000.
  
  During that same period, the amount of asphalt
  and concrete poured each year nationwide more than doubled.
  
  
  Recent deluges in Turkey's two largest cities, Istanbul
  and Ankara, have created surreal scenes over the past few years of
  water-logged subways, floating cars and people swimming across the street.
  
  
  
  In the Black Sea region, environmental experts say the risks are compounded by the mountainous topography and the hundreds
  of dams and hydropower stations, quarries, mines and roads built there.
  
  
  A project to connect the region's ecologically fragile highlands with a 2,600-km (4,184-mile) highway has continued to move forward despite court rulings against it
  on environmental grounds, activists and local officials say.
  
  
  Environmentalists have spoken out against the highway, saying such projects cause deforestation and soil erosion,
  contributing to the destructiveness of floods and landslides.
  
  
  Trees help to soak up rainwater, shield the land from heavy rainfall and hold soil
  in place, they note.
  
  Government officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have
  promised to help Dereli and other affected communities rebuild in a more
  sustainable way.
  
  About a week after the floods, the government announced it will relocate homes and businesses away from the streambed.
  
  
  It also pledged to build 250 houses in a traditional regional style that incorporates high stone foundations as part of a province-wide recovery and redevelopment effort
  that also includes cash grants to residents.
  
  "Thanks to our president, the state has said it will support us. If it doesn't, I will have to close my business," said Talic, who estimates that the shop he opened just six months ago has sustained up to $13,500 in damages.
  
  
  But the country needs to start thinking
  longer term if it wants to protect its people from flooding in the future,
  said Kadioglu, the disaster management expert.
  
  "Turkey is very good at response and recovery, but we need to shift from crisis management to risk management," he said.
  
  
  
  "We can't just clean up and keep going as if nothing happened." (Reporting by
  Jennifer Hattam, Editing by Jumana Farouky and Zoe
  Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation,
  the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers
  the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or
  fairly.
  
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