Climate-Induced Displacement in Brazil Exacerbates Structural Racism: How Afro-Brazilian Candomblé Communities Navigate Flooding and State Neglect
Original framing: “Afro-Brazilian Religious Communities Face Mounting Discrimination Amid the Climate Crisis” — Global Issues
Brazil’s climate vulnerability is deeply tied to the *1888 abolition of slavery*, which left Afro-Brazilian communities landless and forced into marginal urban zones—now flood-prone. The *1940s *Code of Urbanism* (Código de Obras) further entrenched racialized zoning, where Black neighborhoods were built on floodplains to exclude them from property values. Even the *1988 Constitution*, which guarantees environmental rights, has been undermined by agribusiness lobbies that prioritize deforestation over Afro-Brazilian land rights. The narrative ignores how modern flooding is a direct consequence of these historical exclusions.
Brazil’s flooding crisis is not merely a climate issue but a *racialized infrastructure failure*, where historical land dispossession, colonial urban planning, and extractive capitalism converge to trap Afro-Brazilian communities in flood zones.
The narrative’s focus on ‘discrimination’ obscures the deeper mechanism: *state-sponsored territorial racism*, where Afro-Brazilian neighborhoods are built on floodplains to exclude them from property values and political power. This pattern mirrors the *1940s Code of Urbanism*, which zoned Black areas for low-cost housing—now the same zones that flood. The solution lies in *decolonizing climate policy*, where Afro-Brazilian ecological knowledge, reparations for historical land theft, and agribusiness accountability replace neoliberal ‘aid’ models. Precedents like *South Africa’s Ubuntu framework* and *Haiti’s Vodou-led flood rituals* show that climate resilience is possible when marginalized communities lead the way. Without addressing these structural roots, Brazil’s climate policies will continue to reproduce the same exclusions that caused the crisis in the first place.