FLOODS IN MONROVIA AND LIVING WITH RISKS
THERE CAN BE NO LIFE WITHOUT CHANGE
This is 2nd part of 3, describing our entry at the Challenge #VizRisk
The Challenge in Monrovia #VizRisk
In the first part, we describe our entrance to this challenge and how were impressed by the life of some people in Monrovia. We think it is a good idea to clarify that idea. First, Monrovia is like any other city in the world, rich and poor people, a city with many faces, some are nice or beautiful, others not that much. In some aspects, they have the same kind of problems we suffer in many cities in the world, well, in the undeveloped world.
What makes Monrovia so special is that everybody has the right to a minimum life quality and what happens there deserves our attention.
Then, forgot about the modern Monrovia. Another city lives in West Point and Clara Town that deserves an answer. Those two cities seem to have the same kind of problem with the flooding but they are so different. Sometimes from far away is easy to think that the floods and the causes are alike and is not true for them.
Let us begin with West Point, overcrowded; when the newspapers or authorities talk about the neighborhood, they mention 75000 inhabitants in less than a 1 km2. We have some doubts about that; probably they are englobing West Point and Clara Town in one package. Anyway, this is too much people for more or less 4 km2, which is the area between the two of them. The newspapers, public officers, even the aid agencies, all of them use the same numbers without mention a reference of a trusted source.
West Point is a place where people found refuge from the civil war. A place with no organization, no services as water, sanitation or electricity, for example. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs made an estimate of 4 latrines for all the area. In addition, they have to be paid. There was no drainage and in a place with around 5000 mm of rain by year, of course there are flooding problems.
The little drainage they have is reduced to almost nothing because there is no waste management in the area. The garbage is everywhere even clogging the drainages.
Then if you see the pictures, they build their houses anywhere, even just close to the water line in the beach. During the night when the tide rises is when problems arise. The water goes over the shantytown and live for them turns to be a misery. As if that wasn’t enough, they have climate change coming on.
The Liberian Environmental Protection Agency in the National Policy and Response Strategy on Climate Change Report uses a value of 1 m as the 2100 expected raise in the sea level, with values ranging between 0.5 to 1.6 m.
Finally, for West Point there are problems for bad and lack of drainage, waste, rainfall and sea level increase.
The good thing is that the government can do something about. Structural and no structural solutions. That is if there is a good environmental governance in there.
Clara Town is so different. It is a slum too but built upon a swamp. Some of the first settlers choose this place to live. The view was great, was easy to defend, close to the sea, with water. Now it is a slum with a network of haphazard “streets”, many of which are flooded for several months of the year.
Life is so hard, that people in there called themselves “Struggle Community” instead of Clara Town. Wikipedia reports that 10000 residents share two privately owned water taps and 75000 people shared 11 public toilets and 22 public taps by 2009. Again, those numbers have to be taken with some reserves. The fact is there are no many toilets and public taps.
In few words, the main reason of the vulnerability of Westpoint is its proximity to the ocean. The high water level of the ocean due to tides, which may cause a significant increase of the level of the Mesurado River and therefore induces flooding of large sectors of Westpoint. Furthermore, the Climatic Change will increase the Atlantic Ocean water level and worsen this situation.
The problem in Clara Town is different as it has been built upon a swamp and its inhabitants are used to live in the middle of water. Tides also induce increasing water levels of the Mesurado River. Therefore, the problem is the poor drainage of the lower part of Clara Town and it could help to design prevention measures to avoid that the water gets in the area.
At this point, it could be great to have more hydrologic information to put some numbers on the table but for now although is impossible to estimate the high of the water we still have maps.
Can we suggest something about those problems?
Yes, but they have to include technical and socio- economic components.
Technical components. Possible solutions to these problems may include for West Point the building of protection levees on the coast side and in the south side levees for the tide and sea rise, and a program to improve the drainage waste recollection including education to internalize the value of maintaining the systems in operation. Most of all, they need continuity on time.
In the past, donors from international agencies have given money and professional help to projects such as waste management. It worked just perfect while they were on charge. Newspapers wrote about this wonderful clean city called Monrovia. When they left was like the world stop and the old behaviors came back the same way or worst. Somehow sustainability has to be assured.
In both cases, West Point and Clara Town could be studied the excavation of a channel between the Mesurado River and the ocean in a sector closed to the Monrovia University. This channel could alleviate some of the flow in the area and decrease the level of the water.
On the other part, levees may be built along the southern side of Clara Town to avoid flooding. However, these levees must include some watergates (same for West Point) at their bottom to allow drainage of the water runoff during the rainy season but avoiding the entrance of water from the river.
Because this place is in a swamp, or better on a wetland, it needs of a special treatment. People in there has to learn to live with the water. It is almost impossible to reclaim the entire place to the water even with the works we are suggesting.
Of course, these are only general proposal. A real comprehensive study is a must. Here in any case those possible solutions are presented in the figure. You can see the dykes, the derivation channel, the new conformation of West Point changing the hamlets to building with all the services. Parks and places to go in order to raise healthy and happy children.
How about the way people lives in Clara Town?
The inhabitants of Clara Town live in stilt houses. The picture at the beginning shows a worman walking on the planks. Actually, in case you do not know, many people live in stilt houses, palafitos in Spanish or maison sur pilotis in French. In Africa in a place called Ganvié, in Birmania in Asia, of course the famous Venice in Europe. Closer to us, in the Sinamaica lagoon in Venezuela lives the “water people”. You can see their houses in the photo on the left, to the right you can see some news palafitos with some services included. Actually, those are the descendant of one of the original inhabitants of the country.
In case you don’t know, Venezuela owes its name to Venice, the meaning is little Venice because when the Italian Americo Vespuccio came to the country with the 3rd expedition of Cristopher Columbus. He travel with Alonso de Ojeda to the Maracaibo lake and he was surprised with the similarities on the way of living and kind of baptize our country.
The point is in first place that they are a lot less in number, still are the native people and in second place they know how to live with the environment, respect the environment and because they are not too many, although they defecate in the water still they live within the water renewal capacity. In the orient of the country in Estado Sucre there are some palafito lodges with all the services and solar power.
Sumarizing, Clara Town is located in a swamp that is in reality a wetland and should return to be a wetland, well managed and protected. All of this take us to the social measurements. It is not enough the technical part, necessary conditions but not enough. Something more is needed. This take us to next point.
Sustainable management of flood areas in Monrovia
The human face of the solution. The most vulnerable populations, affected by poverty, poor educational levels and low incomes are frequently induced to occupy the less favorable areas for safe living besides they have to cope with the exposure to risks and socio-natural hazards. This is the case of the inhabitants of West Point and Clara Town in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, who occupy sections of the city subjected, almost annually, to floods in periods of increased rainfall.
Monrovia, in addition to being the rainiest capital of the world, with 5180 mm of average annual precipitation, is located in the delta of the Mesurado River, which due to the low topography of the region, forms marshy areas and wetlands whose level increases in the rainy period, affecting the lower neighborhoods of the city. Precisely these zones are the poorest, densely populated and lacking the services and infrastructures necessary to guarantee the health and safety of their inhabitants.
In addition, we must consider that these areas present other conditions that worsen the situation: the permanent presence of solid urban waste that obstructs both natural and built drainages, which increases the risks and consequent disasters due to flooding.
In order to improve these conditions, it is now necessary to incorporate approaches framed within the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations Organization. Specially the goal number eleven about Sustainable Cities and Communities, involving concrete actions of other objectives such as Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Clean Water and Sanitation, Reducing Inequality, Climate Action, Life Below Water and Life On Land, among others.
To achieve these goals, it is necessary to incorporate all social and important actors, public, private and government sectors, NGO’s and international aid agencies by means of governance strategies.
What are the solutions to these problems associated with socio-natural risks, urban environmental management, land planning and urban governance? There are many possibilities, which are at the same time complex, but they are absolutely necessary to initiate processes of structural changes addressed to improve the causes of the problems and to reach, among others, the above referred goal of sustainable cities and communities.
Following there are some ideas twe propose to improve the current problems:
A. Structural measures
1. Water works for sustainable management of the hydraulic dynamics of the area, which allows draining to the sea the surplus water from surface runoff in the rainy season.
2. Construction of a pier around West Point to prevent the floods due to the increase of the level of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mesurado River affecting the inhabited areas.
3. Construction of buildings of apartments in the West Point area, where the population is relocated under conditions of optimum densities and free spaces in the neighborhood for green areas, recreational and sports areas, schools, health centers, and neighborhood market and handicrafts, among others.
4. Develop a safe housing program that includes rebuilt of the houses in Clara Town, walkways and the infrastructure required to provide basic services friendly to the environment.
5. Construction in other sectors of the city with low socio natural risk, residential areas with infrastructure and services.
B. Management programs:
1. To develop a process of urban land use planning of the city of Monrovia and its surroundings that allows the identification of potentially usable and safe areas towards which to consolidate urban growth. There, residential social welfare complexes should be built to relocate families currently occupying flood areas such as West Point and Clara Town, as well as new poor migrants who come from the interior of the country in search of improvements in their quality of life.
2. Urban reorganization inside West Point. A special plan within this neighborhood of the city located in the immediate area to the formal and oldest center of Monrovia, where could be created a new touristic center, based on the views and the landscape that can be appreciated from the new protection levees in both side Atlantic Ocean and the Mesurado River.
3. Develop urban community empowerment programs based on both educations to the child, young and adults and develop of skills for the generation of productive enterprises that allow their active participation in the labor market.
4. Strengthening of urban governance through approaches of understandings among all social actors, government and local and national public institutions, entrepreneurs and private productive sectors, community sectors, NGO´s, international organizations to responsibly manage the capacities and competence of cooperation and collaboration that each one it has to fulfill in favor of the common good.
5. Strengthening of rural sector by means of sustainable and productive agricultural and tourism systems in order to improve the quality of life of the rural people and reduce the migration process from rural to urban areas.
Our 3rd and last part:
