 | Vehicles navigate through a flooded road © UN-HABITAT |
In a bid to raise awareness about disaster mitigation and awareness, the UN-HABITAT team in Maputo, Mozambique, are holding a special World Habitat Day event with the country’s National Institute for Disaster Management in the very zone where floods brought on by heavy rains have struck in recent years with devastating impact. As it cyclically occurs and with higher frequency in recent years, the rainy season is approaching raising concerns on people’s safety and possible loss of livelihoods in the low plateau of Inhangoma, part of Mutarara village in the central province of Tete. This is the place being tuned up to host the main celebrations of World Habitat Day 2010 in Mozambique, amid other initiatives that will take part in most of the urban areas of the country. The event includes a soccer game between two teams of young pupils from a local primary school, the distribution of awareness materials and t-shirts, refreshments and at the end of the day the screening of two animations namely The Change – a 15 minutes cartoon depicting the causes, effects and possible adaptation measures to cope with climate change – and The River – an award winning cartoon telling the tales of the Limpopo river in the southern part of the country and showing ideas on how people can live with floods. Mutarara village is concealed between a low level area where two major rivers meet, namely the Zambezi River in the southwest and the Chire in the northeast limit. As heavy rains and discharges from the Cahora Bassa dam upstream the Zambezi are expected, people are working hard to ensure that they have an elevated place of refugee while they wait for expected flood waters to subside. The platform, which once finished will house 3 classrooms in its top, is part of a strategy advocated by UN-HABITAT through its governmental partner INGC – the National Institute for Disasters Management of Mozambique – aiming to assist communities in living with floods. Even in remote areas, people are being taught how to change their attitude, their city or their village, striving for a better life. See also on this website: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=2835 |
