Months after devastating rains displaced 420,000 people in Rio Grande do Sul, an unusual consensus has formed around the need for a faster transition to renewables

Beside a narrow canal that runs through the outskirts of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil , a row of wooden houses with makeshift fences lean among piles of debris and power poles tangled in sagging wires. From the dirt road, Alexandra Marina Romero, 27, gazes at the aftermath of a disaster. “There used to be a church here,” she says. “Now it’s all gone.”

In May, a devastating flood ravaged her neighbourhood, leaving a trail of chaos and triggering a humanitarian crisis . “What we went through was horrific. The water took over everything,” says Romero, a supermarket assistant who migrated to Brazil from Venezuela in 2018.