climate and poverty, the dual responsibility of the authorities – Libération

It is the poorest and most deprived department in France. Since Saturday, it has also been the most devastated. Cyclone Chido, which hit Mayotte on the first day of the weekend, transformed this small archipelago in the Indian Ocean into “vision of the end of the world”, as a shocked resident told us. Hundreds, even thousands of deaths would be deplored, almost unheard of. More than 100,000 people lived in slums that were wiped off the map. Hospitals and the airport are affected, electricity poles are down, the network is faulty… Mayotte is cut off from the world and the survivors need everything.

This event “exceptional”, according to Météo France, is a natural phenomenon, of course, but in this specific case, man has an enormous responsibility. On two levels. By contributing to climate change which has resulted in surface temperatures of ocean waters close to 30 degrees, which, with very deep warm waters, has created “a large reservoir of energy available for cyclones”. And by allowing this department to sink into misery when all the alarm bells had been ringing for months and even years.

In Mayotte we are in France and yet access to drinking water is uncertain, explained Liberation in March. We are in France and yet six out of ten homes do not have toilets or showers, an unsanitary condition which has favored the spread of… cholera, an epidemic that we did not imagine seeing again in 2024. We are in France and yet , even before the cyclone passed, the nursing staff at the Mamoudzou hospital center were already denouncing “deficient emergency management” with insufficient staff to care for patients. We dare not imagine the situation today when the injured are pouring in from everywhere. Ditto for the prisons which, less than a month ago, were the subject of damning reports from the General Controller of places of deprivation of liberty, denouncing overoccupancy “alarming”, detainees and migrants abandoned to their own devices and a right that is almost universally violated. We therefore understand why Bruno Retailleau, Minister of the Interior of the resigning government, hastened his departure for Mayotte. The State has failed in the management of this department and the local population is today paying the price. The least we can do now is to help and comfort him. Quickly, and by all means.