They built a home on land they thought was safe. Then came the mudslide — and a glimpse into the future of our vulnerable megacities

LIMA, Peru—Dennis Valverde and Karol Vela were living with their two children in a rented apartment in the north end of Lima when the COVID-19 lockdown began.

Valverde, 35, drives a bus, but at the time he did not have enough shifts. When the landlord wouldn’t lower their rent for a few months, they decided to move out. They had seen an ad on Facebook for a housing project in Carabayllo, also north of the city. The land was in a remote area, on the edge of the hills surrounding Lima. It lacked a water connection, and electricity was “borrowed” from another point. But the price was affordable.

In April 2020, they moved in and started putting their house together. But on the afternoon of March 14, 2023, Vela received a call from her cousin and neighbour while she was working. The huayco had arrived.

Intense warming of the sea

As Vela, 28, was walking to her land through the surrounding hills, she could see from above how the stream that passed outside her house had turned into a river of stones and mud (known as a huayco). The house was destroyed.

During the first days of March this year, the Peruvian Pacific coast suffered rainfall levels high above the seasonal average, generating floods and disasters along the entire coastal strip. At the end of March, the National Institute of Civil Defense reported more than 65,000 people affected and 65 people dead throughout the region.

“There was an intense and rapid warming of the sea along the Peruvian coast, which generated temperatures well above average,” says oceanographer Gino Passalaqua.

The higher the sea temperature, the higher the humidity that reaches the atmosphere, increasing the rainfall. “Peaks of up to 6 degrees C above the usual average were reached,” says Passalaqua.

In Lima, several gorges became active, flooding areas in the north, east and south of the city, around the three rivers that cross it. Hundreds of families lost their homes. The start of the school year was suspended for a few days, and traffic was interrupted in different areas including major highways.

Six years ago, in the summer of 2017, a similar event caused the Rimac River, Lima’s main water source, to overflow in the centre of the city. The mud and stones in its riverbed generated the closure of the water treatment plant, which left more than half the city without supply for about a week.

As these extreme weather events become more frequent around the world, thousands of Lima residents are struggling to survive in a way that offers a glimpse into the future of life in vulnerable megacities.

The trouble with land trafficking

“I could have bought on the hill, but I didn’t want to give that quality of life to my children,” says Dennis Valverde. He’s referring to the housing project offering the land he bought in 2020. “That’s why I bought legal. I went to a supposedly reliable place, where I had guarantees of not having any problems with my family.”

Lima is a city of 10 million inhabitants. In 1940 it had 600,000. Most people migrated from the country’s interior. From the ’50s, into the ’90s, families carried out collective occupations that eventually became major urban areas. Today, land trafficking, which usually occurs on the outskirts of Lima, provides a housing alternative for the city’s poorest people.

“Land traffickers have taken on a new prominence,” says Matteo Stiglich, an urbanist and historian. “They occupy usually public land, parcel it and sell it.” The problem is that safe land is running out and people are occupying steep hillsides, or gorges that are activated by extreme rains, such as those in March. The Municipality of Lima estimates that around 155,000 people live in potentially flood-prone areas.

Valverde and Vela decided to buy a plot of land that they thought was in a safe location. It had approval from the municipality. “Why does it give permits?” says Valverde. “Why doesn’t it say, this area is uninhabitable?”

Several officials all over Peru have been prosecuted, connected to corruption around land development.

The owner of the housing project didn’t want to give them back their money and they couldn´t afford a legal process. They negotiated a new plot of land farther away from the riverbed. “I have the illusion of building my house,” says Vela, “but with El Niño I don’t know what is going to happen.”

The latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes how the intensity and frequency of El Niño has increased in the last decades. In May, the World Meteorological Organization warned that global temperatures could reach unprecedented levels in the next five years. Last week it declared the onset of El Niño conditions at the tropical Pacific. The organization defines El Niño as a “naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.”

“To mitigate disaster risks in the face of climate change, there must be proper environmental governance,” says Carlo Angeles, a former city councillor and environmental activist.

In 2021, the Municipality of Lima approved a Local Climate Action Plan, which Angeles says has been left on standby by the current administration.

“The voice of the people most affected, those who are going to lose their homes or become unemployed, should be taken into account,” says Mariana Alegre of Lima Cómo Vamos, a citizen watchdog group. “Now, however, either there are minor welfare policies after an event, or there is an aggressive branding of people as ignorant for occupying areas where they should not live.”

It’s not just the poor

This year, natural disasters not only affected the poorest areas of the city. This was also the case in 2017, when a huayco flooded the streets of Punta Hermosa, 45 kilometres from downtown Lima. The seaside neighbourhood was founded in the early 1950s by upper middle-class families, and is known for its beaches and surf spots.

“It can’t be that we don’t learn anything!” says Zoey Massey, a resident. “I can understand that you don’t remember ’98 (when there was a severe El Niño event), but 2017?”

A few days later, the prime minister arrived in Punta Hermosa along with a police squad to help clean up the streets. The photo-op was all over the media. In the eastern part of the district, close to the hills and occupied via land trafficking, residents complained that help had not arrived.

In response, Punta Hermosa Mayor Manuel Fernández told the media, “you cannot occupy a geological risk zone, wait for a disaster to befall and then ask for help.”

A few metres from where he was speaking, near the beach, the huayco had demolished a sports complex built in the middle of the riverbed.

“This year the huayco has affected houses that are decades old. Why doesn’t he say the same thing about them?” says Massey, referring to the more affluent area. “I am against invasions, but they are also neighbours.”

Dennis Valverde saw what happened in Punta Hermosa on TV, at his cousin’s house, where he has been living with his family since they lost their home. “We don’t have the support of the state, because the state is focused on the most posh places,” he says. “We are always the forgotten ones.”

The mosquito-borne threat

In addition to the floods, temperature changes have contributed to a dengue epidemic.

As of the end of June, the Ministry of Health had confirmed 18,956 cases of dengue fever in Lima in 2023. It’s 25 times the number of cases for the same period in 2022.

“This is no longer a problem of the future, it is here now,” says Willy Lescano, epidemiologist and director of a research centre on climate change and health at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. “There is a greater capacity for the reproduction of the dengue vector because there are seasons of high temperatures that are longer, with higher temperature peaks.”

Dengue is a virus transmitted through a mosquito, the aedes, that bites someone infected and transmits it to another person. The disease in its mild form can produce fever, nausea and body aches; in its severe form, hemorrhages and death. Management may require hospitalization, which in an epidemic can cause health services to collapse, as has happened in Piura, in the north.

More than half of the world’s population lives in areas at risk for dengue fever, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Factors such as lack of water and overcrowding contribute to transmission within cities. When there is no water connection, people store water in large containers. If they are poorly covered, the aedes lays its eggs in the water and multiplies.

“A house with a badly covered drum can affect 20 more around it,” says Lescano.

Although the current dengue epidemic is present almost everywhere in the city, it has concentrated in areas without access to water. In Lima, around 700,000 people don’t have a water connection, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics in 2021.

Risk — and hope

The coming years present great challenges for cities like Lima. In a few months a new El Niño will come.

“There is still no fully developed environmental awareness in the city,” says Carlo Angeles. The March floods generated headlines in the media for a couple of weeks and mobilized part of the citizenry, but the news seems to be behind us. “As long as the authorities and the media don’t give this issue the headlines,” says Mariana Alegre, “citizens will not be sensitive to it.”

Valverde and Vela are aware that the risk of another flood is still present. Like them, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the city who see the future with uncertainty, but without giving up hope.

“When I was a child I never had a house. We always lived in a rented room. Me, my mom and my older brother,” says Valverde. “Now it was my turn to face this (natural disasters), but we’re going to stay there. It’s my home, it’s my dream. My inheritance for my children.”

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