PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad
Officially, the Caribbean's rainy season begins in June, coinciding with the start of the hurricane season. But recently, heavy rains have signalled an early start to the rainy season, flooding streets, swelling rivers and causing widespread damage to crops.
Gated residential communities on the Paraná Delta have sprawled out of control in recent years, and are plugging up the local ecosystem and preventing the natural runoff of water that cushions the impact of floods in a vast area near the Argentine capital.
Almost every rainy season the floodgates of Kariba Dam have to be opened to relieve pressure on the dam wall. But despite warnings not to live or farm on the river banks of the Zambezi River downstream of the dam, some people do so
anyway and end up losing their crops.
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