Families live in torment during historic drought in the Amazon – 09/28/2023 – Environment
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The Amazon contains 20% of all fresh water in the world, but in the house of Maria, 63 years old and resident of Rio Branco, Acre, there is no water in the taps.
Married and mother of two children, she is depending on the local city hall to receive 3,000 liters of water, delivered by tanker truck weekly.
“If we wash clothes, we take out the last bit of water to mop the house, wash the sidewalk. We save money, because we live in expectation — we never know if we will have water or not”, says Maria, who asked to have his surname preserved.
“Sometimes the city council’s water pipe has a problem and doesn’t come, so we have to spend R$50 to buy a thousand-liter box. It’s like that, it’s very painful.”
Maria’s family is one of more than 4,000 families being supplied by water trucks as part of Operation Drought, launched by Rio Branco’s Civil Defense in July and which this year should last until mid-December.
In 2021, the operation served ten communities, but this year there are already at least 30 — at a time when the Acre river, which supplies the state capital, reached a level of 1.44 meters, just 19 cm above the minimum historical 1.25 meters, recorded in October 2022.
“We are experiencing a 40% loss of production in crops such as cassava, bananas, coffee, fish farming [criação de peixes] and in the dairy basin — this represents a 40% loss in the producer’s economy in rural areas”, estimates Lieutenant Colonel Cláudio Falcão, coordinator of Civil Defense in Rio Branco.
“In urban areas, there is an increase in respiratory diseases due to fires and a high risk of water shortages in the capital. We have been working hard to maintain supply in neighborhoods where the water does not have sufficient pressure, but the tanker trucks are already insufficient for demand – remembering that, with drought, water consumption increases.”
Last week, the Acre government declared a state of emergency, citing overcrowding in health facilities due to poor air quality and high temperatures.
“Between June 23 and August 4, we went 41 days without a drop of rain and, now in September, the historical average is 91 mm and so far we have half that,” says Falcão.
Two simultaneous weather phenomena
At a time when the South region is facing unprecedented floods and temperatures across the country are reaching historic records, the drought in the Amazon this year is the second most serious in 13 years, according to Inpa (National Institute for Amazonian Research).
The three events — excess rain in the South, above-average temperatures in spring and drought in the North — have a common cause: El Niño, warming of the waters of the Pacific.
But this year, El Niño occurs simultaneously with a warming of the North Tropical Atlantic.
It is the combination of the two effects that is worsening the drought in the Amazon and could delay the next rainy season in the region — which normally starts in mid-October — by up to 45 days, says meteorologist Renato Senna, from Inpa.
“At this moment, basically the entire Eastern Amazon — from Pará to the mouth of the Amazon in the Atlantic Ocean — already has a very marked precipitation deficit. And, in the Western Amazon, the problem is more serious in the Negro and Branco river basins, in the state of Roraima, where rainfall is much lower than what normally occurs at this time of year.”
According to Senna, the simultaneous occurrence of warming of the Pacific and Atlantic waters already occurred in 2005 and in the 2009-2010 biennium. In this last episode, the biggest drought was recorded in the Negro River basin in the last 120 years.
“On the Negro River, this year we are observing a very sharp and atypical river descent regime for this time of year”, observes Senna.
“Normally, [a descida] is around 15 to 20 cm [por dia]. In 2005, these rates were higher, but still within this limit; in 2010, it was already above 20 cm per day in the month of September and, in 2023, we are averaging almost 30 cm per day, which is completely outside the standards”, highlights the expert.
He also notes that some of the main Amazon rivers are already at levels below those recorded at the same time in 2010, the year of the greatest drought in history in the Amazon.
“Today [terça-feira, 26] the level of the Negro River in Manaus is 16.74 m. The historic low was 13.63 m in 2010, but at that time that year, the river was at 17.2 m. In other words, it was 50 cm higher than what we have today”, says Senna, noting that this indicates that the drought this year could perhaps surpass that of 2010.
José Genivaldo Moreira, doctor in Sanitation, Environment and Water Resources and professor at Ufac (Federal University of Acre), observes that, although dry periods are seasonal in the Amazon and El Niño is a cyclical phenomenon, there is an increase in frequency of extreme weather events in the region, which may be related to the advancement of climate change, which is worsened by factors such as deforestation.
“Before, we saw extreme events happen every 15 years. Not today, we see them happening every five years and sometimes even less,” says Moreira, remembering that Rio Branco also suffered from unprecedented floods in the first half of the year.
“These recurring impacts are also due to flaws in the structure of actions —both structuring and non-structuring— that must come from the public authorities to face the impact of these events.”
Students without school and 500,000 at risk of running out of food and water
In the state of Amazonas, there are already 15 municipalities in an emergency situation due to the severe drought. According to a survey carried out by the state’s Civil Defense, the cities most affected by low water levels are in the banks of the Juruá and Solimões rivers, in the Upper and Middle Solimões regions. Another 40 municipalities are on alert and five are on alert.
In a note released last week, the Amazonas State Department of Education reported that the drought had already affected 355 students in the state education network, who were unable to reach their schools due to low river levels.
“If the ebb continues to increase in the municipalities, at least 20 thousand students could be impacted”, informed the ministry, adding that students already affected will have a change in the academic calendar and that vulnerable students will receive food kits.
On Tuesday (26), the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima (União Brasil), was in a meeting in Brasília with the ministers of Integration and Regional Development, Waldez Góes, of the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, and representatives from six federal agencies.
After the meeting, the expansion of humanitarian aid to the region was announced, with the sending of items such as basic food baskets and water, in addition to the intensification of the fight against deforestation and fires, mainly in the south of Amazonas.
The federal government also announced the release of R$140 million for dredging in the Madeira and Solimões rivers, important transport routes for cargo and products in the region, including the Manaus Free Trade Zone.
According to Wilson Lima, more than 100,000 people are already affected by the drought in Amazonas and the number of people affected is expected to increase throughout October, reaching 500,000 people who may be left without access to food and drinking water.
Furthermore, he believes that the 2024 drought in the Amazon region could be even more severe than the current one. This is because, due to the low level of the rivers now, the next rainy period may not be enough to recover them.
Food 40% more expensive
Vanessa Reis, 40, lives in Benjamin Constant (AM), one of the municipalities most affected by the drought in the far west of the state of Amazonas.
Administrative assistant at an indigenous school and owner of a small personalized stationery business for entrepreneurs, she feels the effects of the extreme drought on her family’s food and the costs of her small business.
“There has been an increase in product prices of around 40%, because large vessels are not arriving in Benjamin Constant. They are only arriving in the neighboring city of Tabatinga”, observes Vanessa, who is married and mother of a disabled son.
According to her, this mainly affected the prices of items that arrive from abroad, such as rice, beans and oil, which now need to be delivered to Tabatinga and then transported to Benjamin Constant in smaller vessels, such as canoes and flying boats.
“There was also an increase in the fare — to leave from here to Tabatinga, it cost R$35 on the baleeiras, which are small flying boats. From R$35, it went to R$70, because the route became longer. And there are a lot of people who she takes this route every day, because she lives here and works in Tabatinga, or vice versa”, says the resident.
With her small stationery business, Vanessa fulfilled orders from surrounding cities, but had to interrupt her activity due to high freight rates. Now, she just creates the products and helps customers print them herself, but as a result, she has lost a lot of revenue.
“We pay rent, fuel and our business helped to alleviate the budget. Now we are controlling expenses. For example, we no longer have dinner, we only have a snack at night, so we are taking the opportunity to balance the scale”, he states, maintaining the good mood.
Renato Senna, from Inpa, assesses that the Amazon regions are not prepared to face a drought as severe as the current one — despite the efforts currently undertaken by city halls, state and federal governments, in addition to the various civil defenses in the region.
“Rivers are the population’s major traffic arteries — they are the roads of the Amazon. When there is a severe drought, this interrupts the arrival of basic necessities. Basic food baskets don’t arrive, fuel doesn’t arrive for many cities that still depend on it for having lighting, access to schools and healthcare are interrupted”, he explains.
“With the drought, distances increase and boats cannot navigate. It becomes impossible.”
The text was originally published here.
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