world mirror
A lot is affecting the Amazon: the El Niño weather phenomenon, but also the consequences of climate change. The consequences are already massive for the people who live in the Amazon. Is the development still reversible?
It is the rainy season, but in the municipality of Sissayama, 100 kilometers northeast of the Brazilian city of Manaus, there is no sign of it. The 39 families of the Mura indigenous village feel almost cut off from the environment. They live in small wooden houses on an arm of the river, but it is only a few centimeters deep.
Normally they would drive their small motorboats for an hour to the nearest town and there they could get food, they would sell cassava flour, their children would go to school. Would.
Without a river, there is no connection to the rest of the world
But the journey now takes at least three hours. First it’s one to two hours on foot, over dry footbridges, through an unusually high heat, then we continue on a small flat boat, then change again to a larger one when they reach a larger tributary.
Osseias Cordero is the “cacique” of the place, the leader of the community. The 44-year-old puts his hand in the water.
It is “not even 20 centimeters, a hand’s breadth” deep here. “A little more weight in the boat and then nothing will work. I don’t know, if this continues, the river will dry up completely and we’ll be completely cut off.”
The effects of El Niño
The Amazon basin is facing its worst drought in 122 years. The water levels are extremely low, but the air and water temperatures are extremely high. Forest fires occur again and again.
For days in October, thick clouds of smoke hung over the city of Manaus, making breathing difficult.
The reason for this is the climate phenomenon El Niño and probably also the warming of the tropical North Atlantic, which, according to scientists, is related to global climate change.
The hunt is becoming increasingly difficult
In Sissamaya this has a concrete impact on life. On the one hand there is social isolation, but then there is the problem of food security. Osseias and his neighbors wade through the river and try to catch fish with nets and harpoons.
Osseias alone has eight children, and the men only catch five fish. That’s only enough for one small meal, and only one. Hunting for animals has also become more difficult.
They would like to kill a deer – an animal that provides meat for many people for several days. “But to do that we would have to go hunting for a day or two. Many animals have moved on in search of water.”
The plants also produce less
Tardeles Faria de Carvalho is leaning over a small cassava plant on a slope, sweat is on his forehead. Cassava is a nutritious root, like a potato, and is the main source of carbohydrates in the diet of people here.
The plant doesn’t grow. It is too hot. For Tardeles, this is “just sad. It took me so much work to plant all of this. Totally unsuccessful. And a loss of income. I pray to God that it will rain soon.”
Little proteins, few carbohydrates – that is also a big problem.
Osseias Cordero and the residents of Sissayama have to walk long distances to get to the nearest place.
The CO2 storage now releases CO2
Luciana Gatti walks quickly through the sober hallways to her office in São Paulo. At the National Institute for Space Research she studies the climate in the Amazon.
Gatti shows a suitcase filled with glass cylinders. She collects air samples there. Gatti flies over the rainforest and takes air samples at different altitudes. She then evaluates the air composition.
She discovered that the rainforest releases CO2 where it has been heavily cut down. CO2 is what drives global warming.
A gigantic supply
Actually, the largest rainforest on earth does the opposite. It is a gigantic CO2 sink. Around 150 to 200 billion tons of carbon are stored in biomass and soils.
In some regions of the Amazon, 30 percent of the tropical forest has been cut down, and in other places almost 40 percent. Especially for cattle and soy production.
And it is now hotter there, it rains less and there the rainforest releases CO2, says Gatti. Humanity is heading towards the earth’s climate collapse – “much sooner than all models have predicted. We are changing the temperature of our earth. We are deforestation, we are losing the cooling trees and replacing them with cattle or soy plantations.”
“Climate airbag” is what Gatti calls the rainforest. According to Gatti, the global climate needs a healthy rainforest to absorb global CO2 emissions. But the Amazon rainforest is losing its resilience, studies show.
Rivers are drying up, large areas are being cleared: the Amazon could lose its function as a “climate airbag”.
The rainforest regenerates more slowly
About three-quarters of forests have lost their ability to recover from fires or droughts. Scientists fear that this could mean an increased risk of the Amazon rainforest dying.
The entire rainforest system is in danger of collapsing. Because a healthy rainforest produces rain itself. In doing so, it cools the atmosphere and influences the necessary rainfall locally and throughout South America.
Due to the heat and drought, the trees are lacking water. The rainforest produces less rain. If this continues, it could irreversibly turn into a savannah.
“Can we now say with certainty that we are at the tipping point? We can’t. But we have to do our best to turn things around because it’s about our survival,” says Gatti.
Massive consequences
If the rainforest collapses, it will have consequences for the planet, the people of the region and the gigantic biodiversity that the Amazon is home to: river dolphins, jaguars, toucans.
According to the new government, illegal deforestation fell by 61 percent from January to October. It should be stopped completely by 2030.
But that alone is not enough, says Gatti. Massive reforestation and a rethinking of humanity worldwide are needed. She herself stopped eating beef.
The Mura in Sissayama feel helpless in the situation. They teach their children the old traditions and explain to them how to live with nature. But they worry whether their children still have a future at home.
You can see these and other reports in Weltspiegel – on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on Erste.