The worst drought I’ve ever seen was in 2012. -- Unforgiving droughts -- When these long droughts happened in the past, it used to be worse, because children died back then. At that moment, unsure about what had become of my children, material losses were irrelevant to me.
-- Torrential rains -- It’s funny… I can’t talk about this without getting emotional. It was such a sad feeling. Many people were crying, both men and women.
-- Violent storm tides -- Realizing the speed and force of the sea was something terrifying. I feared for my son during the storm tide. I was afraid a tsunami might be coming.
Some people aren’t paying much attention to these climate issues. -- Excessive heat -- These people are suffering harsh losses. We were fighting the fire wearing flip-flops and cleats.
-- Uncontrollable fires -- This brings up emotions. -- Tomorrow has come -- -- The drama of Brazilian people affected by climate change -- Do you know why the mandacaru cacti in the Caatinga are so thorny? The thorns make them resistant to droughts.
You can note how cacti are very resilient. This weir has seen its share this year. Look at how much the water level has dropped with all the heat and the wind.
-- Farmer -- I moved here in 1998. Since then, the worse drought I’ve seen in São José do Egito, here in the community of São Miguel, was the one in 2012. That drought left its mark on me.
We saw the animals starving but couldn’t feed them, and no one wanted to take them, not even for free. That year felt like punishment. -- The drought between 2012 and 2017 was the longest in the history of Brazil -- The town issued a state of emergency, and some water tank trucks from the Army came and supplied water to my mother-in-law’s cistern.
They got the water from far, very far away, and it wasn’t good quality water, but it was the water we had. During these droughts, we saw our guava trees wither; we used to harvest over thirty boxes of guavas and send them to guava paste factories, and now, we have nothing. This area was a vegetable garden.
We had vegetables and mango trees. We had such beautiful mango trees. We had pumpkins, mango trees, guava trees.
We had a vast variety. -- According to Embrapa, Brazilian agriculture may lose 7. 4 billion USD in 2020.
. . -- -- .
. . and double that amount in 2070 due to climate change.
--- If we had land, water, and technical assistance, the farmers could produce a lot here. We do know that when these long droughts happened in the past, it used to be worse because children died back then. We haven’t had that happen to our families.
. . because everyone either received the Bolsa Família social welfare or were covered by crop insurance.
One way or another, everyone could buy some vegetables to feed their families, but we had no money left to buy feed for the animals. I remember my mother coming back from the emergency response center. It hurts me when I think about that.
I was a small child, but I remember. She brought home those black beans that are hard to cook. That was what she earned working there, and sometimes she got some money.
We kept waiting for her to breastfeed us because often there was nothing else to eat. Debate time is over! Science is clear on this: human actions are responsible for the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere which is causing global warming, and we are already facing the consequences of these actions, today.
It is immoral to keep debating whether or not climate change exists. First, climate change creates significant environmental disturbances. Then, economic losses.
After that, lives are lost, and the cultural fabric of communities is ripped, cultural roots are ripped out. And then there’s the whole institutional issue of how to deal with communities which are affected at their place of origin. These people must be made visible.
Nova Friburgo, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, on January 11th, 2011. An ordinary day, nobody even mentioned the possibility of rain, let alone heavy rain. At around 2 AM, a friend called me and said: “I’m calling to tell you that your shop is flooded, but don’t come down because there is no way to cross the river.
” It’s funny… I can’t talk about this without getting emotional. My impression was that there was a river above the clouds. The clouds moved, and the water moved with them.
-- In January 2011, over 900 people died, and at least 300 thousand were directly affected by a disaster in the mountain area of the state of Rio de Janeiro -- There was literally not a single hill I could see that had not been affected by landslides. Not even one. After much difficulty, I managed to get to my store, which was utterly destroyed.
Both entrance doors were literally on the floor. The mud came into the shop with so much force, that it exploded inside, throwing everything that was inside, out into the streets. I lost.
. . I don’t even know exactly how much I lost, but surely over 1 million reais.
These were moments of panic. But at that same moment, the panic I felt after seeing my shop was replaced by the panic of trying to find out where my children were. The first of my sons came back at around 11 AM or noon, and my older son got home at about 5 PM.
They were about to after seeing the state of our store because it was destroyed, but I told them “You are forbidden to cry. From what I see in Nova Friburgo, there will be a very high number of casualties. We are alive.
So let’s rebuild our business. This building suffered severe damage due to the landslides, and there were houses all around this area. This area was severely affected, and many people died here.
Unfortunately, this area was severely affected. The city lost its beauty because there was no more grass or trees in the hills. These were lessons that I will carry with me for rest of my life.
The environment is not everlasting. The environment is here now, but it can change. And if it does change, nature will take revenge on us.
That’s a way of seeing things. On the day of the storm tide, I got a call from my mom, and she was terrified, desperate. Many houses had been flooded, including in nearby communities, and she was desperate.
She was very scared. The Civil Defense was activated, and they said the community had to be evacuated. The report stated if the sea broke through the barriers on both sides and the area became an inlet the water could flow violently towards the community, so people’s lives were at risk.
-- In 2016, a violent storm tide reduced the width of the narrowest strip of land on the island. From the original 23 meters of land, only 2 meters remained -- It was frightening. We were terrified.
We feared losing people. We were worried they would leave because of fear and the community would be scattered. Baleia cove is a community that started with fish drying activities.
Sixty years ago, my grandfather noticed erosion was getting more intense. We began mapping it and saw that, on average, one meter of land was lost each year. In 2015, a catamaran tourist boat tried to dock right in front of the community, in an area where there were structures to contain the advance of the sea.
The community had eleven houses, and we lost four of them due to that boat docking. In October 2016, there was a storm tide, and there was a strip of land 500 meters away from the community, which had a width of 23 meters between the open sea and the channel. Suddenly, it reduced to a width of two meters.
From that moment on, we understood that if there were only one and a half meter of land remaining, that would be the last year of that community. As storm tides got more frequent, we started noticing the sand is being washed away much more quickly, and that’s why the area became an inlet. -- In August 2018, another violent storm tide hit the region.
In twenty days, the whole strip of land, with a total length of 600 meters, disappeared under the water. -- These two tips were still connected until approximately twenty days ago. The barrier has been broken just recently, and the sea has now joined the channel.
It is frightening to see how quickly this happened, even for us who were monitoring the erosion. When the inlet was flooded, we said to ourselves: “we did the right thing. ” So we were happy about that but, at the same time, we were sad because we weren’t there anymore.
But we could, at least, still visit the community. We went there to get materials, we went back all the time. And it’s becoming submerged, we’re losing parts of it day after day.
It is sad to imagine the day when it won’t be there anymore. The stories, the memories, we have it all with us. But we feel that the people who passed away while we were living at the old cove stayed behind.
This still stirs up emotions for us. Look, the car is moving, it’s moving… Oh my god! I’ve lived in Ponta da Praia for twenty years, and my life has been completely changed after the two strong storm tides that happened here.
As I had never experienced anything like that before, I think the one from 2005 was worse for me. I had never seen the beachside avenue covered with sand. The lights went out in the streets.
In the storm tide of 2016, some people got out swimming through that part over there, employees were walking on the wall. It was all very sad, people were struggling to get out and losing their stuff. I lost two cars, and I decided I won’t buy another one for as long as I live here.
-- Storm tides are stronger and more frequent on the coast -- People were in shock. We looked towards the front of the building, to the sea and, when the water started hitting. .
. the glass walls near the front desk, we got even more desperate. It looked like the water was going to flood everything.
From up there I could see the cars in the other building, floating. This was all submerged. I feared for my son during the storm tide.
I was afraid a tsunami might be coming or maybe something worse. I kept thinking: “I’ll get my son and go up, I’ll go up to the last floor because it’s very unlikely that a wave will hit us all the way up there. ” We had never had to leave our vessel because of bad weather until two years ago.
-- Climate change has affected oyster farming on the coast of Santa Catarina -- I suffer the effects of climate change. The most glaring thing is the absence of south winds. We remember the fishermen saying that when a south wind came in, it would last for three days.
For a few years now, we notice that when south winds do come at all, they are weak, and continue only for a short time. Twenty years ago, we used a specific process for planting the oyster seeds, always starting in February or March, which was when the winter season would begin. We relied on the temperature of the water being regulated and maintained precisely by this phenomenon, the south winds.
As the years went by, the absence of south winds has kept the water warmer for a longer period. Some people aren’t paying much attention to these climate issues and end up using the same practices as before, and because of that, they are suffering harsh losses. Our work directly depends on the weather and the climate.
Everything in our production chain depends on the weather. If something runs out of control, it will be 30 years of history going down the drain. There is already a lot of scientific information available in Brazil that shows a very close relationship between deforestation and rainfall and the issue of droughts.
You can't just say that not deforesting is a global contribution because you are not merely contributing to the global climate. It’s a local and regional contribution as well, and we have to think about that. In 2004, deforestation reached 27 thousand km² per year, and it went down in 2012, reaching approximately 4 thousand km² per year.
Since 2012, we went from 4 thousand km² to 7 thousand km². An even worse period was from July to November of 2018, in which forest fires increased by 36%. The net result is that, despite the extraordinary progress Brazil has made between 2004 and 2012, it is today the seventh largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
-- 20% of the Amazon has already been deforested. The largest part of this area has been destroyed by illegal deforestation -- -- If deforestation in the Amazon reaches 40%, the ecosystem may collapse, and the forest may cease to exist as such -- If we stop emitting today, the temperature increase would still reach 1,5° C. This increase would still cause situations of public calamity in inhabited regions, such as all coastal areas.
For example, Santos, Recife, Rio de Janeiro. This gives us a sense of urgency that unfortunately, humanity is not being able to imprint in the fight against climate change. Thirty years ago, for example, we used to go to the Araguaia River in a canoe, and we would take a 50-meter rope and drop it straight into the river, and that rope would not reach the bottom.
Today, when we go to the middle of the Araguaia, you have to know the right channel for your canoe, because it will hit the sandbanks, it will hit rocks, and you could die. Today, Brazil is one of the few rainforest reserves in the world, which provides us with a solid balance regarding emissions and removal of greenhouse gases, and with the hydrological cycle, and that is worth a lot of money. So we are practically throwing our environmental potency in the garbage, which is one of the most sources of wealth we have.
The years of 2009, 2010 and 2011 were difficult ones. Part of the villages, of the whole area, was burned up to sixty percent. It was terrifying for us, indigenous peoples living in the villages.
Our leaders strived to create a fire brigade at the village to fight and prevent fires. And this volunteer brigade works as the protector of the indigenous land. My brigade chose me for being a woman.
I’m the only woman in the brigade and the chief as well because I’m the only one who got this far. And to “get” here means to overcome obstacles. To overcome all things in your way that tried to bring you down.
It destroyed crop and hunting areas, people’s places, and the places where they went fishing. -- A record number of wildfires have been registered in 2017: over 275 thousand, 132 thousand of them in the Amazon. -- We fought the fire with flip-flops and cleats.
We don’t have our own vehicle or the complete set of materials. We can’t afford these things, but we are trying very hard to get them. The brigade is formed by people who are parents.
But we don’t get paid to be part of the brigade so we can’t help our family financially. I, for example, am a mother. This is supposed to be the responsibility of the state.
It’s not just the members of the brigade who are at risk. The community is at risk too. We are fighting for what is ours, and we always focus on seeking what will provide protection for our village.
[Battle cry] One, two, three, Krikati Brigade. We want to leave what remains of the forest for future generations so that they can live here, planting, harvesting, and fishing like we used to in the past.
