Arid crevices and unusual beaches, the cruelest face of the climate crisis in the Amazon

Laia Mataix Gómez

Puerto Nariño (Colombia), Oct 25 (EFE).- With the river – the only means of transportation – almost dry, the inhabitants of Santa Clara have to walk two hours every four days to get drinking water because the lack of rain leaves an unusual image in the Colombian Amazon: arid crevices and extensive beaches that cause anxiety among the riverside residents.

The families’ journey to Puerto Nariño, the closest municipal capital, is quite an odyssey: they have to pull the canoe because there is not enough water in the Loretoyacu River, a tributary of the Amazon, and walk about 700 meters until they reach the water treatment pump.

The 20-liter containers they fill per house last about three or four days, and they have to make the trip again.

A trip that previously took 45 minutes, with the waters so low, takes almost two hours. And not just to collect water, if someone in the community has a medical emergency, he cannot navigate to the nearest hospital.

“Warming has come to affect the ecosystem, also in terms of the mortality of different species of fish,” Gentil Gómez, the curaca – the community’s highest authority – tells EFE, and confirms that “the climate has not been like before. , ten years ago it didn’t heat up like this.”

After a month without rain, a few drops fell a week ago, something that for the moment allows them to survive for about 25 days.

The rivers are the Amazonian roads and the markets where the riverside populations get much of their food; They are an essential part of their lives and their daily lives.

Jerónimo, 61 years old, who has been dedicated to fishing all his life, remembers that when he was about 15 years old there was a summer as pronounced as this one in Lake Tarapoto that caused a lot of fish mortality, which was followed by a shortage of their main food. communities.

In Santa Clara, for example, they need four kilos of fish a day to feed a family. The menu is fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner; But with this long summer they fear that they will not be able to fish as much as they need.

“Now there are not so many dead fish, but that is the danger,” warns Jerónimo, who has conveyed this fear to his fellow fishermen. ‘Where are we going to go to eat,’ he asks, facing the prospect of a drought that is expected to continue.

These changes in climate also cause uncertainty in the communities, since “planting times are called into question,” says Lilia Java, local coordinator of the Omacha Foundation, an organization that has been working since 1993 for the conservation of dolphins, manatees and other fauna species.

“For us indigenous peoples, these lakes, rivers and streams are more than food providers, they are where our cultural identity, our ancestral knowledge, our relationship with the ecosystem is born,” Java details.

Lake Correo, between the Amazon and Loretoyacu rivers, has become four smaller, separate lagoons, cutting off connectivity for aquatic species, after so many weeks without rain.

This drought, which could worsen with the arrival of the El Niño phenomenon, also affects all aquatic fauna, such as dolphins, conservation ambassadors and thermometers of the good state of an ecosystem. More than 150 died at the beginning of the month in the Brazilian part of the Amazon, setting off all the alarms.

“About 15 or 20 years ago on the Amazon River you could not see the extensive beaches that you see now,” says Silvia Vejarano, biologist and conservation specialist at WWF Colombia.

On the boat trip from Leticia, capital of the Colombian department of Amazonas, and Puerto Nariño, these extensive banks that appeared “at least a month ago” and that are not normal, adds the expert, are evident.

The arid landscape that is glimpsed while sailing through the Amazon shows the rainless season that the region has accumulated. By now, in Santa Clara the Loretoyacu should already be two meters deeper. EFE

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