A small unpaved road draws attention in the community of Alto Jari, in Arapixuna, 32 kilometers from Santarém, Western Pará. The vegetation stands out like a natural carpet that seems to have survived the extreme drought that has hit the region in recent months, and which has already decimated animals and crops in large proportions. But what could be a light at the end of the tunnel for the more than 30 families who live there, soon turns out to be a mirage in the Amazon “desert”: the Jari canal, an arm of the Amazon River, becomes a road, without any trace of water.
Dulcicleia Oliveira, although originally from Capitão Poço, in the northeast of Pará, she has been living in this community since 2014. Until early September, she used to work in gastronomic tourism, using water lilies [victoria amazonica] - a native species that she grew in her backyard - as an ingredient to make brownies and popcorn. Due to the severe drought, the area was closed to visitors because boats could no longer reach the area, and days later, the residents themselves were left without access to other nearby cities. Not even their small motor-boats could leave the place.
“We have always prepared ourselves for the river floods, but never for the drought. Our community and the community of Jari do Socorro do not have drinking water. We collect water in the community of Moacá, but once the Jari canal dries up, we have no access to that water, because boats cannot reach it,” laments Dulcicleia.
The former Navy cook says that residents got together to clean the canal because the tide has been showing signs of return. Even so, what should have been a cause for celebration still raises a warning sign: “Although the river level is starting to raise, the lakes are going to dry up and this is a natural phenomenon. But it is a huge concern because, as the lakes where the fish and animals are found recedes, the water starts to heat up and these animals start to die.”
On Marajó Island, the situation is the same. The public employee, Agostinho Gonçalves Júnior, 39, lives in the municipality of Chaves. He says that for the past two years, the communities have been experiencing the worst droughts in history. The rivers that supplied the city have dried up, and the little water that remains is salty. “Our community used to store rainwater in tanks and barrels, but many people don’t have a cistern nearby – which we call a ramp – and there is no way of collecting this water. And for those who have it, the water level is very low or it is very dirty,” says Agostinho.
He says that the city and the state have joined forces to help families during this difficult time, but without the river flow to ensure navigation, the problems remain. “The communities are having to buy mineral water. The problem is that not all of them are able to support themselves. I have an artesian pit, but not everyone can afford to dig one. We build a chain and give water to our neighbors. Since the river is dry, we can’t receive supplies to the market. And even when the boat manages to move, it doesn’t reach those who need it most,” he says.
Environmental racism and its effects
Dulcicleia and Agostinho are part of a national challenge. Millions of people in Brazil face a problem that goes far beyond a drought event which has gotten out of hand. They are victims of the so-called environmental racism, a term that emerged in the 1980s in the United States and now returns with more force as COP 30 approaches, to be held in Belém next year.
The concept denounces the inequality in the distribution of environmental impacts, which disproportionately affect marginalized populations and ethnic minorities, whether they are people living in the forest or the poorest communities living in urban slums. In the Amazon, this discrimination is manifested by the confluence of several factors, ranging from the lack of basic sanitation to the dumping of toxic waste in vulnerable areas, to land grabbing and exploitation of lands belonging to traditional peoples. Such conditions make these communities the main victims of climate catastrophes – a scenario aggravated by consumer logic and ideas of racial superiority. This is what explains Ana Cláudia Cardoso, a Professor at the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Pará.
“What happened is that the world ended up intensifying too much the processes of exploitation in order to increase consumption, and we will see that, from the 19th century onwards, we have established an environmental crisis. And this environmental crisis shows that we are living on the same planet, where we have ecosystems reacting to the way we used heat sources, intensified the emission of pollutants, and increased the tasting area for large-scale production,” says the researcher.
According to Cardoso, populations that have a better connection with nature are the first ones to be affected by climate change, because there is a relationship of respect for nature's timing, and when the climate changes, it disorients the production chain and harms the knowledge acquired over many generations.
“Our native populations don’t know when it’s time to plant or harvest because the climate is very unregulated. There are some areas that now present very different rainfall patterns and very intense drought conditions that were not common before. So, we observe that the population that did not use to live in the city and follow the consumption logic, have been the first ones to face the impacts of lack of water and food shortages. These evidences reinforce the paradigm of racism that we have had for a long time,” explains Ana Cláudia.
Peripheral populations are also affected
The 2022 Census conducted by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics], released in November, shows that the North Region, whose territory occupies around 80% of the Legal Amazon, has the largest share of people living in favelas among all Brazilian regions: 18.9% in total, compared to 8.5% in the Northeast, 8.4% in the Southeast, 3.2% in the South and 2.4% in the Central-West. The data shows that communities living within the region's urban centers are also victims of environmental racism.
According to Professor Roberta Sodré from Centro de Estudo e Defesa do Negro no Pará - CEDENPA [Center for Studies and Defense of Black People in Pará], it is necessary to look at and bring to the center of the socio-political-environmental debate the historically marginalized characters, inside and outside urban centers, to seek social equity.
“IBGE data shows that black and brown people are living in high-risk areas in greater numbers. We are on the eve of COP 30 and the lowlands of Belém are showing that black and indigenous bodies are the most present there. We need to have an open dialogue with the most impacted ones, so that they can also be agents of climate communication. We need to have more open dialogues with government officials, so that public policies are increasingly monitored and we have the right to break this cycle of structural inequality that ends up affecting some more than others,” says Roberta Sodré.
Census data also show that, among the twenty most populous favelas and urban communities in the country, eight are located in the North Region (seven of them in Manaus). The states with the largest proportions of their population living in favelas and urban communities are in the Amazon region: Amazonas (34.7%), Amapá (24.4%) and Pará (18.8%).
Public authorities mobilize for actions
Combating environmental racism is a concern of Pará government. In addition to the presentation of a Bill of Indication by state deputy Carlos Bordalo (PT) to the Executive Branch, with the aim of guaranteeing environmental justice and equity in access to environmental resources and benefits, the state Civil Defense has also been working to ensure that families affected by the drought are not left unprotected.
In October, the state delivered basic food baskets and water to approximately 1,200 riverside families living in Santarém. Sixteen communities benefited from the action carried out by the Fire Department and State Civil Defense in partnership with the Civil Defense. The previous month, the Federal and State governments declared a state of alert for the impacts caused by high temperatures and drought in municipalities in Pará, such as the western region. The objective is to curb the damage caused by fires and the reduction of water levels in reservoirs, rivers and aquifers, which cause losses in essential economic activities and in the quality of life of the population that survives on agriculture, livestock and fishing.
The deputy coordinator of Civil Defense, Colonel Marcelo Nogueira, says that the humanitarian aid from the state government should reach around 50 municipalities that claimed to be having difficulties in dealing with the extreme drought and forest fires: “The criteria for choosing these municipalities are listed by Civil Defense. The government transfers the amount on to the municipality, which is able to identify its impacted communities, distributes it.”
Nogueira also mentions some efforts made by the police in Pará, such as Operation Curupira, which determined an Environmental Emergency in the municipalities of Altamira, Anapu, São Félix do Xingu, Pacajá, Novo Progresso, Itaituba, Portel, Senador José Porfírio, Novo Repartimento, Uruará, Rurópolis, Placas, Trairão, Jacareacanga and Medicilândia, and installed three fixed bases of action in São Félix do Xingu, Uruará and Novo Progresso; Operation Amazônia Viva, to combat deforestation; and Operation Fênix, to fight against environmental fires.
Youth joins the fight against environmental racism
Over 10,000 kilometers separate the COP 30 headquarters, Belém, from the city where COP 29 was held this year, in Baku, Azerbaijan. But for a group of young people from various Brazilian territories, including those from the outskirts of Jurunas, crossing the ocean was necessary to shout to the world that they, too, are active agents in the fight for environmental equity. “Decentralizing COP discussions” was the theme presented at the Regional Climate Foundations stand, by the COP Coalition of Baixadas.
The group brings together 15 civil society organizations, led by young people from the outskirts of Belém, and has developed its own tools to diagnose how peripheral areas are affected as a consequence of drought, flooding, landslides, among others, in addition to thinking about actions that can minimize and eradicate social disparities in regions that are more vulnerable and impacted by the climate emergency.
“We at COP das Baixadas believe that, in order to correct the flaws related to environmental racism and socio-environmental inequalities in the Amazon, it is essential to implement inclusive public policies that prioritize access to land and land regularization, protect territorial rights and also guarantee the protection of traditional populations. And, to this end, we emerged as an organization called Yellow Zones, which are practical examples that decentralize the climate debate and directly involve the most vulnerable communities. These are innovation zones that create spaces for community engagement, promote climate education, training and social justice, and empowerment and popular social participation,” says Waleska Queiroz, one of the foundation’s organizers.
To Waleska, COP 30 is an opportunity to talk about the future of humanity, listening to populations that have historically been silenced by colonization processes. “It is essential that we incorporate climate justice into all political decisions, placing indigenous people, quilombolas, riverside communities and peripheral populations at the center of city planning, ensuring that their voices are heard and regarded in global events, such as COP 30, which will take place in Belém.”
Change and mobilize
In August 2023, the Federal Government created the Comitê de Monitoramento da Amazônia Negra e Enfrentamento ao Racismo Ambiental [Committee for Monitoring the Black Amazon and Combating Environmental Racism], a partnership between the Ministry of Racial Equality (MIR) and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MMA), with the aim of proposing measures to combat environmental racism in the Legal Amazon. The Committee will also contribute to the expansion of bodies promoting racial equality in the states of the Legal Amazon, so that racial equality policies reach a greater number of people.
According to Professor Ana Cláudia, despite the efforts, governments still have a hard time dealing with the issue, because the productive logic that does not correspond that of the most affected people by social inequality prevails. However, she recognizes that the mobilization of civil society around the issue generates positive impacts. She believes, however, that collective work will only achieve satisfactory results when there is a change in individual behavior, understanding that the ecosystem is not at the service of humanity and that the knowledge of traditional peoples can no longer be ignored.
“We haven’t yet decided that we will need to walk, that we’re going to reduce our consumption of objects that we don’t need, that we’re not going to be controlled by advertising, or that we’re going to change our lifestyle. We don’t realize that we’re going to value permeable areas in the city much more and that we shall see ourselves as inhabitants of ecosystems. It’s crucial, at this moment, for us to target these groups that we’ve relegated to the background, because they excel at taking care of ecosystems in a more natural and balanced way than we do,” she concludes.
INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIP
The production of Liberal Amazon is one of the initiatives of the Technical Cooperation Agreement between the Liberal Group and the Federal University of Pará. The articles involving research from UFPA are revised by professionals from the academy. The translation of the content is also provided by the agreement, through the research project ET-Multi: Translation Studies: multifaces and multisemiotics.
