"Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon”, May 27, 2020

Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.

Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.

Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations…

The combination of an increasingly hot and dry climate resulting in far more numerous and intense Amazon wildfires — especially as land grabbers clear more rainforest, or as farmers clear fields for planting — is also negatively impacting indigenous reserves, especially those located along the so-called “Arc of Deforestation” stretching from Rondônia state in the west of Brazil, to Pará state in the east…

According to the leader of the women warriors of Rondônia [Maria Leonice Tupari], fires gave rise to another serious problem…“The smoke from the fires made many people sick, suffering from strong headaches, eye irritation and respiratory problems. The smoke was terrible. Especially children and the elderly needed to be taken to regional hospitals, which were already full of people from the cities who had also been poisoned.”