Maripasoula (Guyana), report
Water, food and even fuel are increasingly rare commodities in the Amazonian regions of southern Guyana. In Maripasoula, the most populated commune in the region, gas bottles are already almost impossible to find in shops, according to the residents. « The situation is increasingly critical and unsustainable. We lack everything »summarizes one of them, appalled.
For the 40,000 inhabitants of Haut-Maroni and Haut-Oyapock, if access to basic public services is generally uncertain, the violent drought which is raging throughout the Amazon basin is on the verge of transforming these daily failures into real humanitarian crisis.
In these Amazonian regions devoid of roads, the low water level of the rivers has reached a historically low level. This forced the canoeists who provided most of the transport of people and goods to drastically reduce or even cease their activities. Only air connections carried out by small nineteen-seater propeller planes still connect the municipalities of Maripasoula, Camopi or Grand-Santi to the coast, and residents fear a worsening of shortages.
The Maroni River dry.
DR
The intensity of this dry season (August-November) is linked to the chronic water deficit that Guyana has suffered for eighteen months (with the exception of May 2024), and to abnormally high temperatures, which could cause 2024 is the hottest year ever recorded in Guyana, ahead of the previous record… of 2023. According to Météo-France, these are two consequences of the El Niño ocean phenomenon and, in the background, climate change.
Water pack for 17 euros
With one month of the dry season remaining, rationing of drinking water is already in place for several thousand people. If this is a structural problem in the villages furthest upstream of the Maroni, the deficiencies now concern most of the inhabitants connected to alluvial boreholes (which draw their supplies from water tables whose level depends on a river) , including in the most downstream locations, such as in the town of Grand-Santi.
Read also: In Guyana, Native Americans face a lack of water
As for the rare goods arriving in the region by plane – via France or Suriname – we still need to be able to afford them. In Maripasoula, prices that were already prohibitive in normal times have almost doubled, reaching 17 euros for a pack of water or 100 euros for a bottle of gas. « If what is happening to us happened in France, we would already be talking about a natural disaster »summarizes Jonathan Abienso, a Maripasoulian at the head of a freight company which has stopped its activity.
Daily travel, whether for health reasons or for school transportation, is also an ordeal. On this first day of school, several hundred students had no way to get to school.
An airlift
On October 31, the prefecture of Guyana announced it was setting up an airlift using army aircraft. Objective: to supply isolated communities with water, food, but also fuel to supply the thermal power stations which provide electricity to Haut-Maroni.
At the same time, the local authority of Guyana, which has control over air transport, announced that it would double its freight capacity for inland municipalities. Finally, the villages most affected by the shortage received atmospheric water fountains and tablets to make the water in the creeks drinkable.
These emergency measures, as necessary as they are costly, call into question the anticipation of state services. These extreme dry seasons, which we know will get worse with climate change, are in fact not new to the region.
Above all, for years the authorities of certain villages have been demanding funds to replace their obsolete boreholes and most local elected officials have been demanding the construction of a « River road »in order to connect Maripasoula to the coast. Promised several times [1]but never completed due to its estimated cost of at least 1 billion euros, this road is, according to elected officials, the only way to open up this region, more than ever on the borders of the Republic.
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