Colombia | Indigenous communities challenged by drying up of the Amazon River

With food or a large container of water on their shoulders, members of the Yagua indigenous community of the Colombian Amazon walk on what was once the bed of an arm of the Amazon River, whose flow has fallen by 90% due to the lack of precipitation.

Near the town of Leticia (South), capital of the department of Amazonas, the arm of the dry river isolates the Yagua village and its 600 inhabitants by a three-kilometer-long sandy beach.

To reach the nearest point where the boats supply them, they now have to walk two hours, compared to 15 minutes previously when the waves of the Amazon stretched as far as the eye could see.

Under the burning sun “it’s painful”, laments Victor Facelino, a 52-year-old Yagua, to AFP. “It’s difficult to walk on the sometimes unstable sand,” he said, with a six-liter container of water offered by the authorities on his shoulders.

The National Unit for Risk and Disaster Management (UNGRD) noted that at Leticia, on the border with Brazil and Peru only accessible by boat, the flow of the Amazon had been reduced by 90%.

“For many of these communities, the only means of transportation is the river, and with the drying up of its tributaries, they are completely cut off” from the world, explains the director of the UNGRD, Carlos Carrillo.

“Like before”

According to the European Copernicus Observatory, the drought coincides with the worst fires in almost 20 years in the Amazon rainforest, which covers mainly Brazil.

Maria Soria and other members of her Yagua community now walk long distances to Isla de los Micos to sell crafts to tourists.

“The Amazon is the ‘lungs of the world’ and it’s magnificent, but right now it’s not good for us because we have to walk so far,” complains Maria Soria, 55, dressed in a traditional Yagua costume.

The office of the governor of the department of 109,000 km² covered in jungle has called the current drought the “worst climate crisis” ever known.

Without a waterway, there is no trade between the three countries successively crossed by the Amazon.

On the Peruvian side, food shortages are hitting hamlets. On the Brazilian side, the authorities have declared a “critical situation”, particularly due to the low level of a hydroelectric plant which generates 11% of national energy.

Prices of all goods, including fuel, are skyrocketing. Low water levels force fishermen to make longer journeys, avoiding sandy beaches. “If you look at the entire coastline, everywhere you go, everything is dry,” notes Roel Pacaya, a 50-year-old fisherman, bitterly.

“In a few years, the whole river will dry up,” worries Maria Soria. “I ask God to bring him back to the way he was before, that we live as before,” she implores.

Scientists have warned of the risk of a climatic “tipping point”, a stage where a vicious circle of deforestation and fires will dry out the Amazonian forest which, in an irreversible change in the ecosystem, will become partly savannah with catastrophic consequences for the more than three million species of plants and animals it is home to.

“Know how to survive”

Eudocia Moran, 59, says she feels trapped. A few meters from his house in the hamlet called Macedonia, the river no longer flows and only a pool of stagnant water remains.

Tourism, the main source of income for residents, has come to a halt and trips to Leticia for supplies are increasingly difficult and expensive.

Head of her Tikuna community, M^me Moran is convinced that the solution lies in a return to the agricultural traditions of her ancestors: “We must work the land again, return to agriculture,” she says.

In his garden, cassava, beans, corn, fruits and vegetables continue to grow

But if the drought continues and hardens the soil, Eudocia Moran does not intend to give up: “I say it to anyone who will listen: it is up to us […] to go with the flow [de l’histoire]because what else can we do other than knowing how to work, knowing how to survive.”