- In Brazil’s Maranhão state, the advance of monoculture and decades of forest destruction have driven a shift in precipitation patterns, diminishing rains and drying out springs that feed important rivers.
- This represents a major threat for the Guajajara Indigenous people, for whom these springs hold spiritual significance and guarantee the health of the rivers they depend on for fishing, bathing, drinking and cultural rituals.
- In an effort to restore drying springs, Indigenous people in the Rio Pindaré reserve are mapping headwaters and planting species native to the Amazon rainforest – like buriti, pupunha and açaí palms – along their margins.
- Scientists say this type of reforestation could help restore balance to water cycles in the region, mitigating the broader impacts of drought and climate change.
RIO PINDARÉ INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil – Under the emerald canopy of the Amazon rainforest, Janaína Guajajara peered into a murky pool of water barely larger than a bathtub. Along its margins, delicate buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) seedlings sprouted from the soil.
“This here was totally dry before – but the plants have restored it,” she said, waving to the fledgling palm trees. “They’ve rescued it.”
The humble pool, tucked in a patch of forest in the Rio Pindaré Indigenous Territory, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, is actually a crucial part of a much bigger water system in this region. Almost invisible to the untrained eye, it forms a trickle of water that snakes past us on its way to the Pindaré River a few miles away, which is fed by these headwaters in the rainforest.
To the Guajajara people who have lived here for centuries, these springs hold deeper meaning. “They are sacred,” said Arlete Guajajara, an Indigenous leader in the Rio Pindaré reserve. “They belong to the spirits of our ancestors. This is where they go to rest.”
The rivers and streams fed by these springs are also necessary for the survival of the Guajajara. They depend on these bodies of water to fish, drink and bathe. It’s also where they carry out rituals like the Menina Moça celebration, an important rite of passage marking the start of adulthood for Guajajara women.
“It is from the river that we get our livelihood,” Janaína told Mongabay in an interview during a recent trip to her village, Novo Planeta. “It’s our tradition, our customs, our everything. And it is the future of our people.”
But these bodies of water have come under threat, as agriculture swallows up the forest around and ushers in weaker rains, longer dry seasons and higher temperatures. Last year, water levels in rivers, here and elsewhere in the Amazon, fell to historic lows amid a punishing drought that scientists linked to deforestation and climate change.
Against this backdrop, preserving the headwaters that nourish rivers has become all the more urgent for the Guajajara people. In 2018, they set out deep in the rainforest in a bid to locate and map these springs. The village elders led the expeditions, retracing fading memories of where they used to be. When they found them, many of the springs had dwindled to mere puddles.
“We knew we had to do something,” said Arlete Guajajara. “We couldn’t just let them disappear.”
Then, last year, the Guajajara people picked one of the springs as a test case. Hoping to turn back the clock on decades of forest destruction on their lands, they planted species native to the Amazon – like buritu, pupunha and açaí – along its margins.
Instead of using seeds, the Guajajara scoured the rainforest collecting promising seedlings that had taken root elsewhere, transplanting them to the headwaters. “We did it using traditional ways, the way our elders taught us,” Arlete said.
The Indigenous community hopes that the young plants can prevent the headwaters from drying up by strengthening the soil around them. Scientists say planting around springs can prevent erosion and help the soil absorb more rain, replenishing groundwater reserves. As the trees mature, they will release increasing amounts of moisture into the air around them, helping to regulate the climate in this area of the rainforest.
“It’s this huge joy, not just for our elders and our ancestors, but for our whole territory,” Janaína said. “When we plant, we’re recovering all that was taken away from us.”
Legacy of destruction
Deep in the shadows of the rainforest, there is no sign of the drought parching the dusty soy fields that stretch for miles beyond the Rio Pindaré reserve. Here, the air is sticky and damp. Insects move in dense swarms and animals rustle in the bush. Rice, cassava and banana grow plentiful, alongside forest species like açaí.
The Rio Pindaré Indigenous Territory stretches some 15,000 hectares across the municipality of Bom Jardim in Maranhão state. Under federal protection since 1982, it lies in an ecological corridor made up of seven reserves, some of them home to Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation from the outside world.
After decades of destruction, most of the rainforest around has succumbed to large-scale agriculture. Yet, despite frequent incursions by outsiders over the years, Rio Pindaré remains an island of rainforest, intact in the face of frenzied development.
“This is the last of the forest here,” said a Funai official who asked to remain unnamed because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “And the Indigenous people depend on it. This is why it’s so important to protect it.”
This corner of the Brazilian Amazon was mostly isolated until a few decades ago, when the military regime that came to power in the 1960s pushed to populate it as a way of guaranteeing its sovereignty. Dubbing it “land without men for men without land,” it handed out plots of lands to thousands of migrants from other corners of Brazil and, over the next two decades, built a series of roads slicing through the rainforest.
One such project was the BR-316, a 2,000-kilometer (1,243-mile) federal highway that slashed the Rio Pindaré reserve in half. The road opened up access to the pristine forest like never before, drawing illegal loggers who could now travel deeper into the Guajajara people’s lands in search of valuable tree varieties.
“The impact was huge,” said Caroline Yoshida, a technical adviser at the Institute of Society, Population and Nature, a nonprofit working with Indigenous groups in the region. “Because the road cuts right in the middle of their land. With that, the wild game diminished, the pressure on their territory increased.”
In the 1980s, the construction of the Carajás Railroad, spanning 891 kilometers (554 miles) from Maranhao’s capital to the neighboring state of Pará, further intensified the wave of migration and created a new frontier of deforestation in the region. Before long, logging hubs were springing up around Rio Pindaré.
In recent decades, the incursions into Rio Pindaré have continued, with settlers from needy villages on the other side of the river regularly invading the territory to illegally hunt and fish, according to Indigenous people and authorities.
“Some of these communities around here, they don’t want to respect this land as being for the exclusive use of Indigenous people,” the agent said. “There is this thinking, why give so much land to them?”
Beyond the territory, meanwhile, monoculture has taken over large swaths of this region. Soy, corn and cattle drive the local economy here, with unwavering support from powerful politicians and lobby groups.
With native vegetation receding, Indigenous people are feeling the pressure, as forests, rivers and springs within their own territories grow dryer, Yoshida said.
“They’re reforesting so they can maintain these springs, so that they don’t die within the territory,” she said. “So that they don’t lose this wealth that they have within the territory.”
A treasure at risk
Headwater springs are important, both for their special role in the water cycle and the fragile nature that makes them vulnerable to climate shocks like drought.
These springs form when reservoirs of groundwater emerge to the surface of the soil, creating small currents of water. These tributaries then travel downstream to join with others, forming larger streams and rivers. Across Brazil, there are some 1.8 million headwater springs scattered across every biome, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) estimates.
But, in the Amazon rainforest, an intensifying water crisis is putting headwaters at risk. Studies show that, across this region of Brazil, the annual dry season has become about a month longer over the past half a century. When rains finally arrive, they are now more likely to be scarce and uneven, providing little relief from drought.
Amid drier climate conditions, less precipitation is infiltrating ground reservoirs tucked under headwater springs and some of these crucial springs are dwindling. And, worryingly, researchers still don’t fully know if – and how – these springs can be restored once they fully dry up.
“When you lose a body of water…it can take dozens, or even hundreds of years to recover,” said Victor Salviati, the superintendent of innovation at the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (known as FAS by its Portuguese acronym), a nonprofit that has developed similar forest restoration projects in the state of Amazonas.
This is because restoring the rich biodiversity and the delicate ecological balance of water sources that have dried up is a lengthy and complex process, Salviati explained. “With the drought we have in the Amazon now, it is difficult for us to wait 50-60 years to recover a spring. So, it is better to preserve and protect the ones we have.”
Planting native species along the margins of headwaters – restoring what is known as riparian forest – is also an important way of strengthening the soil and preventing erosion, according to Salviati. “When the rain falls and you have healthy soil, it can filter the rainwater and return it to the stream or river, in a natural way,” he said.
Meanwhile, scientists say that restoring native forests, in Brazil and beyond, represents one of the planet’s best hopes for mitigating climate change, both locally and globally. Research also suggests these restored forests can help regulate rainfall and prevent important rivers from drying out.
And restoring the areas around headwaters, which feed important rivers throughout the Amazon, are a crucial part of the battle to curb disruptions to the hydrological cycle, according to Salviati. “Any initiative to protect springs, restore the forest around them – this is the best investment we can make.”
Banner image by Ana Ionova for Mongabay.
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