- A severe drought that spread over recent months in Peru’s Loreto and Ucayali regions led to the isolation of more than 130 communities.
- Record low river levels affected the navigation of boats that deliver food and supplies as well as the health and livelihoods of communities that rely on fish for food and trade.
- Indigenous leaders from isolated communities have criticized the state for failing to deliver emergency assistance, such as drinking water and medical supplies.
- The frequency and intensity of extreme drought in the Amazon will continue to increase substantially due to climate change, experts warn.
More than 130 Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon were left isolated after a severe drought caused rivers used for transport to dry up, leaving families with little food, water or health care access. This affected the livelihoods of communities that rely on fish for food and trade, as well as crops and native plants and trees, a report by the country’s Ombudsman’s Office said.
“It has been very difficult,” Apu Roberto Tafur Shupingahua, president of the Federation of Native Communities of the Tapiche and Blanco River, told Mongabay over a phone call. “I could not visit a health center because there are no roads around here. We are completely cut off.”
The dry season usually runs from August to October, but this year it arrived in July, the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru reported. According to the agency, the drought was a result of the El Niño phenomenon, which caused a change in the humidity of the Amazon, resulting in irregular rainfall during the flood season. This led to a reduction in river levels, and the dry season started with a deficit of 2 meters (6.5 feet).
Both El Niño and climate change have contributed to the lack of rainfall in the region, ongoing since mid-2023, but climate change also led to extremely high temperatures and increased water evaporation, according to a report from World Weather Attribution (WWA). Its authors predict dry spells in the Amazon will become more intense.
Rain has since returned, but experts say the consequences of this drought may persist for much longer.
In Peru, the Loreto and Ucayali departments were the most affected, the Ombudsman’s Office said. The Marañón, Huallaga, Napo and Amazonas rivers were on red alert, and 112 communities across all eight provinces of Loreto were isolated by the water shortages.
The Ucayali River also received a red drought alert. On Sept. 17, the Ombudsman’s Office identified 19 Indigenous communities in the Callería district, in the province of Coronel Portillo, that were isolated as a result of the decrease in water levels.
Residents faced food, drinking water and fuel shortages as well as river accidents that resulted in loss of human life. On Sept. 3, four passengers died after a speedboat carrying 20 people from the town of Mazán to Iquitos hit a sandbank on the Amazon River and Itaya route and sank.
“The impact on food security has been one of the main impacts,” Abel Chiroque Becerra, the head of the Loreto Ombudsman’s Office, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “The other issue is education. There was a drought during the midyear holidays and some teachers were unable to return.”
Tafur told Mongabay that without water, most of their crops failed. Plantain and yuca, which they usually convert into flour to avoid rot, were ruined because they did not have enough water to carry out the flour-making process.
Corine Vriesendorp, senior conservation ecologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and senior adviser to the Science Panel for the Amazon, told Mongabay that Amazonian plants are suffering from water stress. There is an uptick in tree mortality as well as reduced plant growth, especially in forests with longer dry seasons.
“In addition, severe droughts are increasing the flammability of forests, and the damage from wildfires is extreme for people and nature, destroying forests that house key resources for food, medicine and cultural practices as well as severe impacts on air quality, leading to respiratory and circulatory diseases,” Vriesendorp said.
As a result of stagnant waters in certain areas, the ombudsman also reported an increase in cholera cases as well as tropical or endemic diseases, such as dengue, malaria and Zika. Indigenous communities that did not have access to health facilities in their territories — six out of eight communities — were unable to travel elsewhere to receive medical attention, as there are no roads.
Most communities in the Peruvian Amazon do not have potable drinking water. To adapt, Tafur said they looked for natural springs where they were sometimes able to find clean water and dug wells to collect what they could. Many had to leave their communities to seek safety elsewhere, he said.
A big concern was for the Indigenous peoples living in isolation and initial contact, such as the Remo (or Isconahua), the Mayoruna (Matsé and Matís) and the Kapanawa, who live in a reserve that spans both Ucayali and Loreto. Their only means of transportation are rivers and they do not have health centers.
In addition to the human impacts, the drought also led to the death of fish and pink river dolphins(Inia geoffrensis) in other parts of the Amazon, such as Lake Tefé in Brazil, where more than a hundred individuals were found dead. “These deaths may be because of increased water temperatures (measured at 39° Celsius, or 102° Fahrenheit, and above), stress on the animals’ physiology, a bloom in bacteria and other pathogens or other unknown factors,” Vriesendorp explained.
Jorge Watanabe, a consultant for the management committee of the Imiría Regional Conservation Area in Ucayali told Mongabay over a video call that the drought has affected the protected area’s peatlands, as they have not had a constant flow of water and therefore have not been enriched with the nutrients that are crucial for the survival of breeding fish populations.
According to Tafur, the state did not offer communities any assistance, such as drinking water, food or medical supplies. “For the state, we do not exist,” Tafur said. “If we did, they would have worried.”
Both the Ucayali and Loreto regional governments did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication.
Given that droughts are becoming increasingly more common, Becerra said there need to be better contingency plans, such as measures to clean the riverbeds and alerts to avoid river accidents. The ombudsman’s report requested that government agencies coordinate with regional authorities to provide air transport, contingency plans to guarantee schooling and social programs for isolated communities as well as transport for medical teams.
In the future, Tafur said he hopes the regional government will support them with drinking water and other emergency assistance. “Right now, we are not prepared to face this kind of thing,” he said. “Next year might be the same, but nothing is being done.”
Banner image: The Amazon River is a lifeline for riverine communities. Image by Sophie Pinchetti / Chaikuni Institute.
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