ClimatePrep

Building Climate Adaptation Capacity in Amazon Floodplain Communities

This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Figure 1. Location of the community of Igarape do Costa © WWF-Brazil

Located in the lower Amazon floodplain of Brazil, the Santarém region harbors important fisheries that many people depend on for employment, food security, government tax revenues, and items to export to both domestic and foreign markets. Climate change is creating difficulties, but not without hope and new opportunities as well.

These fisheries and the services that they provide are known to be sensitive to shifts in the climate. Precipitation patterns are shifting in the Santarém region, with the amount of annual rainfall generally decreasing and floods and droughts becoming more common. Livelihoods for most people around these lakes combine farming and fishing, both of which will be negatively affected by a reduction in rainfall. Less rain will have an especially big impact on the local economy through the quantity of fish that are locally harvested. If regional climate forecasts are accurate, rural livelihoods in lakeshore regions will become increasingly precarious over time.

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Working with Community Fisheries in the Amazon Basin

Oviedo in the field (c) Antonio Oviedo/WWF-Brazil

By Eliot Levine, WWF-US

This story is part of a series on adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon.

The majority of Brazilian Amazon fishermen live in areas vulnerable to climate change, or depend on resources whose distribution and productivity are known to be influenced by climate variability. One of these areas is the Amazon floodplains, where WWF-Brazil has several projects coordinated by me.

Relationships between the impacts of climate change and these fishing communities’ ability to adapt have barely been investigated. This research could help to guide the development of conservation measures that can be used to help community fisheries adapt to the impacts of adverse climate change, both in Brazil and beyond.

Climate change is the most important global environmental issue at this time. Despite quantitative uncertainty in the climate models about the exact extent of impacts, predictions show that future climate will increase, among other things, the frequency of extreme weather events, like severe droughts. Resilience building is a key strategy for mankind to face future climate change.

The purpose of my postings will be to provide a synthesis of current thinking on the relations between climate change, vulnerability assessment, and adaptation projects of community fisheries in the Amazon basin. In my future entries I will present details of the case of Santarem.