“A natureza mudou”: alterações climáticas e transformações nos modos de vida da população no baixo rio Negro, Amazonas

Abstract

Climate change is gradual and perceptible to society as a whole and has major impacts on the riverine communities of the Amazon. These populations are highly sensitive to these transformations, as seasonal hydroclimatic cycles govern their daily lives, integrate their ways of life with the environment and determine the organization of social and agricultural calendars. Climate perception surveys with riverine populations are needed to analyze how they are reacting to the impacts of these changes and what adaptive strategies have adopted. This work aimed to understand the impacts caused by extreme climatic events on the dynamics of physical, environmental, and sociocultural aspects of the socioecological riverine systems in the Negro River. Initially, by analyzing changes in hydroclimatic trends and, later, through the description of perception, we tried to present the impacts on the ways of life and landscape of the communities, and then to know the adaptive strategies in the face of extreme climatic events. The quantitative-qualitative perspective with a multimethod approach was adopted. The research was carried out in the Tiririca, Marajá, Santo Antônio and Terra Preta communities of the Sustainable Development Reserve of the Negro River, with 43 subjects through semi-structured and focus group interviews, with the purpose of observing possible contrasts in the perception of men and women. The results were analyzed by means of historical trends of the seasonality of the hydrological regime, precipitation and temperature, while for qualitative data, the content analysis technique was used. The results indicate that physical and perception records most often coincide, and these indicate that river cycles are changed, that rainfall has decreased and there is unanimity in the perception that temperature rise is a reality that has affected their ways of life at work, education, health and food. Communities are developing adaptive strategies to overcome this new challenge, but public policies need to help to overcome climate variability, contributing to the quality of life of populations.