Carrying six-litre water bottles on their shoulders, members of Colombia’s indigenous Yagua community wander along the dry riverbed of a branch of the mighty Amazon River.
In the tri-border region, where Colombia borders Brazil and Peru, the flow in some areas of the world’s largest river by volume has shrunk by 90 percent, leaving a desert of brown sand etched by ripples.
Near the Colombian border town of Leticia, the 600 residents of the village of Yagua found themselves staring at an emerging beach a kilometer (.6 mile) wide.
Before the smaller branch of the Amazon River that flows through Leticia began to dry up three months ago, it only took villagers about 15 minutes to reach the river’s shores.
Now they have to walk for two hours under the hot sun to reach the landing point for boats that bring food, fuel and drinking water on the only way in and out of the forest.
“This is a really difficult time,” Victor Vassilino, a 52-year-old man from Yagua, told AFP as he carried home a can of water donated by the state to help quench the thirst of people living in the world’s largest rainforest.
“Sometimes we get stuck in the sand,” he said, panting.
Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) has blamed the worst drought in the Amazon region in nearly 20 years for a major contraction of the river in the tri-border region.
“For many of these communities, the only means of transportation is the river, and with the tributaries drying up, they are completely isolated,” said Carlos Carrillo, director of the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP.
– ‘Same as before’ –
The governor of Colombia’s Amazonas department, a 109,000-square-kilometre patch of forest, said the drought was the “worst climate crisis” the region had ever seen.
This coincides with the worst wildfire season in the Amazon region in nearly 20 years, according to the European Copernicus Climate Observatory.
On the Peruvian side of the border, several towns reported food shortages.
On the Brazilian side, which is choking on fire fumes, authorities declared the “situation critical,” with low water levels at a hydroelectric power plant that generates 11 percent of the country’s electricity causing particular concern.
Logistical difficulties have caused the prices of basic commodities, including fuel, to skyrocket. Fishermen have to travel upriver to cast their nets.
“If you look along the river, everywhere you go is dry,” complained Ruel Pacaya, a 50-year-old fisherman in the town of Puerto Narino.
Maria Soria, a Yagua woman who makes her living selling handicrafts on Monkey Island, a nature reserve in the Colombian Amazon, worries that “the whole river will start drying up soon.”
“I ask God to return things to the way they were, so we can live as we did before,” said the 55-year-old, wearing a traditional blue feathered headdress and palm-fiber chest covering, and performing a dance. A small group of tourists.
– Go with the flow –
Even for those who still have access to the river, things are not easy.
Eudokia Moran, 59, said she feels trapped by the now stagnant waters of the Amazon, which lie just meters from her home.
Shopping trips to Leticia, about 30 miles downriver, have become rare, as boat operators fear being stranded in the sand.
Moran, the leader of the indigenous Tikona community, is convinced that the solution is to return to the land.
Instead of relying on the slow influx of tourists, she believes the only way to survive is to “completely immerse myself in agriculture.”
In a garden irrigated partly by the river, cassava, beans, corn and fruit are grown.
“I tell everyone that we have to go with the flow of time, because all we can do is learn how to live.”
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