Brazil faces its worst drought season since 1950: devastating images

The Brazilian Amazon is once again suffering from an extreme drought that threatens to worsen in the coming months. In Manaquiri, near Manaus, there are already dry river beds, cornered fish and around twenty isolated rural communities.

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After a dramatic 2023, Brazil is facing its worst drought this year since 1950 and one of the hardest hit parts of the country is the Amazon region, according to data from the National Center for Monitoring and Alerting Natural Disasters.

In the state of Amazonas, The Government has declared a “state of emergency” in its 62 municipalities due to drought and forest fires. The weather experts had already predicted this and it has been confirmed.

“Everything indicates that we will have a very serious drought. The rivers will go down like never before.“, warned the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima.

The Negro River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon, is now four metres below the level of the same period last year. In the whole of Amazonas, the Brazilian state with the largest indigenous population, the drought is already directly affecting nearly 80,000 families, according to the Civil Defence.

Several hundred of them are in Manaquiri, where since the end of August you can walk along the dry bed of the river that bathes this town (Paraná Manaquiri).

Footprints are left on the sandbanks, once covered in fresh water and now exposed to the sunlight. Where ships loaded with merchandise once sailed and where today you can ride horses.

To go to Manaus, the regional capital, it is still possible to go by another tributary, although it takes an hour longer than usual, which It makes it difficult to transport medicines and food, which harms the local economy.

And with the severe drought, the fires have multiplied. This Sunday there was 3,640 active outbreaks throughout Brazilhalf of them in the Amazon, the largest tropical forest on the planet. There were 237 in the state of Amazonas alone.

In other areas of the country, the flames are also advancing. A fire has burned around 10,000 hectares of the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park in four daysnear the Federal District of Brasilia, which was once again shrouded in smoke on Sunday.

Brazil’s two most populous states, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, have also mobilised large numbers of troops to combat forest fires in their territories, many of which are suspected to have been started intentionally.

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