Where Amazon meets ocean: A Brazilian community fights rising tides

On Marajo Island, astatine the confluence of the Amazon River and Atlantic Ocean successful bluish Brazil, beingness ebbs and flows with the tides.

For much than 4 decades, Ivanil Brito recovered paradise successful her humble stilt house, conscionable 20 metres (65ft) from the shoreline, wherever she and her hubby Catito fished, cultivated crops, and tended to livestock.

“I was a precise blessed idiosyncratic successful that small portion of land. That was my paradise,” she says.

That paradise vanished during a convulsive tempest successful February 2024, erstwhile relentless waters surged done Vila bash Pesqueiro town, eroding the coastline that had nourished generations. “Even though we didn’t determination far, it feels similar a wholly antithetic world,” says Ivanil from their caller colony little than a kilometre (half a mile) inland. “This is simply a mangrove country – hotter, noisier, and not a spot wherever we tin rise animals oregon turn crops.”

Vila bash Pesqueiro, location to astir 160 families, lies wrong the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, a protected country nether the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Established to sphere accepted ways of beingness and sustainable assets management, the reserve present confronts the harsh realities of clime change. While sportfishing remains the superior livelihood, section cuisine and tourism supply supplementary income to the residents. Yet, intensifying tides and accelerating erosion endanger their existence.

For Ivanil’s lad Jhonny, a fisherman studying biology astatine Universidade bash Para, successful the Marajo-Soure campus, these transformations are worrying. “The spot wherever our houses utilized to beryllium is present underwater,” helium says. “For me, moving isn’t conscionable astir information – it’s astir protecting the spot and the radical who shaped my life.”

Meanwhile, residents similar Benedito Lima and his woman Maria Lima person chosen to remain, contempt their location present lasting perilously adjacent to the water’s edge. Leaving would mean surrendering their livelihood. “Every caller tide shakes the ground,” Benedito says, gazing towards what utilized to beryllium a safely distant canal. “This isn’t adjacent the high-tide play yet.”

Climate adaptation present takes assorted forms. Some rebuild farther inland, portion others set their regular routines to accommodate the sea’s advance. Community person Patricia Ribeiro believes a corporate resilience sustains Vila bash Pesqueiro. “Our stories person ever been passed down done generations,” she says. “This is our home, our ancestry. We privation to enactment present to support what our families built. As agelong arsenic we’re together, we won’t springiness up.”

As Brazil prepares to big the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) successful adjacent Belem, communities similar Vila bash Pesqueiro exemplify what is astatine stake. Through its initiatives, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it supports efforts to heighten resilience, support livelihoods, and guarantee these families tin proceed surviving safely connected their ancestral lands.

This photograph assemblage was provided by the International Organization for Migration.