The Amazon’s changing climate Brazil contains 30 per cent of the world’s tropical rainforest and one-fifth of all freshwater resources. Indigenous people are key to protecting these valuable resources.

Fifty-four-year-old Maria says she has noticed the climate changing. Plants are growing more slowly in the Amazon village of Miratu. They have less kale and cabbage. Yams and bananas are smaller. “ We’d have so much yam, we’d get fed up with it. Today we want it for breakfast but we don’t have enough.”

As temperatures rise, Maria and others in her village are leaving earlier for work in the fields. Sometimes they have to stop working by ten in the morning because it’s too hot.

“ Before nature was all beautiful, but things are changing. Before we could just plant things and let nature do the rest.” “ This winter we haven’t had much rain. And the sun was so hot we could see the earth cracking. “ Now sometimes summer seems like winter, winter like summer.”

A new road runs just 500 metres from Miranha territory. Their land is not protected and their resources such as brazil nuts have been disappearing. A rubbish tip alongside the road is polluting one of their main sources of water.

Dead trees line the road where the road has blocked the flow of a stream and the trees have become waterlogged.

Maria’s nephew Mariano works for the indigenous movement: “ Before, indigenous people just took what they needed. When the white men came with their greed and ambition, they started to transform this nature into money, resources started to disappear.”

Supported by our partner CIMI Tefe, the people of Miratu have mapped their land and resources and are lobbying for entry posts where people access it. .

“ I don’t know what people want from the Amazon,” says Mariano. “ Some people talk about the richness of its resources and want part of it.” “ Others say it will be responsible for the balance of the climate of the whole planet.”

“ We are concerned to know what changes in policies, not just in Brazil, but worldwide, will be adopted to make sure we are not dominated.”

How you can help cafod.org.uk/climatejustice Picture credits: Marcella Haddad