Severe Drought Has Returned to The Amazon

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
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Severe Drought Has Returned to The Amazon

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP

Holder of one-fifth of the world's fresh water, the Amazon is beginning the dry season with many of its rivers already at critically low levels, prompting governments to anticipate contingency measures to address issues ranging from disrupted navigation to increasing forest fires.

“The Amazon Basin is facing one of the most severe droughts in recent years in 2024, with significant impacts on several member countries,” stated a technical note issued Wednesday by the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, which includes Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, The AP reported.

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year. Historically, the driest months are August and September, when fire and deforestation peak. So far, the most affected countries are Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, according to ACTO.

On Monday, Brazil’s federal water agency decreed a water shortage in two major basins, Madeira and Purus, which cover an area nearly the size of Mexico. The next day, Acre state declared an emergency amid an impending water shortage in its main city. In June, neighboring Amazonas state adopted the same measure in 20 of its 62 municipalities that are mostly only accessed by water or air, even in normal times.

These steps were taken more than two months earlier than in 2023, when most of the Amazon basin suffered its worst drought on record, killing dozens of river dolphins, choking cities with smoke for months and isolating thousands of people who depended on water transportation. The measures are used to increase monitoring, mobilize resources and personnel and request federal aid.

The depth of Madeira River, one of the largest Amazon tributaries and an important waterway for soybeans and fuel, went below 3 meters (10 feet) near Porto Velho on July 20. In 2023, that occurred on Aug. 15. Navigation has been limited during nighttime, and two of Brazil's largest hydroelectric plants may halt production, as happened last year.

In the Amazonas town of Envira, nearby rivers have become too shallow to navigate. Local officials have asked elders and pregnant women to move from riverine communities to the city center because otherwise medical help may not be able to reach them. Farmers who produce cassava flour can’t get it to market. As a result, this Amazon food staple has more than doubled in price, according to the local administration.

Another concern is fire. There were around 25,000 fires from January until late July — the highest number for this period in almost two decades. In the Amazon, fires are mostly human-made and used to manage pastures and clear deforested areas.

In Acre, the drought has already caused water supply shortages in several areas of its capital, Rio Branco. These communities now depend on trucked-in water, a problem experienced the previous year. Between the two droughts, severe flooding hit 19 of the state's 22 municipalities.

“It's been two years in a row of extreme events,” Julie Messias, Acre's secretary of environment, told The Associated Press. “The result is that we are facing a threat of food shortage. First the crops were flooded, and now the planting period is very dry.”



Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
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Italy Oyster Farmers Dream of Pearls from Warming Mediterranean 

A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 
A pearl oyster called Pinctada radiata is shown next to a farming site in the gulf of poets at La Spezia, Italy, August 29, 2024. (Paolo Varrella/Handout via Reuters) 

Pearls may soon be cultivated in European seas for the first time ever, as Italian oyster farmers seek to exploit an unexpected opportunity offered by the rapidly warming Mediterranean.

In late 2023, the first specimens of Pinctada radiata, a pearl oyster native to the Red Sea, were spotted in the Gulf of Poets, a popular tourist area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Genoa on Italy's north-western coast.

Less than a year later, they are proliferating in what have always been some of the Mediterranean's coldest waters, more normally associated with other types of oyster used for food rather than jewellery.

"We are looking into the possibility of producing cultivated pearls here," said Paolo Varrella, the head of a cooperative that has been breeding food oysters in the area since 2011.

The group has already made contact with pearl oyster farmers in Mexico to get tips on production techniques, Varrella said.

"The Pinctada radiata has been reported in the Ionian Sea around the island of Sicily since the 1970s, but only in the last decade has it moved north" to the cooler Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas that lap the western Italian mainland, said Salvatore Giacobbe, professor of ecology at the University of Messina.

It is the latest in a succession of alien warm-water species to enter the Mediterranean as it heats up due to climate change.

Manuela Falautano, a scientist at the Italian environmental research and protection institute ISPRA, said this trend had seen "an exponential increase" in the last decade.

Some of these species are aggressive and disrupt delicate ecosystems. In a few cases, such the spotted puffer fish and the scorpion fish, they are also dangerous to humans.

The 2.5 million square kilometer (970,000 square mile) expanse of water that separates southern Europe from Africa and the Middle East is heating up faster than the average of the world's seas, Falautano said.

BIG MONEY

Pearl production, more readily associated with Polynesian atolls than the northern Mediterranean, has an annual global turnover of 11 billion dollars, and Italian oyster farmers are keen to cash in.

Adriano Genisi, a pearl importer for more than 30 years, said the Radiata may produce gems similar to Japan's renowned "Akoya" pearls which have a diameter of 5-9 millimeters and a white color with shades of grey, pink and green.

If all goes well the first pearls could be harvested in about a year, he said.

The rising temperature of the Mediterranean is also blamed for an increase in violent storms such as the one that sank the luxury yacht of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch off Sicily last month, killing six passengers and the boat's cook.

Franco Reseghetti, a researcher at Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said measurements taken in the Tyrrhenian in December at depths of between 300 and 800 meters showed the highest temperatures since 2013, and he expected to see a further increase this year.

"The huge amount of energy behind this heating can act as a fuel for devastating atmospheric phenomena" such as the violent storm which appeared to have sunk the yacht off Sicily, Reseghetti said.