Climate change already affects the daily lives of Amazon population
One in three residents of the Amazon (32%) can already feel the effects of climate change directly. The data can be found in the population perception survey Mais Dados Mais Saúde – Clima e Saúde na Amazônia Legal (“More Data, More Health – Climate and Health Care in the Legal Amazon”), released this week.
According to the study, this perception is even greater among people who identify as part of traditional communities – such as indigenous people, quilombolas, riverine communities, and rubber tappers. Of these, 42.2 percent say they can already experience the effects of climate change.
“The Amazon has been prioritizing the establishment of a number of hydroelectric dams, large agricultural businesses, and large-scale deforestation. This has consequences. This development model is exclusionary and predatory, and reinforces poverty and inequality. Traditional peoples are directly affected by these consequences,” Luciana Vasconcelos Sardinha, deputy director for chronic noncommunicable diseases at Vital Strategies and technical head for the study, said in an interview with Agência Brasil.
Among the effects most commonly named by residents are increased electricity bills (83.4%), increased average temperatures (82.4%), increased air pollution (75%), increased occurrence of environmental disasters (74.4%), and increased food prices (73%).
Available at the Public Health Observatory, the survey was conducted online from May 27 to July 24, 2025, with 4,037 people living in one of the nine states that make up the Legal Amazon region – Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins.
Above-average temperatures
Two out of three respondents from the Legal Amazon (64.7%) reported experiencing heat waves in the last two years, with temperatures above the local average. Furthermore, about one-third of them (29.6%) stated that, also in the last two years, they experienced persistent drought, aggravated by more heat and less rain, as well as forest fires with intense smoke that impacted their daily activities (29.2%).
During the same time range, residents also reported witnessing environmental deforestation (28.7%), worsening air quality (26.7%), and worsening water quality (19.9%).
Among the people identifying as part of a traditional community, the top reports were of worsening water quality (24.1%) and problems with food production (21.4%).
Behavior
The survey also points out that climate change has already caused changes in the behavior of residents of the Legal Amazon. Half of the population stated, for example, that they had reduced practices they believe could contribute to the worsening of the problem (53.3%), and 38.4 percent said they felt guilty about wasting energy. Most residents usually separate their waste for recycling (64%), a practice that is even more common among traditional communities (70.1%).
According to Sardinha, even though traditional peoples are the most impacted by climate change, they are also the ones who can produce the most efficient responses to these consequences. “Respect for this cultural diversity, which comes from this [traditional] knowledge, is crucial when we think about how to solve these problems or improve quality of life,” she noted.
“We observe that traditional peoples are more exposed because they are more vulnerable and generally have lower incomes and less education. This is directly transforming the territory they live in, as well as their way of life. But it also shows their potential to reinvent themselves. They organize themselves largely in communities and networks, which has helped mitigate the consequences of climate change,” Sardinha said.
However, she went on to say, mitigating the effects of climate change also needs to be part of public policies that focus on reducing regional inequalities.
“We need to strengthen governance to achieve integrated planning and join forces to increase financial, logistical, and human resources, which are always scarce. So, if we do something in an integrated way, we can achieve better results. Another important way to mitigate these problems is through a development model that involves demographic participation, the socialization of these policies, and, above all, sustainability. We must take into account the initiative of traditional peoples,” she argued.
