MANAUS, Brazil, Dec 20 2024 (IPS) - The flow of the igarapé always dropped for three months every year, but now it has been dry for two years in a row, complains Maria Aparecida dos Anjos, looking at the trickle of water that when flooded reaches the stilts of her wooden house, 50 metres away and on a slope of more than 10 metres high.

The stream, known as igarapé to the riverside dwellers, flows into the Negro river, the great northern tributary of the Amazon, whose flow has dropped by more than 15 metres compared to the rainy season, affecting the essential river transport and the fish-based diet of the local population.

The unprecedented drought temporarily interrupted the growing bonanza of the 30 families of the Santa Helena do Inglês community since they received electricity from the government’s Light for All programme in 2012, reinforced in 2020 by solar energy provided by the non-governmental  Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS).“Energy is life, or perhaps the river is life, but without energy it doesn't work”: Nelson Brito de Mendonça.

The Vista Rio Negro community lodge, with eight rooms, has had to suspend its activities since August this year because of the drought. Ecotourism is an important source of income for the community near Anavilhanas, an attractive river archipelago.

Half of the lodge’s income is share among the community, while the rest goes to salaries, expenses and maintenance.

The guests would spread the word on “the suffering to get to the lodge”, having to walk hundreds of metres on uneven ground and mud, given the distance from the riverbank, and “no one would come anymore”, explained Nelson Brito de Mendonça, 48 and president of the community for the last 22 years, when IPS visited the place.

Berth at the Santa Helena do Inglês lodge, where the Negro River flows during the rainy season in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Communities only accessible by river

Santa Helena is only accessible by river. It takes an hour and a half by speedboat to travel the 64-kilometre distance between the community and Manaus, the Amazonian capital of 2.2 million people. The “Englishman’s” addition comes from a British couple who lived there in the past.

“The inn used to receive occasional guests during the dry period, but it only closed completely in 2023 and 2004,” the two years of severe drought, said Keith-Ivan Oliveira, 54 and manager of the establishment, located at the entrance to the community, with a berth where the water comes in, but now hundreds of metres from the river.

He hopes to reopen the inn in January. For that “the water has to rise a lot, otherwise the big boats can’t reach it,” because of the risk of getting stuck on the sandbanks, he said.

Ecotourism, also practised by several local families in their small individual dwellings, was only made viable by electricity, especially from solar energy, which complemented the energy transmitted by cables, which was insufficient and frequently interrupted by trees blown down by rain and winds.

Air conditioning, indispensable for tourist comfort in the Amazonian heat, takes a lot of energy.

The Pousada Vista Rio de Negro, opened in 2014 as a source of income for the Santa Helena do Inglês community, home to 30 families of fisherpeople, cassava farmers and artisans in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

No power, no water, no food

“Other communities suffer water shortages, but we don’t because we have two sources of energy, the cable network and solar power. If there is no electricity, there is no water, which is then pumped,” Oliveira said.

Santa Helena uses water from an 86-metre deep well that reaches three elevated reservoirs in the highest part of the community. From there, the water drains by gravity to the consumption premises.

For Dos Anjos, who is 59 and heads a typical local family with eight children and six grandchildren, most of them living in Santa Helena, electricity means the comfort of having a refrigerator and not having to keep meat in salt, as well as fans to keep out the heat, television and other electrical appliances.

Lucilene Ferreira de Oliveira, 39, who also has eight children, benefits doubly. She is a cook at the inn, which earns her about 700 reais (US$120) a month when it is open, and she prepares ready-made food at home that she sells in the community. The refrigerator and electric oven are indispensable to her.

Keith-Ivan Oliveira, manager of the Pousada Vista Rio Negro, at the entrance of the ice factory under construction, which will have its own solar energy. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

She highlights the educational improvement for the children. “The school now has air conditioning, which is turned on when it is very hot, a benefit for everyone,” she said.

The electricity also favoured the internet connection that allows for virtual classes, which is necessary since the local school only covers the first five years of Brazilian primary education.

Elizabeth Ferreira da Silva, 16, a granddaughter of Dos Anjos, is completing her ninth and final year of primary school online. The knowledge she has accumulated on the web has facilitated the work she does with the inn’s communications, which is essential in attracting tourists from far away, including foreigners.

The community actually tried solar energy before, in 2011, but it was a very small plant that was soon rendered useless by lightning. Now it has a modern plant with 132 panels and 54 lithium batteries, installed by UCB Power, a company specialising in energy storage, which is sharing the project with FAS.

The solar panels of the plant that will supply the ice factory in the Amazonian community of Santa Helena do Inglês, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It will produce three tonnes per day. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Ice empowers fishing

In addition, Santa Helena already has another plant, with 84 panels, for the operation of an ice factory that is expected to be launched in a few months, with a capacity of three tonnes per day.

This is another project promoted by the FAS and vital to enhance the income of the Amazonian coastal villages, fisherpeople by nature.

“With our ice, we will no longer have to buy it in Manaus, to preserve the fish and sell it at a better price,” Mendonça celebrated. The inhabitants often lose their fish for lack of ice and “already had to give it for free to the trading companies,” he said.

“Energy is life, or perhaps the river is life, but without energy it doesn’t work,” he said, admitting that the ice factory only came about because the community managed to get help for the second solar plant.

The network of electricity distribution cables reached the Brazilian Amazonian community of Santa Helena in 2012, but with insufficient power and frequent interruptions. Solar plants installed later overcame the shortfall, but encourage activities that increase demand and require more energy. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The river dwellers are gaining independence as fisherpeople and reducing their conservation and transport costs, which results in higher profits and better productivity and quality of the fish, Oliveira summarised.

This process points to the beginning of transformations in Santa Helena and the other 18 communities of the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), an environmental conservation area of 103,086 hectares in which its inhabitants remain, taking advantage of their natural resources but in a sustainable way.

The reserve was created in 2008 after eleven dwellers were arrested for illegal logging and sparked a movement for traditional peoples’ rights, sources of income and dignified livelihoods.

Negotiations with the Amazonas state authorities in the capital Manaus resulted in the creation of the RDS. As a result, the inhabitants of the reserve gained the exclusive right to fish in the local section of the Negro River and the departure of the companies that carried out industrial and predatory fishing.

The riverside dwellers became fisherpeople on a commercial scale and today have 13 boats, almost all of them with a capacity of five tons of fish. The ice factory has taken activity to a new level, even if the drought temporarily threatens the activity.

Timber extraction is limited to personal use and sustainably managed forests. Fishing, ecotourism and the cultivation of cassava (manioc), from which flour is made in the various “flour houses”, are the main sources of income.

Lucilene Ferreira de Oliveira, the inn’s cook, also produces meals for sale at her home, an activity that requires sufficient energy for her refrigerators and electric oven, in the small community of Santa Helena do Inglês, in Brazil’s northeastern Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

An example

This is a model to be replicated in the many Amazonian riverside communities, according to Valcleia dos Santos Lima, manager of sustainable community development at FAS.

The community of Bauana, in the municipality of Carauari, in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, has already installed a plant with 80 photovoltaic panels and 32 batteries. In this case, the idea was to launch “a productive chain of factories that benefit from andiroba and murumuru oil,” this graduate in public policy management told IPS.

These are two Amazonian species, respectively a tree and a palm tree (Carapa guianensis and astrocaryum murumuru) whose fruits produce oils for medicinal and cosmetic use.

Energy is key for Amazonians to thrive, to add value to bio-economy products and to promote community-based tourism. In addition, almost one million inhabitants of the Amazon do not have electricity and 313 of the 582 communities in which the FAS operates only have it for four hours a day, Lima recalled.

“In this context, it is important that renewable energy can meet social demands as well as the demands of the economy and employment,” she concluded.