Dr. I. Foster Brown, Senior Scientist, WHRC

This is a meeting of the riverine community of Porturupi on the upper Enviro river of Acre in Brazil's southwestern Amazon. He is answering the question. Has he observed changes in climate? Yes, the river is drying and cold fronts are more intense. Developed Amazonian communities understand the context of climate change, especially at the regional level. We use audience participation and imagination. In this case, people represent vegetation in states east of Acre and southern Brazil. The wind blows water vapor from the Atlantic Ocean west to Acre. On the way, it is recycled by the vegetation in Para, Mato Grosso and Hondona. This recycling occurs due to the absorption of rainfall that penetrates the soil and returns it to the atmosphere, which is transported further west to repeat the cycle during the dry season. However, the pastures in the deforested region are not as efficient in returning water to the atmosphere as forests are. More of the rainfall flows into rivers and returns to the ocean, less gets to Acre in southern Brazil. So residents of Puerto Rubin are also dependent on how people use forest in the eastern Amazon. And because winds turn south over Acre, the rainfall in southern Brazil, the breadbasket of the country, could depend on how people in Puerto Rbin use the forest. We did this play in order to explain the meaning of the word teleconnection and how we are all interconnected where decisions of the people in one area can reverberate thousands of kilometers. In this interview, a local resident asked me about the future of the children who had been attending of talks. My reply is that they will be my age in 2060, by which time large changes are likely to occur, many of them negative to our planet if we follow our current path. The challenge for the adults who are present at the talks is how to leave the planet a better place for our children. The sequence of talks and debates in local Amazon communities is an attempt to help us all understand what we need to do.