The Brazil Project
Climate change is already impacting regions across the globe, stressing water resources, threatening livelihoods, and contributing to rural-to-urban migration and violence. Peace Rising is working towards facilitating the most impacted people and regions to predict and prepare for the impacts of climate change. To do so, we will use our global environmental conflict mapping project along with community based participatory GIS to generate locally based preparedness and solutions. We believe that people have a fundamental right to participate and contribute to the emerging field of environmental mapping while supporting data accessibility and sovereignty. To do so, we will begin with farming communities in Ceará, Brazil to identify the hardest-hit locations and work towards climate preparedness and solutions.
Farmers in the state of Ceará, Brazil are losing their land due to soil degradation, contributing to rural-to-urban migration and violence in Fortaleza. The hardest hit areas and their geographic extents are unknown. Climate change is worsening already frequent regional droughts, leading to reduced farmer incomes, food insecurity, and economic instability. Simultaneously, more and more young people are moving to Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará, which has the 9th highest murder rate in the world. These rural youth often lack the skill sets to participate in Fortaleza’s formal job markets, making them vulnerable to gang recruitment. To break the link of income insecurity, urban migration, and gang violence, agricultural communities must be able to predict and prepare for increasing droughts. These factors, taken together, suggest the urgent need to support local farmers’ drought resilience, economic security, and climate planning. We will do so by combining community based contributions to our global mapping model to generate local solutions.
