“Vulnerabilities and compound risks of escalating climate disasters in the Brazilian Amazon”

Abstract

Abstract The Brazilian Amazon is severely impacted by extreme climate events, with 1.8 million people (6.4% of the Brazilian Amazon’s population) affected by climate-related disasters each year between 2018 and 2022. Yet, how climate disasters specifically affect human populations in different municipalities in the Amazon is underexplored. We target this gap, presenting a region-wide spatiotemporal assessment of climate-related disasters and social vulnerability across the Brazilian Amazon over the period 2000–2022, considering floods, droughts, heatwaves, fires, and landslides, and using a compound risk lens. Analysis of secondary data shows disaster frequency surged, with wet events rising fivefold, fires tenfold, and droughts and heatwaves tripling. Economic losses rose 370% reaching USD 634.2 million annually, with wet events most damaging. Farming sustained over 60% of total losses, followed by infrastructure, housing, and health services. Smaller municipalities, which host 61% of the region’s Indigenous population, experienced the highest relative impacts, including a 9.58% loss in economic growth and lower Social Progress Index scores. Data on non-economic losses and damages were lacking, but further exacerbated the impacts in these vulnerable areas. Findings underscore that climate change is a poverty multiplier, and highlight the urgent need for adaptation policy interventions to be justice-centered.