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The scientists predict hurricanes and violent storms
worsen drought affect crops
the sea is devouring every inch of the beaches
while the natural cycles of insects, birds, mammals are getting out of control
like a broken clock
is the climate change
the footprint that 7 billion of humans are leaving on the planet
we are all responsible
but also witnesses and victims
Our journey begins in a lush Colombian Lanscape
on the shores of Uraba
is a journey through communities attempting to adapt to
a new planet
Here people live on fishing
fishery
but
for some time now
fishing has changed a lot
a fisherman spends up to 15 days without catching a single fish
then I say
that is virtually the climate, because they are getting drying,
the edge of the mangroves are drying.
We are in the last swamp
of Tumarado
This swamp has been greatly affected
by the sedimentation of this channel
of Tumaradocito
the size of this swamp… was previously…
...its limits were over there by where those wetlands and those cativo
Now with sedimentation we has been losing all this, as you can see...
here in the part where we are now, previously
it were about twenty feet depth
now,
today it just 3 feet
deep
Well, this situation has affected the community a lot because
the river has lost fish species
that were frequently caught in this sector before
And you know, we are a fishing community
this affects us
because the fishery has been declining.
To give you the idea, in the past we use to said
that during the month of March,
great tides rise from the sea, and reverse the current of the Atrato river
and we have about 10 years or longer than this no longer happens
with the river, and this affects us because
we fish in the sea
and if the freshwater
extends far into the sea
fishing gets hard… and when the Atrato river is flooded
fishing gets harder… forces us to go much further to the sea to find seawater
to find some fish. Before… we sat on
the river bank on summer nights,
It was frightening so much fish noise in the water, the anchovies
would swim close to the mangroves, and that caused a lot of noise and you could hear big fishes jumping in the water.
Now... the river never reverses its flow
We not heard fish from shore, sometimes hear
a jumping fish
but never with the same frequency as in the past
This weather is mad
you can feel the heat
now you have to find a
tree or a house to cool down
because the greatly increased heat around here, before it was not like this,
It rained and rained and rained here
you could feel cold here
your clothing was dampened and wet
but not now
Now everything is mad
The climate of before, it was a very mild weather
when it was summer ...
the sun beat hard but you didn't feel, it was breezy
and before the cold here was hard, huge, you had to take thick blankets
to be able to sleep, but not today
now, the heat wants to kill you here
High Heat
This also affects the children, for their studies much heat affects them seriously
the heat affects the water
when the water gets hotter, the fishes immersed
at depths which we can not be reached
Now people can't live here, they can't raise a family, then
the move to find better and easier ways of living.
Here are several people who work cutting trees
in order to support their families because fishing isn't an option anymore
And something else that hurts
the community is the indiscriminate felling of trees
from the municipality of Turbo, come many "corta pilotes" (lumberjacks)
they cut the mangrove and mangrove secretes
an ink
an ink…that
well...that repels fish
then the fish do not come close to the mangrove and swim away
Now we can not live on fishing
try to live of fishery now is condemning him and his family to starve.
Imagine, here lived before 20-21 years youngsters
They lived by fishing
but
they only needed 1 or 2 nets of fish to support them selfs
but now when fishing has being damage… if we do not take fish with a giant net, How would they do with two small nets?
these young men had to go away from here
then the result is that it is running out of
village (people).
during the 20th century the sea level rose 15 centimeters
worldwide
when I was born and I opened my eyes
I used to go
as a girl and walked out of here
up there, where the aquarium
is.
there was a sandy beach.
the sea took all that.
In the last decade
Urabá's coastline have lost over 100 meters
with an average annualerosion up to 20 meters in some areas.
We are believed that perhaps
the sea level is rising , we may not see it,
but by this we could believe that mangroves also tends to disappear
disappear
and that the only fish reserve we have in this area
in this area.
Under the 21st century the sea level is expected to rise 59 centimeters
threatening coastal communities, wetlands
mangroves and coral reefs
in the last ten years
more than a quarter of the world's reefs have died
because the rise in the temperature in water
We note that climate change is affecting us
and it will continue to affect us if we do nothing about it.
We have to protect
this territory
this wetland, mangrove reserve
that the government gave us one day
and that despite our protected and effort, we don't see the positive results
but that is what we must do
preserve this territory, in spite of being the only ones
who do it.
To mitigate the effect on climate changes
We believe that the only thing to do is to protect
living on the reserve on the flora and fauna and all
this we have here in this beautiful place of Bocas del Atrato