Under the scorching midday sun, Pedrina Brito de Mendonça picks her way through sandy terrain dotted with shrubs and driftwood. Sandbanks and cracked mudflats stretch into the distance, hemmed in by a line of trees on the horizon, while fresh grass grows around an almost stagnant water channel.
This desolate landscape would be beautiful if it weren’t such a stark reminder of the toll the climate crisis is taking on the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Mendonça is walking along the dried-out bed of Brazil’s Rio Negro, a major Amazon river that has been reduced to a shadow of its former self as a historic drought ravages the rainforest.
