Amazonian cities and extreme hydro-climatic events: research to reduce vulnerability and build resilience

This research partnership will build and strengthen scientific collaboration between UK and Brazilian researchers. Our team will work together to develop new, innovative research in order to reduce the vulnerability of Amazonian cities to extreme climatic events, such as floods and droughts. We hope that this research enables decision-makers in Brazil to identify those cities that need humanitarian assistance most during climate emergencies, and also build long-term resilience (capacity to absorb these shocks) to floods and droughts. Our team members come from various academic disciplines, including statistics, health science, economics, environmental social science, and spatial modelling. We will use secondary data sources to examine how adaptive capacity, local institutions and natural hazard exposure (the occurrence of droughts and floods) influence the negative impacts of these climate events on the well-being of people living in Amazonian cities. We are also interested in how extreme climatic events may influence food prices in these cities, which has implications for the affordability of food for the poorest city-dwellers. Our network also involves local citizens, and we will work with a range of community members in our focal cities in order to make sure that are research is locally-relevant and useful. Finally, we are investing significant effort in improving career opportunities for Amazonian scientists, and will achieve this through UK-Brazil researcher exchange, and workshops to train Masters and PhD students in the UK and Brazil.

ODA Compliance: We aim to enhance the capacity of Brazilian institutions to assess (and reduce) vulnerability to extreme hydro-climatic events in Amazonia. We address the impacts of these events on urban food insecurity, nutrition and multiple dimensions of poverty, using advanced quantitative methods. The long-term goal of our multi-disciplinary network is to improve governance and welfare in some of Brazil's most vulnerable cities - characterized by remoteness, extreme poverty and low development indicators. We will invest in early-career Amazonian scientists' analytical skills, long-term institutional cooperation, and dialogue with citizens and policy-makers. Our research on river-based food distribution and food prices will be useful for government and delivers potential economic benefits for the transport sector. We aim to develop an early warning system for predicting urban food insecurity during droughts and floods. This will enable government to improve humanitarian intervention during climate emergencies and enhance resilience through strategic investment in infrastructure and institutional adaptations.
Who will benefit from this research partnership? Understanding how extreme hydro-climatic events and adaptive capacity interact to cause food insecurity in developing countries provides vital information for reducing the negative impacts of environmental change. This is a key step in developing greater societal resilience to climate shocks. Owing to its novel, topical and applied nature, this research will bring significant benefits to the academic community, governments and the public in UK, Brazil and elsewhere.
How will these groups benefit? 1. Academia: This research will advance the role of quantitative social science as means of understanding major global challenges and developing solutions. This research will generate significant excitement and interest in academic communities, including climate change science, natural hazards research, global environmental change, food security and development studies. Brazilian academia will benefit from cross-disciplinary collaborations (e.g. health sciences and space science) and building new links between partner institutions in Amazonia (e.g. Federal University of Pará, Federal University of Amazonas).
2. Governments: The UK government is actively seeking to advance global efforts to understand and tackle climate change and food insecurity. The proposed research would provide novel evidence for predicting vulnerability to climate change and extreme climatic events. This research will also provide substantial benefits to various levels of government in Brazil, facilitated by close engagement with relevant agencies throughout the research process. This will maximise the potential benefits and adoption of the predictive food insecurity tool to aid planning and disaster response. This would provide the Brazilian government with access to an evidence-based system for strategic investment in adaptive capacity for areas with the greatest vulnerability, and increased ability to intervene effectively during disasters in distribution of resources (e.g. food, fuel, healthcare). Scientists within key Brazilian institutions (e.g. health research agency, FioCruz) will directly benefit through the sharing of model code (done in R) during the research process.
3. The public: Our Amazon seminar series will help to increase general understanding about climate adaptation and food insecurity. We will also provide a voice to those normally invisible during emergencies (through our network of citizens), where top-down approaches have been dominant. Workshops will provide new opportunities for dialogue between stakeholders and will highlight ways to maximise the impact for users of the proposed online map-based early warning system to illustrate municipality-scale vulnerability to food insecurity during droughts and floods.