{
  "id": 16225409,
  "title": "Amazon communities lose water as mining and deforestation reshape rivers",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/23/amazon-communities-lose-water-as-mining-and-deforestation-reshape",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-23T18:15:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mongabay",
    "slug": "mongabay",
    "url": "https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/amazon-communities-lose-water-as-mining-and-deforestation-reshape-rivers/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The Indigenous communities residing in the southern Peruvian Amazon, particularly the Arazaire Indigenous community, are witnessing a significant decline in their water resources due to illegal mining activities. These activities have not only dried up the Inambari River, a once thriving source of life for the community, but have also contaminated the water, forcing residents to purchase potable water. Erick Tijé, a Harakmbut resident, expressed his disappointment over the changed reality, where the water they once relied on for fishing and daily life has become murky and unusable.\n\nSimilarly, in the Colombian Amazon, the Coreguaje people of the Jácome Indigenous Reserve are facing a similar challenge. Lázaro Ibañez, an elder of the community, attributes the dwindling water availability to rampant cattle ranching and the effects of climate change. He lamented the transformation of lush forest landscapes into barren pasture lands, with hardly any trees left, all driven by the need for grazing for cattle. This process has gone hand-in-hand with the drying up of their water sources, leaving the inhabitants of these regions in a paradoxical situation - surrounded by water, yet unable to use it.\n\nFor these Indigenous peoples, the loss of their water sources is not just about the absence of physical water bodies. It's about the disappearance of the spirits that were believed to guard their water sources. These spirits, driven away by the encroachment of logging and cattle ranching, have left the communities feeling a profound loss. This situation, as reported by Mongabay in partnership with Colombian news outlet El Espectador and Venezuela’s El Correo del Caroní, and analyzed using satellite data over a span of more than two decades, paints a grim picture of the impact of deforestation and mining on the world's largest rainforest and its Indigenous inhabitants.",
  "summary": "“People think that because we live in the forest we have plenty of water, but this is the reality,” Erick Tijé, an Indigenous Harakmbut resident of the southern Peruvian Amazon, says in a tone of disappointment, pointing to the murky water flowing down the Inambari River. That river isn’t what it was five years ago, […]",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}