Climate Crisis on the Madeira River: Meanings Produced in a Public Hearing

Abstract

This article analyzes the meanings attributed to climate change and large-scale enterprises on the Madeira River by leaders of Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and popular movements who live and struggle in the territory of the Lower Madeira. The information was generated during a public hearing held in April 2026 in Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil. The analysis, in turn, was guided by Social Psychology. Throughout the text, we discuss how riverside communities, Indigenous peoples, and popular movements name the effects of extreme climate events and connect them to the expansion of hydroelectric dams and agribusiness in the Amazon. The climate crisis experienced in the territory is understood as part of the historical contradictions between a predatory development model and the reproduction of life among affected communities. By addressing denunciations, material and symbolic losses, and collectively formulated proposals, the article argues that public spaces of listening and confrontation are places where suffering takes on social form and territorial and environmental rights are affirmed. Thus, throughout the debate, fragmented and naturalizing interpretations of the production of climate extremes are questioned, especially those that intentionally separate Nature from the mode of production. On the other hand, the meanings identified point to the need to produce and occupy public spaces in order to influence the construction of public policies that protect traditional communities, Indigenous peoples, and vulnerable populations from climate extremes, based on the paths indicated by the impacted communities. In addition, the article emphasizes that these disputes must be carried out without losing sight of the fact that, under capitalism, Nature is always in dispute as something to be inserted into the market as a commodity serving the profit of a minority.