Researchers Call for Action on Reporting, Mitigation and Adaptation
STONY BROOK, NY – December 8, 2025 – A new study published in Environmental Research Letters and conducted by an international team supported in part by the Fulbright Amazonia Program reveals thousands of disasters caused by weather had vast impacts to millions and people and vast infrastructure costs to the people of the Amazon.
The team, which includes co-corresponding author Liliana M. Dávalos, Stony Brook professor from the College of Arts and Sciences department of Ecology & Evolution, focused on extreme weather and its human impacts in its research. This, to their knowledge, is the first attempt to quantify weather-related disasters events reported by municipalities to central governments in Amazonian countries. The team compiled and analyzed 11 years (2013-2023) of disaster reports from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, standardized into storms, floods, landslides, droughts and wildfires. They found 12,451 such weather-related disasters reported in Amazonian municipalities, hurting millions of people, with large impacts to public infrastructure such as roads, schools, and health centers.
“As important as this first-pass is, we hope it becomes a call to action; what we do not count, cannot be addressed, and this is an opportunity to align data collection to the magnitude of events we expect as climate continues to change,” said Liliana M. Dávalos, Stony Brook professor and co-corresponding author.
Credit: Article Authors
“We know South America, like all continents, is becoming hotter and drier with global heating, but how extreme weather is already affecting people on the ground is unknown,” said Ane Alencar, IPAM’s Director of Science and co-corresponding author of the paper.
“There was this unexplored question: what if we can already see how floods, landslides, and fires are reshaping how people live?” said Rayane Pacheco, lead author of the article, and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol.
The number and impact of disasters is still underestimated because data were unavailable for several countries.
One of the first steps to addressing these vast impacts is to support countries in making disaster data timely and accessible so it can be used in planning, improving lives and livelihoods throughout the region. Based on her experience at the Bolivia, Peru and Brazil triple border Galia Selaya, coauthor and ECOSCONSULT (Bolivia) founder emphasized, “We are not starting from zero; there are initiatives to articulate early warning systems to prevent and mitigate disasters, but they need to be strengthened.”
One goal is to promote collaboration among Amazonian countries to better track extreme weather impacts through time. By quantifying and analyzing the distribution of weather disasters across space and time, the authors took the first step to reducing and mitigating those impacts on the peoples of the Amazon.
“We aim for policy makers across Amazonian countries to see and reflect on the disaster numbers for each country and learn from regional experiences; by sharing information and updating disaster action plans the Amazon can increase its preparedness for what will come with our new and changing climate,” said Juan P. Iñamagua, Professor at Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador, and article coauthor.
Authors see the paper as a call to action. Sabina Ribeiro, professor at Universidade Federal do Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, highlights the need to think about Amazon beyond borders. “It is crucial to view the Amazon as a unified system, with transboundary responses to transboundary impacts. Countries within the Amazon must work together to tackle challenges that affect all nations that share the Amazon. A unified strategy is urgent!”
Their findings cannot be more timely as national representatives discuss initiatives such as the Tropical Forests Forever Fund at the first Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change to take place in the Amazon, the ongoing CoP30 at Belém do Pará. With their findings in hand, a brief summary of the results was delivered at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) symposium at CoP30.
“All the data we collected is available to ACTO and to anyone who needs it,“ said Alencar, who delivered the message at the symposium.
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