LIVING ON WATER: Amphibious communities in the Amazon Rainforest

Water in the Amazon Rainforest is a critical life support system for all of us, regulating local to global climate, providing 20% of the ocean’s freshwater supply and supporting a tenth of the world’s plant and animal species as well as 34 million people living in the jungle. As Amazonian cities swell with rapid urban migration, growing populations inhabit the wet edges of the urban landscape. For hundreds of thousands living in amphibious communities along the Amazon River Basin’s urban centers, living on water in floating or stilted homes is not only tied to cultural opportunities but also to health and disease, discrimination, and other socio-political barriers to upward mobility. This chapter examines how collaboration between Pacific Rim designers and researchers and an amphibious community in the urbanized Peruvian Amazon Rainforest can offer solutions to adversities carved by water and enforced by systemic poverty. This collaboration aims to bolster traditional practices and develop practical water-focused solutions that support a clean environment, vector control, habitat balance and health and well-being with benefits from the individual up to the global community scale.