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‘Climate Elders’: How climate change is hurting older people in the Americas

From the United States to the Andes or Brazil, the project brings together portraits of older people living in regions affected by global warming and explains how they are coping with it

Leonardo Carrato

Dec 02, 2025 - 17:31CET

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Ubaldo Almeida, 61, is a farmer who lives at an altitude of 2,370 meters in the northwest of the Andes, in the town of Cahuasquí, Ecuador. Water supply is a constant concern for all farmers in the area. Although the first canals to bring this resource to the highlands date back to the Inca era, climate change has made that supply increasingly unstable, and illegal mining in the nearby mountains poses yet another threat. For Ubaldo, who switched from traditional agriculture to the more profitable cultivation of herbs for cosmetic use, the availability of clean water has become even more crucial, as the family business is strictly organic.Thomas Byczkowski

Gregorio Ríos, 75, is a self-taught architect. He has worked on the construction of several water systems in Peru and Bolivia. A few years ago, he returned to his native San Pedro de Casta, in the central Andes of Peru, where he has been promoting the restoration and construction of ancient ‘water harvesting’ infrastructure, as many local farmers were experiencing droughts due to climate change.Francisco Vigo

Api'soomaahka (William Singer III) stands by the dry pond next to his home in the Kainai Nation near Stand Off, Alberta. The disappearance of the pond is a symptom of the declining water table, which now casts uncertainty on the viability of his well. At 60, Api'soomaahka is becoming an elder in the traditional sense, but he has been working to restore the native prairie on his plot, called Naapi's Garden, as a means of building ecosystem resilience, food security, and cultural recovery in the face of climate change. Amber Bracken

Robert Reddick, 72, works as a lifeguard at the Arcola Lake Senior Center in Miami, Florida. He has been affected because there is less outdoor activity. Everything has moved indoors because southern Florida is experiencing extreme heat. His job is to make families aware of the dangers of heat exposure so they can prevent heat-related illnesses. Ed Kashi

Peter Lucey, 70, stands next to one of four trees he helped plant on municipal land in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles. A lifelong Angeleno, he and other like-minded neighbors are employing “guerrilla” tactics against climate change, such as planting trees on land abandoned by the city. Sara Terry

Francisco Correia da Silva, known as Chico, walks among the rocks that were once a mighty river in Rodeador, Minas Gerais, Brazil. With a mixture of nostalgia and sadness, he recalls how he used to fish in that river as a teenager. Now 80 years old, Chico is known by everyone in the small town. Chico explains that, over the years, monoculture farms have cleared the vegetation around the river's springs, which, in his opinion, has led to less rainfall and the drying up of the riverbed. Ana Caroline de Lima

Maria das Graças de Souza, 74, from the Mora indigenous group and resident of the Parque das Tribos neighborhood in Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil. "Last year's record drought dried up the Anaconda and Tarumã rivers. It affected us greatly; it affected our leisure time, our fishing, the fish we used to catch and eat. It really did a lot of damage, and it still affects us, because the hardest thing now is finding fish around here. You walk around this area and you can't find fish to eat, unless you go to the City of Lights. This has never happened before," she says.Leonardo Carrato

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