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This is a guest blog by Amazon Program Intern Lilian Alves and Amazon Program Director Brent Millikan.

The Northeast of Brazil is well-known for its periodic episodes of severe drought that cause particular hardship for those already suffering from extreme poverty, especially in the region's backlands (sertão). Last month, however, the Northeast was hit by devastating floods, where over fifty people were killed and an estimated 150,000 were left homeless. The center of the tragedy has been the Mundaú and Paraíba river basins in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco, where sudden massive flooding, likened by local observers to a tsunami, devastated towns, farms, bridges and even factories. In the town of Branquinha (Alagoas), an estimated 80% of residential housing was destroyed.

In additional to intense storms and abnormally high rainfall levels, the unprecedented flooding (despite initial denials by local politicians) has been directly linked to a series of dam bursts along the two rivers and their tributaries. The dam bursts reflect a lack of adequate safeguards in the construction and maintenance of both public and private dams, the latter typically for large sugarcane plantations. In the Northeast region, it is estimated that there are at least 100,000 small and medium dams, both old and new, most of which were built with little or no regard for environmental impacts and dam safety.

Devastating floods in the Northeast are also linked to the cl