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While the work of waste pickers advances urban sustainability, there has been little focus on how climate change impacts affect them. This paper reports on a pilot study with 61 waste pickers in Minas Gerais, Brazil to understand their perspectives on climate change impacts and actions. It explores how waste pickers experience climate change impacts at home and at work, their adaptive strategies and the specific actions and actors needed to address these impacts. Waste pickers have practical knowledge and experience of climate events. But due to precarious employment and lack of access to services, infrastructure and social support, their responses are improvised and inefficient. They require better institutional support and their proposals must be incorporated into a negotiated approach to urban resilience. Proposals such as the climate bonus – similar to the existing recycling bonus – may help address the structural drivers of vulnerability for waste pickers in Minas Gerais. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In hydrological modelling, it is important to consider the uncertainties related to a model's structures and parameters when different hydrological models are used to represent a system. Therefore, an adequate analysis of daily discharge forecasts that takes into account the performance of hydrological models can assist in identifying the best extreme discharge forecasts. In this context, this study aims to evaluate the performance of three hydrological models—Lavras Simulation of Hydrology (LASH), Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC), and Distributed Hydrological Model (MHD-INPE) in the Verde River basin. The results demonstrate that LASH and MHD can accurately simulate discharges, thereby establishing them as crucial tools for managing water resources in the study region's basins. Moreover, these findings could serve as a cornerstone for future studies focusing on food and water security, particularly when examining their connection to climate change scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the ongoing transformation of the livestock raising component of a complex agrosilvopastoral management system associated with the Geraizeiro of northern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Increasing droughts and regional climate change, associated with large-scale corporate enclosures of upland rangelands and conversion to eucalyptus plantations for industrial charcoal production have undermined solta, a customary form of extensive cattle raising and centerpiece of Geraizeiro lifeways. In response, farmers are adapting and transforming another, more intense form of livestock raising associated with managed agroforestry in lower-lying areas, manga. Using a social-ecological systems approach and drawing on extensive interviews and ecological inventories, we consider such changes within the overall integrity of the system, suggesting the need to reconsider the role of the Geraizeiros and their use of cattle and fire as a potentially useful tool in reconciling livelihoods and conservation, particularly amidst accelerating social and environmental change and the concomitant threats to the savanna biocultural biome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]