The female performance in adapting to climate change in urban space. A case study in the Peruvian Amazon

This article explores the effects of climate change and climate variability on human health, placing the emphasis on adaptation strategies constructed by social actors in the Human Settlement Nuevo Punchana, located in the flood fringe of the city of Iquitos department of Loreto, one of the most important urban axes of the Peruvian Amazon. The research tries to demonstrate, on the basis of qualitative and quantitative information, on the one hand, the impacts of the (increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change) severe flooding are mediated by gender, and, on the other that social actors construct adaptation strategies to climate stimuli, crisscrossed performances, too, gender differences. Although at first glance the female segment could be classified as the most vulnerable to climate change (inequities structural gender, by its special status) research provides evidence that women are key agents in building adaptation strategies and response aimed at dealing with it. It is further evidence that these strategies have their substrate in the reproduction of traditional knowledge (such as collective work or minga and practice of traditional medicine) "transported" to the city by migrants from mostly rural Amazon, and the deployment of knowledge acquired in the city. The staging of these strategies depend largely female intervention, as are those that "distribute" the capital in the town studied, that is, local cultural resources in the family and community levels.