The melting of glaciers worldwide is one of the starkest effects of global warming.
In Cochabamba in the highlands of Bolivia, there is the next major Climate conference this April, from the people of the global South.
No more a bit of the same old COP15, or COP16 or other complex negotiations… put together for show by the UNFCCC.
This is Just simple Environmental understanding and solidarity building. This is where the Environmental Parliament holds also it’s fifth annual, elders meeting, open to all the conference participants. After all You are our elders. Join us.
Bolivia will host this conference on climate change on April with an expected attendance of more than one thousand environmental organizations and all of ten thousand people along with government representatives from more than 90 countries. Many more people, environmental organizations and activists are expected to participate via the Internet and in global campaign actions on the final day of the conference, 22 April which marks UN Mother Earth Day.
Confirmed speakers for the plenaries of the conference are environmental movements brilliant activists such as NASA scientist Jim Hansen, Bill McKibben of 350.org, Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, Miguel D’Escoto ex President of UN General Assembly, American actor/activist Danny Glover and yours truly speaking on ”Human rights at the Age of Climate”, along with leaders from the leading environmental organizations and communities at the frontline of climate change.
Bolivia has invited all 192 governments in the UN to attend the conference and is working closely with the United Nations Development Program to bring representatives from all the 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), whose populations will be most vulnerable to climate change. Spain, Russia and France have also indicated that they will send representatives and others are still confirming.
The conference was initiated by President Evo Morales of Bolivia who earned his activist stripes as fighter for People’s water rights during the ”Bolivian water wars.”
The reason and logic behind convening a People’s Earth Conference arose in the aftermath of the widely denounced as wet squib outcomes of the Copenhagen UNFCCC conference last December. The UN dropped the ball on the Environment seriously enough that alternate meetings needed to be held to negotiate ourselves in solidarity with the people of this earth.
Yvo De Boer, the UN Chief for the COP 15 process was so profoundly disappointed with the UN failure to assist countries in reaching a meaningful agreement on the warming climate and the issues facing the planet, and the corporate takeover of the Conference of the Parties and attendant Greenwash of the UNFCC that he resigned in protest after the failed talks in Copenhagen.
That was then.
This is now, and the aim of the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change is to advance an agenda led by civil society organizations and in dialogue with proactive governments dedicated to preventing, mitigating and adapting to warming climate and environmental change. The conference aims to analyze the structural causes of climate change, and develop specific proposals and actions for addressing it.
Bolivia’s highlands is a good place for it since the Andes glaciers are at the forefront of the warming planet effects and the issue of diminishing fresh water supplies for all of us.
The melting of glaciers worldwide is one of the strongest disastrous effects of global warming.
In the Cordillera Real mountain range, part of the Andes, glaciers lost 50 percent of their volume between 1960 and 2010. The glacier Chacaltaya, which sits approximately 20 miles from Illimani, has disappeared completely. Five years ago Chacaltaya was proudly heralded by Travel agencies and tour operators as the highest ski slope in the world. Now there is no snow, no ski and certainly no fresh water at the site of the glacier and no water for anyone downslope from the mountain.
Bolivia, which is home to 20 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, is clearly panicked by the rapid pace of the disappearance of the glaciers. Bolivia’s tropical glaciers are especially susceptible to warming climatic changes as they depend on the increasingly erratic rainy season to regenerate, and their altitude compounds the effects of rising temperatures.
Tropical glaciers are glaciers that are located at high altitudes on mountain ranges around the equator, and Ramirez, one of Bolivia’s most respected glacier experts, had optimistically predicted that the Chacaltaya glacier, would last until 2015. IPCC had reported the Chacaltaya glacier won’t melt fully until 2100. A rather optimistic scenario IMHO and as proven by nature. Now, we are in 2010 and there is no more glacier at Chacaltaya. Ninety years earlier than IPCC had predicted, the glacier disappeared. Not a sight of snow up there, not even a pocket of it, for this fresh water supply for the people is all but a memory now. Further, most glacier scientists now reevaluate the IPCC predictions as too optimistic on the state of the glaciers and express doubt that any Andean tropical glaciers will exist in 30 years time [2040]. Therefore the water crisis will be far more real than the James Bond films have you believe…
The trouble is that the tropical glaciers depend on seasonal regularity. In tropical zones south of the equator, seasons are generally divided into rainy and dry: dry is May through November (southern winter) and rainy is November through April (southern summer). During the rainy season, glaciers accumulate moisture and ice mass. This thaws during dry season, filling streams and rivers with fresh water precisely when it is most needed.
With the global warming and the altering climate this regularity has been disrupted fully. Not only long periods of drought are met with ever shorter spans of very light rainfall if at all, but the warm weather doesn’t allow for any rain to freeze in the high Andes. There is no more glacier to be seeded anyway so there is no support for future glacial built either.
Therefore no water retention for the needs of the people and livestock, nor for any other species. Desertification sets in…
We are losing our Life water.
Not just in Bolivia – but elsewhere – and everywhere, across the globe.
When speaking about climate change, people in Bolivia say ”We are losing our Life water…” It is an uncomfortable feeling and a vastly more uncomfortable reality. Bolivia already one of the poorest countries of the western hemisphere is getting thirsty and starved. Lack of water, destroys the subsistence agriculture fully, and not just the livestock feeds. Very little can survive in the desert, whether high altitude or low. Mass migration of the native people to the increasingly dry cities has already been the reality for most.
Even the cities with their complex water supplies are at risk. The glaciers are an indispensable part of the national water supply system and as much as 30 percent of the water supply for the 2 million residents of La Paz [capital] and its sister city of El Alto comes from glacial melt.
On a global scale, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center estimates that 75 percent of the world’s freshwater is stored in glaciers.
But warming temperatures mean that the glaciers are melting at a rate that outpaces their ability to accumulate mass during the rainy months. The consequence is that an important source of water is dwindling dangerously.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Today we stand in Solidarity with all the peoples of this earth.
And until April 22 we are all Bolivians.
Then on Earth day we are all one again…
And maybe we’ll learn something and will remember to become human again no matter the color and the scripts of our passports.
This is a global time that we all come together to huddle and share…
