Vanishing glaciers imperil Bolivia

By David ShukmanEnvironment correspondent, BBC News, La Paz, Bolivia Fears are growing for the future of water supplies in one of Latin America’s fastest-growing urban areas – Bolivia’s sprawling city of La Paz and its neighbour El Alto. Scientists monitoring the glaciers high in the Andes mountains – a key source of water – say […]

36 football fields deforested each minute

By Staff Writers, Buenos Aires (AFP) Oct 22, 2009 The equivalent of 36 football fields are being stripped from the world’s forests each minute, the environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a statement released here on Thursday. The group, presenting its figures during a UN-organized World Forestry Congress held in the […]

World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations despite own warnings

By Ben Webster, Environment Editor The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all […]

Climate change closes the world's highest ski run

  The 18,000-year-old glacier in Bolivia that provided the world with its highest ski run has just finished completely drying up, thanks to our old pal climate change. And of course, it’s taken the run with it. Now, thrill-seeking skiers will no longer be able to bomb down the slopes at 17,785 ft–but far worse, […]

Graph of the Day: Ice Mass Balance of Glaciers and Ice Caps, 1961-2004

Cumulative (a) specific and (b) total mass balances of glaciers and ice caps, calculated for large regions [Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005]. Specific mass balances signalize the strength of the glacier response to climatic change in each region. Total mass balances indicate each region’s contribution to sea level. G. Kaser, J. G. Cogley, M. B. Dyurgerov, […]

Bolivia’s glaciers ‘are doomed’

By James Painter, BBC News, Khapi, Bolivia Marcos Choque is a 67-year-old Aymara Indian with holes in his trousers and battered sandals. He appears remarkably cheerful. Sitting among his fellow villagers from Khapi, perched high up in the Bolivian Andes, he seems to delight in cracking jokes. But ask him about Illimani – the 6,400m […]

Glaciers go, leaving drought, conflict and tension in Andes

In a dry land where almost everyone has their eye on their uphill neighbor’s water, the Andes are already seeing conflicts erupt as global warming changes water patterns. By Barbara FraserFor The Daily Climate ICA, Peru — Two decades ago, the strip of sand between the Pacific Ocean and the Andean foothills was empty except […]

Bolivia: water people of Andes face extinction

Climate change robs Uru Chipaya of lifeline that had sustained them for millennia By Rory Carroll and Andres Schipani in Santa Ana de Chipaya Its members belong to what is thought to be the oldest surviving culture in the Andes, a tribe that has survived for 4,000 years on the barren plains of the Bolivian […]

Retreat of Andean glaciers foretells global water woes

Bolivia accounts for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it will soon be paying a disproportionately high price for a major consequence of global warming: the rapid loss of glaciers and a subsequent decline in vital water supplies. By Carolyn Kormann Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a […]

Bolivia water crisis looms as glacier melts away

Tom Clifford, Foreign Correspondent LA PAZ // The Bolivian capital and its twin city of El Alto are facing a water crisis this year, a leading climatologist says. Demand for water is likely to exceed supply in 2009, with the entire Chacaltaya glacier, which supplies nearly two million people, set to disappear within 12 months, […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial