View previous stories
	Water is the Missing Link in Copenhagen by Thalif Deen IPS/TerraViva   Dec 14, 2009   When the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced the grim news that 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record, the U.N. agency also stressed last week the widespread water-related calamities caused by global warming.   China has suffered its worst drought in five decades. In East Africa, a drought has led to massive food shortages. In North America, Mexico experienced severe-to-exceptional drought conditions in September. And in central Argentina, a drought caused severe damage to agriculture, livestock and water resources.   The devastation caused by climate change is not only triggering droughts worldwide but also, ironically floods in Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, hurricanes in Central America, heavy rainfall and landslides in Colombia and winter storms in Spain and France.   Yet water has been marginalised during the two-week climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, scheduled to conclude Friday.   "Water is the primary medium through which climate change impacts will be felt by human populations and the environment," said Karin Lexen of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), based in the Swedish capital.   She pointed out that changes in water availability and predictability of weather systems has put water at the heart of future development decision-making. "Yet, water is barely mentioned in the draft negotiating text [at the talks in Copenhagen]," Lexen told TerraViva.   Asked why water is on the backburner, she said that some hesitate to include water references in the text since they regard water as a separate "sector" and think that adding water references would make the adaptation text "too detailed".   "We disagree, since water is a cross-cutting issue, related to key issues like energy, forests, livelihoods, transboundary issues etc.," she explained.   "We believe it is important to include references to water resource management in the text since it will be crucial to bridge climate and water communities in implementing adaptation strategies and programmes," Lexen added.   Asked if there are any moves to bring water into the negotiating text, Lexen said that countries like Bangladesh, which are threatened by water-related effects of climate change, have been working actively to get water references into the text.   "The European Union (EU) has not been very interested in getting water into the text, even though individual countries like the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have been much more interested and helpful," she declared.   The WMO, in its report released last week, said that water levels in parts of the Gan River and the Xiangjian River in China were the lowest in the past 50 years. In India, a poor monsoon season caused severe drought-the northwestern and northeastern parts of India were badly affected by one of the weakest monsoon seasons since 1972.   And in November, continuous heavy and intense rainfall in northeastern Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay caused flooding in many places, affecting tens of thousands of people, according to WMO.   Meanwhile, the Global Public Policy Network on Water Management (GPPN), core messages reads: "Water is the primary medium through which climate change impacts will be felt by populations and the environment."   Failure to integrate water management and climate change adaptation "will compromise efforts to build resilience and have potentially devastating impacts on people''s livelihoods."   The GPPN also points out that resilience must be built into the water supply and sanitation sector, and effective water resources management must be implemented as an adaptation action prioritised through National Adaptation Programmes of Action.   Among GPPN''s top textual priorities is a direct reference to water security early on in the negotiating text. "Adapting to climate change is, to a large extent, adapting to too little water, and its central role for climate change adaptation must be acknowledged at this stage," the group says. Visit the related web page
	The retreat of glaciers in the Andes region is a clear indicator of climate change by UN News & agencies   15 December 2009   Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said he backed the science of climate change. He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change involved 2500 scientists examining and translating published science into a series of reports that were then publicly peer reviewed. The final report was endorsed by the panel, and a summary for policymakers backed by governments. "I do not believe that there is any process anywhere out there that is that systematic, that thorough and that transparent," he said.   UN agencies and their partner organizations took part in raising awareness of the humanitarian toll of climate change.   "Climate change is not some abstract problem for the future,” John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters. “It’s a problem which is happening right here and now and happening to ordinary people, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable populations around the world.”   Mr. Holmes, who also serves as UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, pointed to the humanitarian impacts of climate change, including the increasing number and intensity of disasters, as well as migration triggered by factors such as a rise in sea levels.   “We can do something about this. We are not helpless in the face of this,” he stressed, underscoring the importance of disaster risk reduction and early warning systems.   The retreat of glaciers in the Andes region is a clear indicator of climate change. Vulnerable tropical glaciers now melt away at a much faster rate than anticipated by scientists a few years ago. Combined with changing precipitation patterns, this leaves millions of people exposed to an unstable and insufficient water supply for drinking water, irrigation and hydropower.   Dr. Edson Ramirez heads a team of scientists that has monitored several glaciers in the Andes since 1990-91, among them the famed Chacaltaya, close to Bolivia’s capital La Paz.   No need anymore. The 18,000 year-old glacier that delighted thousands of visitors has gone, leaving the ski hut and other remnants of what was once “the world’s highest ski resort” utterly misplaced on barren stones.   The melting of Andean glaciers has gone on for many decades, but the recent acceleration of the process has worried scientists. Ten years ago, Ramirez and his colleagues concluded that the glacier would survive until 2015. But in March this year he had to face the facts: “Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists”.   “The vulnerability is far greater than we expected”, he says. “The retreat of glaciers in the Andes has accelerated in recent years. It is now three times faster than it was before. We expect many other relatively small glaciers to disappear in the coming decade.”   “In our region the glaciers perhaps are the best indicators of climate change. However, the impacts of changing precipitation and the profound changes of many other ecosystems, like wetlands for example, may be even more severe.”   Ninety-nine percent of the world’s tropical glaciers are located in the Andes: Peru (71 percent), Bolivia (22 percent), Ecuador (4 percent) and Colombia (3 percent). Since many rivers originate from these glaciers, their melt waters contribute to the water supply of the capital cities La Paz, Quito and Lima and other large Andean cities.   The glaciers and their water basins provide a large part of the power used in the region, since 70 percent of the region’s power generation is hydroelectric. Irrigation water, essential for the particularly arid Pacific basin, is primarily of glacial origin.   Glaciers act as regulators of the hydrological system in almost all of the Andean areas. They play the role of gigantic reservoirs, capturing the precipitation in the wet season and releasing freshwater throughout the dry season.   Since the mid-1970s, surface temperatures in the region have increased by 0.34 degrees Celsius per decade. In the same period the shrinking of glaciers has accelerated. Many of them have lost more than half of their previous area and volume.   As the glaciers diminish and melt away, the volume of water resources is drastically reduced. According to a World Bank report earlier this year, Peruvian glaciers have lost more than a fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country’s costal region, where more than half the population lives.
	View more stories