Glacial Melting Threatening Populations Around the Globe

Glaciers around the world are disappearing on an accelerated basis, disrupting water flows upon which humans have depended for thousands of years. These climate driven changes are creating water shortages for entire populations, forcing governments to consider mass migrations in the interest of survival. In most cases, these aggressive reductions in water availability are occurring in places where the resources just do not exist to put adequate alternatives in place in time.

One place where this is occurring is Bolivia, where the existence of 100 million people in the region is threatened with the complete melting of most of the glaciers in the Andes within the next twenty years (according to the World Bank, as reported in the New York Times, December 14, 2009). In 2009, the Chacaltaya glacier, approximately 30 kilometers from La Paz, Bolivia disappeared. Water for La Paz comes from a cluster of nearby glaciers, which have lost 35 percent of their ice mass since 1983. Accordingly, the loss of Chacaltaya is the canary in the coal mine.

The first water migrations have begun, with people moving from Palca, which is in the mountains near La Paz, to El Alto, a fast growing municipality next to La Paz. Farmers and residents of mountainous villages such as Palca, have already begun to see glacial melt drying up in the summers, when water for their farms is crucial for survival. The next phase of water migrations are expected to drive people out of El Alto, where supply will fall below demand in just a few years, due to the combination of decreasing glacial runoff and increasing demand.

This same scenario is impacting peoples' lives in the Himalayas as well, with Himalayan glaciers having lost 21 percent of their glacial mass since 1962. Approximately 2 billion people in India, China and Pakistan depend on Himalayan glacial melt for irrigation and drinking water. With the first Himalayan glaciers expected to disappear by 2035, eventually significantly curtailing agricultural production, the disruption to millions of people's lives will be significant.

These real and current disruptions to people's lives around the globe, tied to massively disruptive climate change, provide a strong argument for significantly increasing the investment in clean energy technologies, and accelerating the deployment of increased efficiency and renewable energy throughout our economies.