Venezuela becomes the first country in the world to lose all its glaciers

It’s official, there are no longer any glaciers in Venezuela. The last one has been reduced to a simple patch of snow and ice, due to global warming. Others will follow.

The large plastic tarpaulin with which we had begun to cover the last Venezuelan glacier, to protect it from the sun, was of no use. A paltry measure in the face of inevitable decline. After resisting a little longer than the others, the Humboldt glacier, also called the “Corona glacier”, also ended up melting.

Located at an altitude of 4,940 meters, it is today reduced to a thin white sheet of barely 20,000 square meters. It may seem like a lot, but in the eyes of scientists, you need at least 100,000 square meters to merit the name of glacier. His disappearance was therefore officially and definitively recorded last month. Venezuela has become the first country in modern history to lose its eternal ice.

Other identical scenarios will inevitably occur: at the current rate, glaciologists estimate that 90% of tropical glaciers will have disappeared by 2100. If the Paris agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions was respected , this rate could however be reduced to 60%. This phenomenon, irreversible and rapid, does not always give scientists time to study them.

Tropical glaciers represent only a tiny part of the glaciers that exist in the world. These are only those located near the Equator, but they are true climate barometers. They are found mainly in the north of the Andes, but also in Indonesia and Africa: on Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, or in Uganda, in the “Mountains of the Moon” which serve as the source of the Nile. They are all melting. With rising temperatures, the rain-snow limit increases from year to year. You now have to go beyond 5,000 meters to find ice.

These disappearances will have environmental and social consequences, with an impact on biodiversity and ecosystems coupled with a loss of culture and heritage. In Venezuela, the Corona was part of a very ancient indigenous legend, that of the “five white eagles”, which told of the formation of the five glaciers of this part of the Andes. The repercussions will also be economic: glaciers are often tourist attractions that generate income.

But above all, in certain countries such as Peru and Colombia, they constitute a major source of water supply: water which is drunk, water which produces electricity or which is used for agriculture. In Bolivia for example, during the dry season, nearly 30% of the water resources of La Paz (two million inhabitants) come from the glaciers of the Cordillera Real. The extinction of these real climate barometers also risks fueling social tensions.