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November 26, 2007
Global Warming Hits the Bolivian Water Supply
La Paz, Bolivia, the world's highest capital, depends on the runoff from the glaciers in the Andes for fully one third their water, but due to global warming, the glaciers are rapidly melting.
Not only does this loss of water threaten drinking water but also crops and hydroelectric power. A poor nation such as Bolivia does not have the millions of dollars required to to build reservoirs, shore up leaky distribution networks and construct gas or oil-fired plants.
"We're the ones who've contributed the least to global warming and we're getting hit with the biggest bill,"laments Edson Ramirez, a Bolivian hydrologist who coordinates U.N., French and Japanese sponsored projects to quantify the damage exacted on fragile Andes ecosystems by richer nations that use more gas and create more pollution.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging that a new global treaty on climate change provide funding to help poor countries adapt to its damaging effects. Ban made the recommendation recently when U.N. scientists released a report saying the 40 leading industrial countries produced 46 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2004.
"All these ecosystems are changing very quickly. In fact, every year they change at a faster pace, which has all of us very alarmed," said Walter Vergara, the World Bank's lead climatologist for Latin America, as reported by the Associated Press, and published by CNN.
Posted by Stephen Betheil at November 26, 2007 02:33 PM
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