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Losses and damages connected to glacier retreat in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru

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Abstract

The mountain cryosphere is one of the strongest affected systems by climate change. Glacier shrinkage leads to cascading impacts, including changes in river flow regimes, availability of water resources for downstream populations and economy, changes in the occurrence and severity of natural hazards, and cultural changes associated with landscape character and identity. In this study, we analyze impacts of mountain cryosphere change through a lens of Loss and Damage (L&D), a mechanism of international climate policy that tries to evaluate and reduce negative consequences of climate change for societies. We analyze the effects of climate change on glacier change, glacier lake formation and growth, hydrological regimes, and associated impacts on human societies in the Cordillera Blanca in the Peruvian Andes, now and under future scenarios. We use various methods such as literature review, glacial lake outburst flood, and hydrologic modeling to examine three major dimensions of cryospheric change and associated human impacts: (i) ice loss; (ii) glacial hazards; and (iii) variability of water availability. We identify the damage and losses in terms of the number of people affected by glacial hazards, monetized agricultural crop loss due to water loss, and non-economic values local people attribute to glacier loss. We find that different levels of warming have important negative but differentiated effects on natural and human systems. We also contend that the extent of loss and damage will largely be determined by governance and adaptation decisions such as water resource management and disaster risk management. We suggest that these lines of evidence are more explicitly taken into account in L&D policies.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support from the Proyecto Glaciares+ funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, H. Frey for his input on GLOFs, F. Drenkhan for support for aspects of water resources, S. Schauwecker for providing glacier outlines, and A. Thür for her work on local people’s perceptions.

Funding

This study has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project AguaFuturo, no. 205121L_166272).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Alina Motschmann, Christian Huggel & Randy Muñoz

  2. Robert D. Clark Honors College & Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA

    Mark Carey

  3. Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA

    Holly Moulton

  4. Department of Social Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Noah Walker-Crawford

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  1. Alina Motschmann
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  2. Christian Huggel
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Correspondence to Alina Motschmann.

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Motschmann, A., Huggel, C., Carey, M. et al. Losses and damages connected to glacier retreat in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Climatic Change 162, 837–858 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02770-x

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