Church sees Latin American glaciers as symbols of God, source of life

HUANCAYO, Peru (CNS) - The snow-capped peak of Mount Huaytapallana, which looms over the landscape in the Archdiocese of Huancayo, is a symbol of God and a source of life for the Quechua people of the central Andes.

"Snow-capped mountains are a symbol of the divine," said Huancayo Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno. "In the Quechua culture, there is a very close relationship between nature and human beings."

The Mantaro River Valley, where Huancayo is located, is Peru's breadbasket. The rich soil produces crops for export and food that is sold locally and in Lima, the capital.

Between December and April, there is abundant rainfall in the valley, while snow falls on the white-peaked mountains, where glaciers serve as frozen reservoirs. During the dry season, the slow melting of Andean glaciers provides irrigation and drinking water.

Throughout the Andes Mountains, however, that water supply is threatened because the glaciers are melting faster than snowfall can replenish them. In Bolivia, the glaciers in the Condoriri mountain range that provide much of La Paz's drinking water have shrunk by 30 percent in the past 20 years. Ecuador's capital, Quito, relies on the rapidly melting Antisana glacier for its drinking water.

In Peru, Huaytapallana's ice cap has retreated by more than 1,000 feet in the past five years.

"Blocks of ice that were solid for years are breaking off," Archbishop Barreto told Catholic News Service. "That indicates a rapid deterioration of Huaytapallana, which is the source of Huancayo's drinking water."

The Andes are unusual because they are located in the tropics, but are high enough to have glaciers. The snow caps on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are also considered "tropical glaciers." All have been receding rapidly in the past several decades.

Between 1991 and 2002, the area covered by Andean glaciers shrank by nearly 10 percent, from 2,758 square miles to 2,493 square miles. About 70 percent of the ice is in Peru, with 20 percent in Bolivia and smaller amounts in Ecuador and Colombia.

Venezuela's glaciers are virtually gone. Scientists generally attribute the melting to global climate change, and they say it is probably too late to save most of the Andean glaciers, which could disappear within 30 to 50 years, affecting drinking water supplies, agriculture, hydroelectric energy and tourism.

Farmers are already feeling the pinch, although they do not always recognize it. In Peru's Ancash department, in the Cordillera Blanca range that takes its name from its snow-capped peaks, there are more and more conflicts between neighbors and communities over water, said Cesar Portocarrero, a civil engineer who works with the nonprofit organization Practical Solutions.

That is an early warning sign of diminishing water supplies, said Portocarrero, who helps communities install more efficient irrigation systems to reduce water use. At the foot of the Cordillera Blanca, hydroelectric power plants on the Santa River are part of a system that provides 80 percent of Peru's electricity. During the dry season, they depend on glacial runoff for an adequate water flow.

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A study issued in June found that the glaciers' disappearance would reduce the capacity of one power plant by at least one-third.

The Cordillera Blanca's glaciers are also a tourist attraction, drawing hikers and mountain climbers. Local guides say the mountains have become more unsafe in recent years, and they worry about what will happen when the glaciers are gone.

Similar concerns have been voiced about Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where 80 percent of the snow has melted, and Glacier National Park in Montana, where only 26 glaciers of the more than 100 recorded in 1912 remain and all could be gone by 2030.

"In many parts of the world, there's an economic side to glaciers," said Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center. "Mountaineers and tourists come to see these ice-covered mountaintops. How many of those people will continue to come when the glaciers are gone?"

Photos that Thompson has taken in the Andes and on Kilimanjaro show how drastically the snowscape has changed.

"When we started serious monitoring (of the Andean ice cap Quelccaya) in 1978, there was very little discussion of global warming," said Thompson, who received this year's U.S. National Medal of Science in July from President George W. Bush. "People were talking about the next ice age. It was only in the repeat photography that the demise became so clear and that it was accelerating."

A report issued earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of experts, drew a clear link between climate change and human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. The experts said that while industrialized countries are responsible for most of the emissions that are causing the climate to warm, developing countries will suffer most from the effects, which range from disappearing glaciers to the expansion of deserts to rising sea levels that could cause coastal flooding.

In a letter to participants in the seventh symposium of the Religion, Science and the Environment movement Sept. 1, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, "While it is true that industrializing countries are not morally free to repeat the past errors of others by recklessly continuing to damage the environment, it is also the case that highly industrialized countries must share 'clean technologies' and ensure that their own markets do not sustain demand for goods whose very production contributes to the proliferation of pollution."

In the Andes, where the Quechua people look to the snow-capped mountains for protection, climate change could alter not just the landscape, but also their relationship with the land and with their neighbors, as Portocarrero has seen in the increasing conflicts between communities in the Cordillera Blanca.

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In the Quechua culture, "the snow-capped peaks and the earth itself are seen as a gift" from God, Archbishop Barreto said. "It is a relationship of great harmony."

That, he said, is why the pope's 2007 World Peace Day message was so important.

"The pope said that when there is not a harmonious relationship between nature and human beings, and when there is a deterioration of the environment and people's health, there is also a breakdown in human coexistence," the archbishop said.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops