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Climate change could cost Andean
countries 30 billion dollars a
year, study reveals
Lima, May 9, 2008.- Losses in
the four Andean countries as a
result of climate change could
add up to 30 billion dollars a
year by 2025. This figure,
equivalent to 4.5% of their GDP,
could place Bolivia, Colombia,
Ecuador and Peru’s potential for
development in jeopardy.
This is only one of the
revealing figures unveiled in
the study “Climate Change knows
no borders,”* prepared at the
initiative of the Andean
Community General Secretariat by
a team of researchers from
Universidad del Pacífico del
Perú with the collaboration of
other academic and research
centers and authorities of
Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador
and the support of Spain’s
Environment Ministry and the
Spanish Agency for International
Development Cooperation (AECID).
During the presentation of the
report, the research team
coordinator, Peru’s former
Agriculture Minister, Carlos
Amat y León, insisted that
“climate change is already
happening,” as shown by glacial
loss, more frequent flooding and
stronger and more frequent
occurrences of El Niño.
“Floods, droughts, landslides,
frosts, and landslips virtually
doubled between 2002 and 2006,
as compared with the five-year
period 1987-1991. Since 1970,
every single province in the CAN
countries has experienced at
least one hydrometeorological
disaster,” the coordinator
pointed out.
He stated that climate change
has been evident in the
subregion for over three
decades. “While changes in
global temperature have amounted
to 0.2ºC per decade since 1990,
in the central Andean region the
rise in temperature between 1974
and 1998 was 0.34ºC --in other
words, 70% more than the global
average.”
Amat y León warned that if the
temperature rises over 2°C, the
Andean countries will find
themselves in a serious
situation. “The Amazon could
begin to collapse as glacial
retreat intensifies,
jeopardizing the supply of
water,” he announced.
Even if this does not happen,
he cautioned, “by 2020,
deglaciation in the Andes could
put close to 40 million people
at risk of losing their water
supply for drinking, hydroenergy
and farming, particularly in
Quito, Lima and La Paz.
A fact that should be
considered, he stated, is that
the people who will witness the
effects of climate change are
already alive and under the age
of 33; they make up 64 percent
of the population today.
Amat y León emphasized that in
order to be able to address this
common challenge, the
international community must
have a strong interest in
cooperating in the efforts of
Andean countries to cope with
the effects of climate change
and learn from this experience.
He went on to add that it is
essential to have an action plan
in place that contains
substantive measures like
transferring technology to
produce clean energy; sharing
knowledge and capacities;
receiving financial
contributions proportional to
the size of the problem; making
changes in production processes
to bring them into line with the
new parameters imposed by
climate change; and reinforcing
the capacity for governance,
particularly the capacity of
local governments to design and
implement economic and social
infrastructure.
The Secretary General of the
Andean Community, Freddy Ehlers,
for his part, pointed out that
because the current development
model is incompatible with the
planet’s sustainability, it is
necessary to define a new
development model that will
guarantee man’s integral
development and his harmonious
relationship with nature.
He also emphasized the need to
take more coordinated action to
mitigate and adjust to climate
change, including the adoption
of commitments to reduce
emissions and to develop new
mechanisms and incentives for
conserving forests and
biodiversity, as stipulated in
the Bali working plan on climate
change and the objectives of the
Convention on Biological
Diversity.
Ehlers revealed that a recent
study based on data taken from
the Stern Report, the Ecological
Footprint and the World Bank
states that Andean countries
could receive billions of
dollars from industrialized
countries in return for the
environmental services provided
to the entire world by Amazon
tropical forests. “These
forests are a basic bargaining
chip of the Andean countries
with the international
community,” he concluded.
* The complete document can be
seen at the CAN’s following
website address:
http://www.comunidadandina.org/public/libro_84.htm |
