In December this year, Peru will host the COP-20 meeting on worldwide climate change.  Peru accounts for just 0.7% of global greenhouse gases, but it is one of the countries most seriously threatened by the impacts of climate change. It is to be hoped therefore, that the hosting of COP-20 will galvanise public opinion and force the political class to think more purposefully long-term in devising ways of mitigating the likely effects.

It was with this in mind that the PNUD, the United Nations Development Programme in Peru, published a lengthy and detailed report at the end of 2013 on the effects of climate change and how these relate to problems of human development.  As the report states clearly, it is the poor and most vulnerable sectors that will be most at risk.  Indeed, the impacts of climate change have been making themselves felt over recent years.

The Peru Support Group thought it useful to summarise its main conclusions since they help us separate out some of the specific attributes of climate change in Peru.  The full report (in Spanish) is to be found at

http://www.pe.undp.org/content/peru/es/home/library/poverty/Informesobredesarrollohumano2013/IDHPeru2013

The report highlights what it sees as five main transmission mechanisms:

Exposure to extreme events. Of natural disasters suffered in recent years, two-thirds were caused by climatic factors; the scale of such disasters has been in the ascendant. Flooding and droughts have become commonplace, especially in the Amazon jungle. The effect of global warming and human activity in the Amazon threatens to turn the area into a net contributor to the production of CO2. Peru is also highly vulnerable to the effects of the Niño phenomenon. The exact relationship between the Niño and climate change is a matter of scientific debate, but the frequencies of extreme Niños have accelerated in the last two or three decades.  The Niño (and its counterpart La Niña which follows on from Niño years) can have devastating effects on agriculture and fishing as well as on housing and infrastructure.

Changes in eco-systems and the services provided by ecosystems. There is a danger that eco-systems become transmission mechanisms through the ‘services’ these provide for human activities.  The report identifies four key eco-systems, namely:

  • the marine-coastal eco-system, in which the warming of ocean waters in northern Peru and their cooling in the centre and south may impact negatively on the predictability of fishing, especially in the context of Niños (and Niñas);
  • Amazonian forests, where drought is eroding the forest cover, an effect compounded by human activities (timber exploitation, illegal mining, agricultural inroads etc);
  • the Amazon wetlands where alternation between drought and intense flooding is endangering the livelihoods of already highly vulnerable peoples;
  • the Andean highlands where warming is already affecting growth patterns of plants, accelerating glacial melt and leading to the drying up of highland bog areas (a vital source of water).

All-in-all, existing trends are likely to become more accentuated, endangering already precarious human livelihoods, and – in all probability – further accelerating urbanisation.

Water-related stress and insecurity. Much of Peru’s population and economic activity is conducted on already highly arid terrain. Water is critical for agriculture and hydroelectricity as well as for human consumption.  Water sources have become increasingly polluted, largely because of poor treatment of urban waste and mining activity.  Glacial melt is accelerating problems of water supply (95% of the population depend on water derived from the high Andes).  Access to clean water is still a major problem for poor households. Mining activity and the growth of coastal cash-crop farming is accentuating water shortage.  More than 60% of Peruvians live in coastal cities where water shortages are likely to become an ever-more serious problem, accentuated by inefficient distribution of water between different user types.

Food production.  Climate change is already leading to problems of food security.  Peru, increasingly, is dependent of food imports. Both agriculture and fishing are highly sensitive to climate variability, adding to existing problems such as land degradation (especially in the highlands) and overfishing. Production in the highlands has been badly affected by lengthy bouts of intense cold in recent years.  The impact of climate change is very serious for small-scale agricultural producers without access to capital or insurance schemes, and dependent on a single crop. Severe climate change represents a huge threat to the future of peasant agriculture.

Health. Advances in public health are threatened by the effects of climate change. These alter the natural conditions which give rise to disease (especially the prevalence of those like malaria and dengue), which impact on people’s nutritional levels and access to adequate supplies of clean water, and which bring about other changes in the eco-system that impact on human health.

Summing up, the PNUD report states that ‘climate change is real and is brought about by human activity.  However, in spite of the scientific consensus and the growing evidence on the need for decisive and urgent collective action at the global level, the agreements and policy measures to confront it (both globally and locally in Peru) are still incipient’.

Will COP-20 serve as a wake-up call to those in public positions in Peru who, traditionally, tend to be blinkered to the need to respond to long-term challenges?