Community | March 02, 2011 | 7 comments

Flooded Bolivia faces long term water woes

source: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/flooded-bolivia-faces-long-term-water-woes/

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JanforGore
Widespread flooding in Bolivia, which prompted the government to declare a national emergency last week, shows the vulnerability of one of South America's poorest countries to changing weather patterns linked to climate change.

Landlocked Bolivia, which runs from the rugged Andes to the Amazon jungle, faces a variety of climate change-related pressures, from disappearing glaciers to worsening droughts and more intense and unpredictable rainfall. Combined with rising urban demand for water, the problems suggest a long-term water crisis ahead for the country, analysts say.

The latest disaster has killed at least 50 people and left thousands homeless in Bolivia after weeks of heavy rain triggered flooding and mudslides, with 400 houses destroyed in the capital La Paz alone in a mudslide.

In Cochabamba, southeast of La Paz, schools and stadiums were sheltering hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed. In lowland Santa Cruz department, Bolivia's major grain growing region, floods damaged soy, corn and wheat crops. Rivers burst their banks and major roads were unusable.

"We've declared a state of emergency on different levels in different areas of the country," Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra said last week.

The government has allocated $20 million to help survivors.

Defence Minister Saavedra put the crisis in the Cochabamba, Beni, Santa Cruz, La Paz, Chuquisaca and Tarija departments (administrative regions) down to the La Niña weather phenomenon, linked to abnormally cool ocean temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific.

Changing ocean temperatures and increased evaporation linked to climate change may be increasing the frequency and intensity of La Nina and El Nino events, some scientists believe.

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Perhaps the most worrying threat to the country’s water supplies, however, has been glacier retreat. Chacaltaya, which at 5,300 m was once the world's highest ski run, is now a rocky, icy slope with a redundant lift.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Green,   Earth Care,   Water Is Life,   2 more
  2. tags:
    Culture,  Environment,  Climate Change,  Agriculture,  8 more
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7 comments // Flooded Bolivia faces long term water woes

  • coolplanet
    • +1
      coolplanet  

    • IceKat,
      A graph like you constantly present (below) is easy to make up in Photoshop.
      I notice that you never provide a source or link with your "data."
      You must work for Fox "news."

    • 1 year ago
  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  
    • Image

    • "Landlocked Bolivia... faces a variety of climate change-related pressures, from disappearing glaciers to worsening droughts and more intense and unpredictable rainfall. "

      Droughts and intense rainfall? Oh well that just about wraps it up. As usual the modem-bound extremists fall hook line and sinker for the tear-jerking propaganda spewed out in this article, but then they love this sort of thing.

      "All long-run monthly temperature series for the Bolivian highlands, including the La Paz/El Alto station, which is located near Chacaltaya, show cooling trends over the last six decades of about -0.2ºC/decade (2). This is confirmed by more recent daily temperature anomalies from the University of Dayton Daily Temperature Archive since 1995 (see Figure 2). There is a statistically significant negative trend of -0.11ºC/decade since 1/1/1995 (98% confidence). The average anomaly for the 1995-2009 period is -0.6ºC, suggesting that the recent negative trend is a continuation of a longer trend, as suggested by the monthly data."
      http://www.inesad.edu.bo/mmblog/mm_20090323.htm

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  

    • Einstein said that the definition of insanity is making the same mistake over and over and each time expecting a different result.
      As Prof. Jared Diamond presents in his brillient book "Collapse" what is happening in Bolivia and all around the world today once happened at Easter Island, Greenland and Central America, always starting with deforestation, then soil erosion and ending with floods and droughts.
      Just look at the Island of Hispaniola. Haiti to the west side is almost completely deforested and the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. Yet the Dominican Republic to the east side is lush with trees and among the wealthiest.
      Japan faced this same problem hundreds of years ago and immediately halted deforesting because they used their brains. Thus today Japan is the most forested country per capita on Earth.
      Interestingly Japan is not experiencing the effects of global warming as badly as the rest of the world.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • artemis6
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5--C09b_E

      The people however are coming together using ancient farming techniques that allow them to farm even during excessive flood and drought. For they know firsthand the effects of biodistress. These are the people we need to be listening to, not people like Koch and their soaked in oil denier minions.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
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