Possible Climate Change Impacts On Irrigated Agriculture
The effects of climate change in Peru can be seen in more extreme weather conditions and El Niño Southern Oscillation causing droughts and floods, and the retreat of Andean glaciers. The combined impacts of global warming and extreme weather are likely to severely impact hydrology, decreasing the water flow available for irrigation downstream in the coastal region and altering crop productivity. The Andean Community (CAN) estimates that climate change will cause US$30,000 million in losses or 4,5% of the GDP annually starting in 2025.
El Niño hits Peru approximately every seven years, producing economic and environmental damages and loss of life. In 1997-1998 El Niño caused US$2 billion in damages. Climate change is increasing the severity of this and other storms, increasing the vulnerability of Peru's poor, and damaging low technology irrigation infrastructures and agricultural crops. In the mountains, deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture increase erosion and the risk of landslides. These effects are felt both at their source and further downstream and include damage to crops, water resources, and irrigation.
Peru contains roughly 71% of the world's tropical glaciers. Some of Peru's perennial rivers are fed by glaciers that are rapidly disappearing due to climate change. Since 1980 Peruvian glaciers have lost 22% of their surface area (500 km2), equivalent to 7,000 million cubic meters of water (about ten years of water supply for Lima). Glacier retreat in the Andes has important repercussions on Peru's water resources, including irrigation production and hydropower generation. This trend will continue, and it is believed that the increased runoff will cause Peru to suffer from severe water stress over the next 20 years. Peru's water supply is predicted to then decrease dramatically between 2030 and 2050.
Read more about this topic: Irrigation In Peru
Famous quotes containing the words climate, change, impacts and/or agriculture:
“Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are living in a society of excrescence.... The boil is growing out of control, recklessly at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)