The Peruvian government and Swiss Cooperation are working together to promote territories resilient to climate change

The Glaciers+ Project, an initiative executed by the University of Zurich and CARE Peru consortium, in alliance with the Ministry of the Environment, ANA, CENEPRED, and the regional governments of Cusco, Ancash and Lima

The event “Challenges and opportunities in the face of glacial retreat” was held on June 25, at the residence of the Swiss Ambassador. It was an opportunity to strengthen alliances and networks by sharing the teamwork with a multi-level and inter-institutional approach developed by the Glaciers+ Project over a period of 8 years, to gather stakeholders together and to present the progress and results achieved, with the aim of improving the capacity for comprehensive adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the face of deglaciation. Glaciers+ articulated the capacities and efforts of local and regional governments, national institutions and academic entities and achieved important impacts in the basins of Ancash, Cusco and Cañete.

“Glacier melt caused by climate change is a process of great concern. The latest studies tell us that by 2050 – in just 20 years – the global glacier mass will be reduced by 36% in the long term. They also indicate that, in order to maintain the level of the current glacier mass, the global average temperature should fall to the level of the pre-industrial era, as it did in 1870, and that, we know, will not be possible,” said Markus-Alexander Antonietti, Switzerland’s ambassador to Peru in his inaugural address.

He also highlighted three main results: i) training for more than 450 professionals, ii) increasing resilience benefiting more than 60,000 families living in glacier basins in Lima, Ancash and Cusco; and iii) the creation of collaborative alliances between academia and the public and private sectors to reduce gaps and take action in future scenarios of challenges and opportunities in connection with glacial retreat. “It is of special interest to seek answers to these challenges linked to glacial retreat brought about by climate change,” he said.  

The event included holding the Net Working – Advances, Opportunities and Action Plans, with three forums designed for each of the regions, in which representatives of the Ancash, Cusco and Lima regions discussed their actions, challenges and opportunities with representatives of the public and private sectors and academia

Prospects and Action Plan for glacial retreat and water resource management opportunities.

De acuerdo al programa, finalizado el Net Working, se desarrolló un panel que contó con la participación de Jorge Ganoza, gerente general Autoridad Nacional del Agua; Karina Ginocchio, Directora de Políticas Públicas de la Dirección General de Inversión Pública del Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas; Gisella Orjeda, presidenta del Instituto Nacional de Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña; y Roxana Orrego, directora general de Asuntos Ambientales Agrarios del Ministerio de Agricultura, que buscó dar a conocer sobre las acciones que vienen desarrollando estos sectores frente al retroceso glaciar y gestión del recurso hídrico. Puede ver el desarrollo del panel en el siguiente video.

Finalising the panel, Lucía Ruiz, Minister of the Environment, addressed the audience, and said: “The process of deglaciation, in terms of adaptation or glacial risk, is generating problems in water quality in the southern part of the country, and probably in other regions”, referring to the fact that the rocks of the snow-capped mountains, which glacial retreat is leaving uncovered, show that this phenomenon is having a great impact and is generating problems in the environment.

She highlighted the eight years of Swiss Cooperation’s support for adaptation to climate change, its multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and multi-purpose work, and the empathy it has with the communities. “This is a country that needs to understand itself  better every day, but that also requires multi-dimensional territorial interventions” she said, and added that the work must continue, taking advantage of what has been learned thanks to the work held in Ancash, Cusco and Cañete, “starting again in the face of these challenges“.

Closing the event, Martin Jaggi, Director of the SDC, thanked all those involved in making the project possible. He also said that in its first phase, Glaciers+ made important contributions to the issues of risks of glacial retreat, water scarcity and landslides, and through research and studies had shown that new lakes would be formed as a result of glacial retreat, underlining the importance of implementing early warning systems.

For its second phase, Jaggi mentioned that the project focused on highlighting the importance of implementing multipurpose projects to make the most of the water that glaciers are leaving. “Climate phenomena are more and more recurrent, we have to be very united and continue working, there are still challenges, and we will continue to work on the issue at a regional level“, he concluded

You are invited to relive the close of the Glaciers+ project, on 25 June, at the residence of the Swiss Ambassador to Peru.

Glaciers+ is an initiative of Swiss Cooperation in Peru, in the framework of the Climate Change Global Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), executed by the Zurich University and Care Peru consortium; in an alliance with the Environment Ministry, the ANA, CENEPRED and the regional governments of Cusco, Ancash and Lima. Glaciers+ has promoted discussion forums for disseminating and consolidating the adaptation approach based on multi-purpose projects at national and Andean scale, identifying the conditions, the challenges, opportunities and strategies necessary for implementing it.

For Further information:
Glaciers+ project, project file; Swiss Embassy, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC
Web Glaciers+ Project