The speed of change is crazy. When something so visible is lost, it also brings home the scale of global climate change, says Emily Boyd, professor at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies.
Emily and her colleagues at Lund University are working on impacts of intangible losses and damages resulting from socio-political, economic and climate drivers.
They look at the vanishing Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, located in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida Mountain range, as an example of cross-scale and transboundary impacts of climate change. Its loss will be felt in different realms, from potential loss of income, if tourism declines in the area, to loss of ecosystems services which glaciers provide, loss of environments of cultural value, and so far, unforeseen changes in global climate change processes. While many thought the glacier would melt within the next decade, the process has gone remarkedly faster.
According to Emily Boyd,
– This event brings home too how losses in different places impact ecosystems and communities far away. It is also worrying that loss is being normalized.
She emphasizes how these events necessitate the need for research not only on ways to mitigate climate change, which is of key importance if temperatures are to stay below 1,5 degrees compared to preindustrial times, but also on questions of who experience loss, how, where and in what contexts, which are now brought even more to the fore.
– Loss will look different to different people, depending on their capabilities, existing vulnerabilities and previous experiences. We shouldn’t assume that the loss of this glacier will impact communities living close to it equally, says Emily Boyd.
– We need to ramp up how we prepare for a future under climate change. In this future, regardless if we are able to make drastic reductions in emissions, some losses will accrue. Therefore, we need knowledge, both on what loss can mean, and on how our communities can be supported to prepare, and above all, on how we can advance adaptation.
Loss of glacier can inform research in other places
She also highlights that accruing impacts in Venezuela can be used to inform work and research on glacier melt in other areas, for example in Nepal, where LUCSUS is researching retreating glaciers from a societal perspective, specifically looking at how ecosystem changes affect communities living beside the glaciers.
She ends by noting how just transformations remain hampered by the prevailing political imagination that technology and capital alone can solve, and halt, problems connected to climate change and biodiversity loss.
– It is quite well established that loss does not necessarily trigger action, however finding common ground on lived experiences of climate change is important. Adaptation needs to be just, effective and cross-scale. Exploring the issue of resistance will also be key: why do groups resist adaptation, and how can leaders design adaptation with communities?
