Climate checkup: symptoms of global warming are becoming more serious in Latin America and the Caribbean, underscoring the urgency of developing sustainable ecosystems.

• Author: Balaguer, Alejandro

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There was a time when animals roamed freely across a continental mass of healthy forests--a veritable ocean of green vegetation. Across the length and breadth of the Americas, these forests formed a massive chain of ecosystems that--from the time the Central American isthmus was formed--allowed migratory species to move from one continent to the other. But little by little, the giant trees began to disappear. Of that green chain that grew along the bridge uniting North and South America, only a few links remained. The forest began to fragment, and many species that served as indicators of the planet's health were no longer seen in their previous numbers but began to die off. Today, the problem has been aggravated due to climate change--global warming caused by increased emissions of the greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. And now more than plants and animals are at risk; human beings are too.

Data on the ecological disaster caused by humans' bad habits are endless and becoming more extreme all the time. Take, for example, the fourth Global Environmental Outlook assessment (GEO-4) issued in 2007 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This complex diagnostic test, conducted by experts on the planet's ailing health, shows troubling results. The scientific report, which updates UN data, leaves no doubt that climate change is producing an increase in temperature, a rise in sea levels, and a greater intensity and frequency of extreme natural disasters.

Ricardo Sanchez, who heads UNEP's Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, talked about the report's findings during the presentation late last year of the GEO-4 report in Panama. "Unfortunately, in our region a series of extreme events, occurring in a highly vulnerable environment, have produced natural disasters of extraordinary impact," he said. "We can see what has happened in Mexico, both Tabasco and Chiapas; see what has happened in the Dominican Republic, where more than 30 percent of the area was flooded by a tropical depression; see the impact in Haiti, and in the eastern part of Cuba, where losses are estimated to be higher than 500 million dollars due to these events. If we go farther south, we should remember the extraordinary flooding last May in Uruguay, which has also occurred in some parts of Argentina. We see the forest fires that took place in Paraguay, which were also the result of the influence of climate on an environment with these characteristics. The conclusion from various points of view shows that climate change is a fact, and one sign of this is the effects of these disasters."

Added to the catastrophes are the melting of icecaps in the region and the process of "savannization" in the Amazon Basin, whereby fires cause forests to be gradually replaced by savanna-like vegetation. As consumption increases and greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, global warming worsens; as a result, areas where ice has disappeared are on the rise. Andean and Antarctic glaciers are going through a massive, accelerated retreat that was unforeseen by the scientific community. Every day, new images attest to this reality. Weakened glaciers crumble; ice outcroppings as tall as buildings come crashing down; blue, crystalline icebergs float until they melt away, soon to become part of the rivers and oceans. As flooding inevitably causes sea levels to rise, it is estimated that millions of people will have to migrate from coastal and island areas.

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In the case of the Andean glaciers found at tropical latitudes, experts think that In twenty years these will disappear altogether. For Peruvian researcher Jorge Recharte, who directs the Mountain Institute's Andes Program, the evidence is overwhelming: "Glaciers are In a clear process of retreat. We are, on the one hand, reaching the peak of an inter-glacial period that corresponds with warming caused by Earth's natural cycles; but according to research statistics and data, there is no doubt whatsoever that this is being accelerated by global warming. The highest zones, the mountain peaks, act as a kind of thermometer to measure what is happening in the rest of the world. What we see there is a symptom of what is to come, and it is dramatic."

According to the US-based Mountain Institute, in the past 35 years a fifth of the glaciers have disappeared, the smallest ones no longer exist, and the medium-sized ones are receding. The speed at which they recede depends on the parameters of global warming, and it is not known exactly when they will disappear for good.

One dramatic example is that of Peru's Cordillera Blanca. There, at 16,000 feet above sea level, the air is as thin as its glaciers are today, which leads the sheepherders of the high plateaus to say that...