A comprehensive study released information detailing the potential 15% drop in the GDP of Peru within the century due to climate change, causing detrimental damage to the fishery, agriculture, and mining sectors.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the national government, the study’s experts explain that with the current pace of global warming, fisheries and the anchovy market in particular will be hard hit. Following a reduction in anchovy numbers, fishmeal would take a dive as well.
Formally entitled, The Economics of Climate Change in Peru, this report explains the evidence for the instability of Peru’s GDP due to its high vulnerability to climate change. Presented at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or COP 20, the report emphasized this fact as Peru is facing seven of the nine vulnerability characteristics established by the Convention.
Peru’s tropical glaciers make up 70% of the current global stock and scientific evidence demonstrates that one fifth of that has disappeared due to humans in the last 30 years. The melting of these glaciers cause and lead to a chain reaction of flooding, drought, rising sea-levels, and global warming.
From the extent of the analysed losses comes about the need for early action to reduce the vulnerability of the entire territory, explains Reuters in the document.
Characteristics that make Peru highly vulnerable to climate change also include low, arid and semi-arid coastal areas; it has areas that are susceptible to deforestation or erosion, natural disasters, drought and desertification; and it has highly polluted urban areas and fragile ecosystems, said Diario Gestion.