The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela also has an environmental apex. The right to water is violated daily in homes, schools and hospitals, both by the intermittency of the service and by the poor quality of the liquid, while by the faults of urban cleaning, garbage accumulates in the communities, and is the focus of vectors and pathogens.
Mining Arc of the Orinoco
The mining concessions in the 111 thousand square kilometers that make up the Orinoco Mining Arc, south of the largest river in the country, threaten the country's hydroelectric potential. Illegal mining has caused an increase in the rate of deforestation in the basins of the Caura and Caroní rivers, among others.
The lack of a plant layer causes the rain to become runoff instead of being absorbed by the roots, dragging mud and stones into the rivers. Consequently, reservoirs such as El Guri fill up more slowly and in less quantity because they accumulate sediments in their bottom.
The loss of trees also raises the temperature of forest microclimates, while the digging of mines to extract gold, coltan or diamond by propulsion of river water, favor the creation of immense mosquito breeding sites that transmit the parasite of the malaria. In addition, this erosion of the soil layer that has accumulated nutrients for decades makes the damage caused by deforestation almost irreversible.
The announcement of new technologies to reverse the effects caused by mining or exploitation in a manner "responsible with the environment and Human Rights" have been denied by journalistic investigations that certify how the armed mafias control the mines, as well as the purchase of " gold mining "from authorities who extract it illegally, which prevent the entry of concession companies.
Climate change
It is not a story. Academics warn that global warming can affect coffee production in Latin America, especially in three countries, one of them Venezuela. In 2004, the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (Inameh) published a report on the consequences of climate change on the volume and change of occurrence of rainfall.
This has been ratified by professors of the Department of Environmental Studies of the Simón Bolívar University (USB).
In the 4th Environmental Conferences of the Andrés Bello Catholic University (Ucab), held in November 2017, the professor warned that by 2060 rainfall would be reduced between 5% and 25%. Another 22 speakers agreed on the urgent need to make a national plan of action in the face of Climate Change, whose national threats fall on agriculture, the fishery and coastal and island cities.
Just days after the call of the academics in the Ucab, the Ministry of Ecosocialism presented the Second National Communication on Climate Change as part of the United Nations Framework Convention. However, the country goes to the tail of the region.
As reported by the specialized blog NotiambienteVe by Professor Alejandro Álvarez Iragorry, from the Climate 21 Coalition: "In the Latin American and Caribbean region, most of the countries have published, to date, at least 2 reports (21 of 33 countries) and nine have submitted more (Mexico has submitted five, Uruguay four, and Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, three) ".
As the call was exclusively governmental, the Academy of Sciences made with the support of the Embassy of the United Kingdom the First Academic Report on Climate Change, which includes an environmental diagnosis as well as possible solutions for adaptation and mitigation in the absence of a National Plan yet not elaborated
For its part, both the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) and the National Assembly are holding consultations for the enactment of their own National Law on Climate Change.
The last Glacier
In 2015 a note from The Economist, replicated by GlacierHub, warned what many Meridans knew but little has been spilled by public opinion. Venezuela could be the first country to run out of glaciers due to Climate Change.
Of the three that the country owned, only one remains, located in the Humboldt peak, which is one tenth the size of 30 years ago, which could disappear "between 10 and 20 years." As early as 2010, researchers had found that 83.74% of the coverage had been lost by 2008, giving the Venezuelan glaciers only 10 years of existence.
Formed by the accumulation of layers of frozen snow for centuries, tropical glaciers melt progressively over centuries, producing mountain lagoons and filling rivers, changing their size during the year. Now they are rapidly melting all over the world from Spain to Indonesia, affecting the access to water of the surrounding communities.
After the military evicted an American scientist who traveled to Venezuela to investigate, the studies at the Humboldt are done remotely using satellite monitoring. Locally, as they are not a source of water or threaten populations, there has been no interest in following up on them.
The Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler presented at a concert in Medellín in April 2018 a decade song to this last glacier, after remembering that some of his relatives live in the city of Mérida.
"Caparo" in danger
The last wooded relict of the Colombian-Venezuelan plains is also in danger. The Forest Reserve of Caparo, an Area under Special Administration Regime (Abrae) was created in 1961 with an area of 175 thousand hectares for sustainable logging through private concessions, but this was not fulfilled.
A cartographic study by the Latin American Forestry Institute and the Universidad de Los Andes found that this area had lost 62.5% of its forest cover between 1987 and 2007, at an average rate of 4,798 hectares per year. Fires and indiscriminate felling caused by the invaders are the main cause of the destruction.
Within the Reserve is the Caparo Experimental Station, of 7 thousand hectares, under a loan granted to the ULA in 1982, which is also used for scientific research. It is one of the most recognized places in Latin America in the study of the production of teak, timber species, also serving as a place of practice for students of Forestry Engineering and forestry laboratory for researchers.
In addition, it is the last refuge of the brown spider monkey, an endemic species of Colombia and Venezuela, almost extinct in our country. The biologist Diana Duque-Sandoval, director of the Mono Spider Project Coffee in Caparo, has denounced new invasions of 200 people since January 5, 2018.
The cooperative Embajadores de Cristo 777, who claim the space to build houses, have defended themselves saying that they have not cut down trees while the University Council, professors and students of the ULA have denounced the environmental impact caused by photographs.
After their request was rejected by the National Land Institute (Inti) in accordance with the Forest Law, the Criminal Control Court of Barinas ordered the eviction that was to be executed by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) in early February .
We all want solutions, but what is it that we are contributing? a planet every day more damaged, more polluted, focus on its improvement is everyone's job, happy day!