In the 1980s the Pastoruri glacier was one of the greatest adventure tourism destinations in South America. Over 100,000 people visited the glacier annually to mountaineer, ski, and enjoy spending time on one of the most accessible glaciers over 17,000’. But since 1995, Pastoruri has lost more than 50% of its mass, transforming the icy giant into a slushy, overfull lake. To remedy the fact that currently only about 30,000 people visit the glacier each year, La Ruta del Cambio Climático (or the Path of Climate Change) was created in order to teach visitors about the effects of glacial melt. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t quite have the same draw.

The Ruta was designed to use existing, natural features to create a compelling narrative about the diverse effects of climate change on the region. Beginning in the nearby city, Huaraz, the route winds participants through multiple ecosystems — from lower altitude chakras (at around 11,000’), through high-alpine pastures, to the start of the trail just an hour away from Pastoruri’s 17,000’ peak. On the way, guides demonstrate change by visiting endangered climate-sensitive plants, gasified and mineralized lakes now unsuitable for consumption, and slowly disappearing water sources historically used by local communities. Each stop is intended to highlight a different piece of the climate puzzle, all with the same end: this is serious, just look!

At the start of the paved trail where the trek to the glacier begins, tourists are able to buy water, snacks, and coca leaves from local vendors. They can rest in designated areas, use hygiene services, and read about the glacier on nearby plaques — although, admittedly, the facilities are pretty run down. Just after the trail begins, dozens of guides and horses await visitors who find the hike or altitude too strenuous. Beyond the horses’ capabilities further up the path, tourists can pay strong, able-bodied men to ride on their backs to the vista point. All of these comforts are recent developments, intended to cater to a wildly different type of tourist than the athletes decades earlier.

With the sagging economic revenue of diminished tourism, maintenance of the site is challenging. Some safety railings have collapsed, maps have been half-torn off of wooden signposts, and the safety of dirt roads is questionable. Fixing these problems may heighten the Ruta experience for complaining tourists and out of touch ex-pats, but economic insecurity is also a major part of climate change. Perhaps that’s not the climate change reality some visitors want to see. It’s certainly not advertised to them. Tourists agencies across Peru instead promise participants a rare eco-tourism marvel: an endangered icy giant, estimated to have just a decade of vitality left. “See it while you can!” signs encourage. But when people actually arrive, what does near extinction actually look like? A now unremarkable small piece of ice above a high lake?

The Ruta de Cambio Climatico project succeeded in re-imagining the Pastoruri glacier as a spectacle in the context of time. The value of its experience derives precisely from its temporal state: in between former grandeur, but not yet disappeared. This particular market niche is different from the climate change objects, like bottled luxury Norwegian iceberg water, and instead, sells participants a meaningful adventure. The very fact that this market will burst and collapse with the disappearance of the glacier is in part what gives it meaning.

Climate change has arrived in the Cordillera Blanca. Since 1970, this high altitude mountain range with the largest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world has lost around 30% of its icy mass (or around 200km²). The flowing meltwater converges into hundreds of new high alpine lakes, many of which grow overfull and unstable with each passing year. In a place already notorious for one of the worst environmental disasters in history (killing over 20,000 people), the consequences of further melt from climate change are potentially catastrophic. But in the last 15 months of fieldwork research here, climate change has taken multiple other forms — less sensational than a disastrous flood, but alarming and life threatening none the less. 

Drought. The rainy season arrived four months late to the Cordillera Blanca last year. Farmers who planted seeds in August and September anticipating rain had nothing but dry dust and dead crops on their farms in November. Those who waited found that the ground was too hard to plant anything, though they tried anyway. By the end of November, fires raged across the countryside. Smoke filled the valleys of the region for weeks as people desperately burned whatever trash and organic matter they could find, a method locally believed to produce heavy, rain-bearing clouds. Concern grew until the last weekend of November.

I woke early to multiple text messages alerting me that dozens of angry campesinos (rural farmers) were marching through villages just above Carhuaz, collecting folks along the way. They were upset that the rains had still not arrived, despite their best efforts, and had a plan to end the drought once and for all. Together, they climbed up onto a nearby peak and destroyed the metal apparatus that resided there — a small metal box, solar panel, and antenna. People took turns speaking heatedly, but the local alcalde (an elected position like that of a mayor) guided the message. They knew the equipment was secretly the property of the nearby mining company. They knew it was sending signals to the sky to stop the rains. They knew it existed to make work at the open pit mines more profitable. And after everything the mine has done by poisoning nearby water sources, they’d had enough. They destroyed it to stop the signals and bring back the rain.

Immediately after the spectacle, people quietly returned to their homes. Chisme (gossip) traveled from village to village that not all participants were as certain as they claimed. After all, the equipment had been there for years, why would the mines wait until now to stop the rain? But they were desperate for a solution, they couldn’t imagine another reason this could be happening, and, well, the damage was already done.

Unfortunately for everyone, what was destroyed was not an anti-rain machine owned by a mining corporation. It was an early alarm system for possible glacial lake outburst floods, donated by Swiss researchers to the local municipal government. With the machine, if a flood were to threaten the townsfolk below, the alarm would sound with enough time to theoretically get thousands of residents below to safety. Now, without this equipment, there would be no warning if a disaster were to strike.

As timing would have it, the very next day it rained, and it continued to rain for months. How endlessly frustrating coincidence can be.

This conflict is just one of many facing climate change adaptation here in the Andes. In part, this possibly could have been prevented by holding more democratic and informative meetings with local campesinos, in their own language (Quechua) or presented by trusted leaders. But this isn’t the first time climate science equipment has been deliberately smashed, and it’s not the first time communities have blamed the mines for problems caused by climate change. This incident points to longer running tensions that underlay environmental epistemes.

Conflicts with foreign-owned mining companies here began during the early 1990s, under then President Fujimori’s mining boom. Land rights were restructured, granting the national government mineral rights across the country, allowing them to establish mines where locals protested. Subsequently, when people began presenting symptoms of tainted water and soil, they were politically gaslit by claims that they had no scientific proof. Capital-S Science was routinely used against them as a resource they didn’t have access to (Li 2015). This past year alone, dozens of locals were sentenced to decades in prison for protesting the mine and local government for failing to follow through on promises to improve their living conditions (not to mention the last few regional presidents have been incarcerated for embezzlement and corruption). So when foreign scientists arrive with the support of the government to place machinery on nearby mountain tops, it’s understandable why people might be skeptical.

Unfortunately, the lakes above town now threaten the lives of everyone living below them. Making the region safe and livable during the era of climate change will require millions of soles of resources. It will undoubtedly require social justice and healing. And these incidents illustrate a demand for both without paternalistic management or neocolonial saviors.

Over the next few weeks as a guest blogger, I will be writing from the field where I am currently wrapping up my dissertation research on some of the worlds within this hard-hit place affected by climate change. My writings will be primarily ethnographically oriented, as I begin to analyze some of the more existential questions raised by those with whom I research. I happily welcome opening a dialogue with others.

— Li, Fabiana. Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. Duke University Press, 2015.