Vulnerability to climate change: Venezuela
When analyzing Venezuela’s vulnerability respecting climate change, we must understand the country’s geography to understand its high vulnerability. The variety of its landscapes have a direct relation respecting to ecosystems, habitats and the risks of each form of landscape to humans.
South region is covered by the Amazonas. Deforestations issues and global warming are raising considerably the vulnerability over the forests to burn, threatening biodiversity in this sense. On the other hand, El Niño and La Niña are phenomena which bring droughts or excessive rains. When droughts are produced over this region, hydro power is considerably affected, especially when we consider that the biggest dams are fed with the water coming from rivers which are born in this jungle region. Venezuela depends on 70% hydro to meet its electricity demand.
Another factor we should consider about La Niña specifically is that when high levels of rains come and flooding occurs, Dengue, cutaneous leishmaniasis and Malaria are diseases that spread very easily.
Northern part is dominated by coastline, having mountains also sharing this scenery. In this regions risk of flooding or landslides have increased. Most of the population is in this area, being the country vulnerable in this sense, especially in the regions where sea and mountain meet. Respecting to biodiversity and habitats, the rise of sea level has contributed to the loss of mangroves, affecting local plants and animals that used to live in these areas. Urbanization has also affectes this type of habitats.
The Llanos region (large extensions of flatlands which cover a large portion of the territory), if considered as a whole, holds the major cultivable lands in the country. Droughts or excessive rains have affected crops and yields respectively, affecting the countries food security and pushing people to look for better conditions in the city, consequently, slums and poverty problems have been favored by this factor. Slums favor the spread of diseases and HIV’s.
The Andes has been losing its biodiversity for climatic reasons. Taking into consideration that this region is a great chain of big mountains, the risk of slides have also increased, affecting agriculture and populations along.
As visible, Venezuela is a country that has high vulnerability when it comes to population, biodiversity and habitats. The different climatic regions upraise different risks for their diverse nature.
Sources:
Magrin, G., C. Gay García, D. Cruz Choque, J.C. Giménez, A.R. Moreno, G.J. Nagy, C. Nobre and A. Villamizar, 2007: Latin America.Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds.,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 581-615.
The Climate Vulnerability Monitor (2010). Available at: http://daraint.org/climate-vulnerability-monitor/climate-vulnerability-monitor-2010/ . Last accessed 05/02/2012
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06 Feb 2012
por
Rodrigo Capriles Mazzei
IMSD /
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