World Bank warns of climate change in Andes

LIMA, Peru (AP)

“In Peru, (the glaciers) are melting very quickly. More than 20 percent of the glacial ice caps have disappeared since the 1970s,” World Bank climate change specialist Walter Vergara told reporters in the capital, Lima.

The World Bank study on climate change in Latin America warns of three other major threats besides glacier disappearance: the destruction of coral reefs by warming oceans, which could cause the Caribbean basin’s ecosystem to “collapse”; wetlands devastation in the Gulf of Mexico due to deforestation, pollution and land development; and the risk of reduced rainfall drying large swaths of the Amazon jungle.

AP