Climate change impact: Venezuela has reached a sad point in the fight against climate change. It has lost all its glaciers, becoming the first country to do so. In 1910, Venezuela had six glaciers covering 1,000 square kilometers. But now, there’s hardly any ice left, and what’s left doesn’t count as glaciers anymore.
By 2011, Venezuela had lost five of its glaciers, leaving only one, called the Humboldt glacier or La Corona, in the Sierra Nevada National Park. But even this last glacier has shrunk so much that it’s now considered an ice field instead.Professor Julio Cesar Centeno from the University of the Andes (ULA) said, “There are no more glaciers in Venezuela.” He also expressed sadness that only 0.4 percent of their original size remains.
At its largest, La Corona covered 4.5 square kilometers (1.7 square miles). Now, it’s less than 0.02 square kilometers (2 hectares), much smaller than the minimum size needed to be called a glacier, which is 0.1 square kilometers (10 hectares).
Research from the last five years shows a shocking 98 percent decrease in glacier size in Venezuela from 1953 to 2019. The rate of ice loss sped up dramatically after 1998, reaching a peak of about 17 percent per year from 2016 onward.
In 1998, La Corona covered about 0.6 square kilometers (0.2 square miles). By 2015, it had shrunk so much that it was almost no longer considered a glacier. ULA researchers mentioned that their most recent expedition in December 2023 found that the glacier had lost around two hectares from its size in 2019. The Venezuelan Government tried to protect the Humboldt glacier by covering it with a geotextile blanket in December. However, this effort was unsuccessful and faced criticism from conservationists. They were worried that the degrading fabric could contaminate the ecosystem.