: Tackle Global Warming.
lobal warming should be
near the top of your priorities, Mr. President. You may
wonder why a Bolivian is so
concerned and impassioned
about the subject—and why he
would ask the most powerful
man in the world to make it
one of the most important issues on his agenda.
I’ll explain. About a year
ago I was in Bolivia and spoke
with a friend of mine, an avid
skier who frequents Chacaltaya, Bolivia’s only ski resort,
situated on top of an Andean
glacier. It is the highest ski resort in the world. For the past
60 years, Bolivians and foreigners have enjoyed a unique
skiing experience there—but
they may no longer be able to
in the next decade. The glacier
is disappearing at an alarming speed.
Jaime Argollo Bautista, the
director of the Institute of
Geological Investigation at the
University of San Andrés in Bolivia, in a New York Times article published in 2007, claimed
that more than 80 percent of
the glacier had been lost in
the past 20 years. Frighteningly, according to Mr. Argollo,
“Chacaltaya is but a preview of
what’s going to happen to our
other glaciers.”
For Bolivians, this is ominous and deeply disturbing.
Half of our people are indigenous. They revere the Andes
as providers of life—and with
good reason! The World Bank
estimates that the melting glaciers in the Andes threaten
the water supply of over 30
million people in the Andean
basin. Thirty percent of the
population of La Paz derives
its drinking water from melting glaciers. And, if that were
not sufficiently worrisome,
Bolivia gets 50 percent of its
electricity from hydroelectric
power generated by melting
glaciers. Alarmingly, the International Panel on Climate
Change predicts that many
lower-altitude Andean glaciers
could disappear in as little as
ten years. Some predict the
Chacaltaya glacier could vanish in as little as three years.
These changes would be irreversible and devastating for
Bolivians and the people of
other Andean countries.
Due to the speed with which
the changes have occurred and
the impoverished condition
of the Bolivian state, there has
been minimal planning to offset the coming catastrophe. To
further compound these problems, Bolivia was hit with
months of floods, hailstorms
and droughts earlier this year.
The floods affected over half
a million people and caused
Marcelo Claure is the
founder, chairman,
president & CEO of
Brightstar Corp. and
a Young Global Leader
in the World Economic
Forum. Photographed
with his daughter, Siena,
and dog, Tiber, on the
balcony of his apartment
in Miami Beach.
