Icy reception for plan to 'save' Venezuela's last glacier
A small patch of ice among bare rock is all that remains of Venezuela's last glacier, which the government hopes to restore to its former glory using a geothermal blanket.
Experts say that would be too little too late.
While glacier melt is a global phenomenon blamed on climate change, Venezuela is the first country in the Andes mountain range—which stretches all the way to Chile in the south—to lose all its glaciers.
Venezuela has lost five in total, adding up to some 1,000 hectares of ice, in the last century or so.
"In Venezuela there are no more glaciers," Julio Cesar Centeno, a university professor and advisor to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), told AFP.
"What we have is a piece of ice that is 0.4 percent of its original size."
Centeno and other experts are convinced the loss of La Corona glacier on Humboldt peak, some 4,900 meters (more than 16,000 feet) above sea level, is irreversible.
But the government announced a plan in December to slow and even reverse the thaw by covering the area with a thermal mesh made of polypropylene plastic warding off the Sun's rays.
The cover was delivered to Humboldt peak by helicopter in 35 separate pieces, each measuring 2.75 meters by 80 meters, in December, but the government has not said whether it has already been unrolled.
Venezuela's government has announced plans to 'save' the La Corona glacier which experts say is already gone.