We usually don’t think of glaciers as being in Peru, but the mountains of Peru have beautiful – and melting – glaciers. Nevado Palcaraju, once a magnificent glacier in Coirdillera Blanca, is almost gone. Beneath it is a turquoise colored lake 15 miles from Huaraz, a city of 50,000 persons. If a rockslide crashed into the lake of melted glacier ice, it would create a tsunami that would inundate the town and its residents.
This is an area of tropical glaciers, which now with the warming climate have begun to melt. And one townsperson Luciano Lliuya is suing the German company RWE for its role in warming the glaciers. He only asked for a small sum to build a protective barrier for Huaraz, but the German company realized that if it agreed to liability for its plants in the industrial areas of Peru, the consequences would be enormous.
His lawsuit is in Essen, Germany, and now the evidence gathering part of the trial has begun. Since Lliuya filed his action in 2014, more than 2,000 other persons and groups have followed suit, asking that international polluters be held accountable.
Prayer for the Day
Overwhelmed by their magnificence and beauty,
In awe we look at towering glaciers, O God;
Created by your hand but now melting into the earth,
They are but one instance of our negligence of your creation.
Open our eyes, O Lord, to what we have done to them,
And give us a vision of your beauty restored.
In the name of the One who enlarges our vision,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen
Thoughts for the Day
I believe I am like a witness, because I see the mountains and what’s happening to them. And I share what is going on.
- Luciano Lliuya, Huaraz, Peru
These landscapes have a really important meaning for us and for our family, for our history here. We want to protect these areas because it’s our home.
- Luciana Olaza la Rosa, local environmental activist
Hear, you peoples, all of you, listen, O earth and all that is in it;
And let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from the holy temple.
For, lo, the Lord is coming out of God’s place,
And will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
Then the mountains will melt under the Lord, and the valleys will burst open,
Like wax near the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.—Micah 1:1-4
Nevado Palcaraju
If I imagine that the mountain is a person, and it felt like it was being affected, it would also go to court, make these demands.