Popular lake away in Chile – only the desert left

"Popular lake away in Chile – only the desert remains."

"Of what was once a destination for a swim, water ski or only enjoy the chilean summer heat, remains today a sandy desert."

"After ten years of drought, lake Aculeo, an hour's drive from the capital city of Santiago, gone."

"as late as 2011 was the 12 square km and six metres deep, the lagoon is a popular excursion destination, with a thriving tourism industry with camping, restaurants and activities. All that is now visible, is abandoned swimming platforms, canoes and boats in the sandy desert, and benresterna of dead animals that once sought to feed on the last of the grass surrounding the Aculeo."

"A sign with a picture of a sparkling blue lagoon with the Andes in the background are left with the text"

"Climate change, but also a lot of pressure from the surrounding agriculture and tourism, is located behind the lake's death."

"– My grandparents remember when the rainy season lasted at least a week, today we are lucky if it rains in two days, " says Camila Nuñez who works at a nearby restaurant."

"on average, it rained 350 millimeters annually in Chile during the 1980s. In the last year had rainfall shrunk to half. Scientists believe that the rainfall will continue to decrease as a result of global warming."

" We have lived through a very long period of drought that lasted several years. In the future, we see that the rainfall will decrease, so it is very likely that the coming years will be equally dry, " says Eduardo Bustos, climatologist at the Catholic university in Chile."

"the Exploited to death"

"With the growing tourism around the lake has also followed the increased exploitation that is taxed hard on the water resources. Profitable avokadoodlingar around the lake contributed further to the over-exploitation of a fragile ecosystem."

"We killed the lake, a little at a time," says 26-year-old Antonia Romero, who has memories from childhood summers at the Aculeos beaches."

"About 70 percent of Chile's population lives today in areas where the risk of drought is large. Scientists estimate that water levels in the interior will drop by 30 percent by the year 2030."

"The overall scientific community, with the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change in the lead, is, in principle, agree that the global warming detected in the last decades is due to human emissions of so called greenhouse gases."

"in 2015, at a summit in Paris, the conclusion of a global climate agreement to curb this. It states-among other things-that global warming should be limited to below two degrees compared with pre-industrial times, and global emissions as soon as possible to reach their maximum level and then decrease. In addition, the world's developed countries to contribute 100 billion dollars annually in aid for climate measures for developing countries from 2020."

"Then a sufficient number of states ratified the paris agreement entered into force on 4 november 2016. In the following year decided the united states to pull out."

"It's relatively well known that China stands for the absolute terms, the largest emissions of climate-impacting carbon dioxide, with the USA in second place and EUROPE in third. This was the countries with the greatest carbon dioxide emissions 2017, measured in billions of tons:"

"Source: the UN, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency with multiple"