Tourist Responses to Climate Change and Glacial Melt in the Peruvian Andes

Melting Marvels: Tourist Responses to Climate Change and Glacial Melt in the Peruvian Andes

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Sarah Kelly Wright

Graduate Program in Geography

The Ohio State University 2009

Thesis Committee

Dr. Kendra McSweeney, Co-Advisor

Dr. Bryan Mark, Co-Advisor

Dr. Becky Mansfield

ABSTRACT

The world has gone over the precipice of modern global climate change. Even with rapid

reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the world is already locked into a cycle that

includes some climate change. The tropical Peruvian Andes have been compared to a

'canary in a coalmine' since accelerating glacier recession heralds a response to global

warming with grave consequences for local populations (Dougherty, 2004). The

Cordillera Blanca (8-10ºS) contains more of the world's tropical glaciers than any other

range, and they are receding very rapidly (Ames, 1998). A large portion of Peru depends on these glaciers to moderate their water supply during the highly seasonal precipitation regime (Mark et al. 2005). The tourism that the Ancash region relies on will most likely be greatly reduced as the glaciers disappear, as well.

This thesis is situated in this highly complex context, looking at how tourists to the Cordillera Blanca region perceive and understand modern global climate change, glacier recession, and adaptation strategies. In this thesis, I present an analysis of my fieldwork conducted during the summer of 2008. The results show that Peruvians believe an extremely strong relationship exists between the receding glaciers and modern global climate change, but they have a weak understanding of what the mechanics of that relationship would be. Peruvians are also blaming themselves equally with the rest of the world, including the developed countries. This is anomalous to other victims of climate change, such as the Inuit and Small-Island States, and shows Peru’s close ties to

ii governments like the United States. Although Peruvians also call themselves environmentalists, their current and future policy decisions may be affected by their mental framework in a way that diminishes action on the problem.

I am situating this research at the nexus of three literatures: political ecology, environmental tourism, and the literature discussing local understandings of and responses to environmental change. Each literature contributes a significant portion of the theoretical framework for the thesis in a way that has not been attempted in previous studies. The insights provided in this thesis also make contributions to each of these literatures in illustrating how tourists are responding to the current environmental changes, how the discourse surrounding glacial recession is shaping/being shaped by local policies and actions, and how perceptions and understandings of anthropogenic climate change vary in an unexpected way between Peruvians and other groups of people currently being affected.

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DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to Sandip Suvedi, with thanks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I wish to thank my advisors, Kendra McSweeney and Bryan Mark for

all of their help over the past two years. They have been invaluable during the entire

process from writing proposals to conducting research to the thesis creation. Without

their patience and dedication, this thesis would not have been possible. Specifically,

thanks go to Bryan for teaching me about Peru’s relationship with modern global climate

change and allowing me into his research team. Thanks must also go to Kendra for her

countless hours leading me through the murky waters of thesis writing.

I would also like to thank Becky Mansfield for guiding me through the long

journey of discovering my epistemology. Her work with me both inside and outside the

classroom enabled me to find my place within the literature.

I thank Jeffrey Bury for welcoming me into the research team and piloting me

through the research process. His knowledge of the field and situations within the

Cordillera Blanca helped inspire my research questions.

I would also like to thank Marie Cieri for her role in developing my research methods. Without her, I would never have been able to jump off the cliff into my

fieldwork.

I thank my family for their support throughout my life, but most especially in the

past two years. I thank my parents, Bill and Carol Wright, for their cheerleading abilities.

I thank my brother, Greg Wright, for providing insight and understanding from his own experiences. I thank Amy Anderson for her cheery perceptions of how to react to graduate studies. Most of all, I thank Sandip Suvedi for being there for me throughout the whole process.

Finally, I must thank all of the wonderful people I encountered in Peru. Without the hospitality of Mi Casa, the knowledge of UGRH, and the candidness of all my interviewees, this thesis would be much less rewarding. Thank you all.

This research was supposed by generous grants from The National Geographic

Society, Ohio State’s Office of International Affairs, and the Association of American

Geographers Latin American Specialty Group.

VITA

May 2007…………….……………………. B.A. Geography, Michigan State University

May 2007………….…….….…….B.A. International Studies, Michigan State University

2008- Present………………….Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study Major Field: Geography

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………....……. ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………. iv Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….…….v Vita……………………………………………………………………………………vii List of Figures………………………………………………………………..…….…..ix

Chapters:

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 1 1.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………….. 1 1.2 Introduction to Global Climate Change…………………………………. 4 1.3 Introduction to Tropical Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca……………… 7 1.4 Demographic Information………………………………………………. 11 1.5 Economics of Peru……………………………………………………… 12 1.6 Introduction to Tourism in Ancash……………………………………… 13 1.7 Introduction to Cordillera Blanca Tourism……………………………… 15 1.8 Economic Importance of Tourism as Compared to Mining……………... 18 1.9 Tourism and Global Climate Change…………………………………… 19

2. Conceptual Framework………………………………………………………. 23 2.1 Conceptual Approach………………………………………………….… 24 2.2 The Global Environmental Management Discourse…………………….. 27 2.3 The Global Environmental Management and Denial Discourses: The United States…………………………………………………………...... 30 2.4 Profligacy Discourse………………………………………………….….. 32 2.4.1 Inuit Perceptions of Climate Change……………………….…….. 33 2.4.2 Small-Island States’ Relationship with Climate Change…………. 37 2.5 Summary of Case Studies………………………………………………. 40 2.6 Where Peruvians Fit…………………………………………………..... 40

3. Methodology……………………………………………………………….… 42 3.1 Methods………………………………………………………….…….… 44 3.2 Survey Design…………………………………………………….……... 47 3.3 Validity and Reliability………………………………………….…….… 49 3.4 Interview Locations…………………………………………….…….…. 51 3.5 Demographics of Participants………………………………….…….…. 57

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4. Survey Results………………………………………………………………... 63 4.1 Peruvian Tourists say “Yes!” to the Environment………………………. 64 4.2 Associating Glacial Melt with Climate Change…………………………. 65 4.3 The Ozone Layer………………………………………………………… 67 4.4 Effects on Tourism………………………………………………………. 68 4.5 The Blame Game: Who is responsible for climate change?...... 69 4.6 Who Will be Affected by Climate Change?...... 72 4.7 Water: “Agua es vida”…………………………………………………... 74 4.8 Government Actions, Current and Future…………………………...….. 77 4.9 Summary of Findings……………………………………………….…... 80

5. Survey Discussion……………………………………………………….……. 81 5.1 Theme One: Peruvian Relationships with their Environment…….……... 81 5.2 Theme Two: Fatalism in Inaction……………………………………….. 87 5.3 Theme Three: The Blame Game…………………………………………. 89 5.3.1 The Mystery of the Closed Glacier: Case Study of Pastoruri…….. 90 5.4 Conclusions………………………………………………………………. 96

6. Summary and Conclusions……………………………………………………. 98 6.1 Importance of Research………………………………………………….. 98 6.2 Summary of Findings……………………………………………………. 99 6.3 Limitations of the Study…………………………………………….…… 102 6.4 Suggestions for Future Research…………………………………….…... 103

List of References………………………………………………………………… 104

Appendix A Tourist Semi-Structured Survey Questions in English….……....…. 113 Appendix B Tourist Semi-Structured Survey Questions in Spanish.……………. 114

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 This diagram illustrates the model predictions of different climate

scenarios, including the business-as-usual curve red) and the immediate

reduction of emissions (orange) (IPCC WGI 2007; p. 762)……………………… 4

Figure 1.2 The graphs compare the IPCC models with observations (IPCC WGI

SPM 2007, p. 6) …………………………………………………..…………… 6

Figure 1.3 This map depicts Peru and the Cordillera Blanca. The gray areas are

glacierized (Mark and Seltzer 2005, p. 2267).…………………………………… 9

Figure 1.4 These are two remote sensing images of Pastoruri from 1987 (left) to

1996 (right) (Silverio and Jaquet 2004, p. 348)………………………………… 10

Figure 2.1 Venn Diagram showing the overlapping areas of the literature used

in framing this thesis……………………..…………………………………… 27

Figure 3.1 This tourist map is a copy of a map I picked up in Huaraz. I found

this online (Focus Software 2008). The map features the Northern part of the

study area. The map is most likely not to scale………………………...……… 43

Figure 3.2 This is the Southern half of the map above (Focus Software

2008)……..………………………………………………………...………… 44

Figure 3.3 The distribution of interviews sorted by their locations throughout study area. …………………………………………………………………… 51

Figure 3.4 In this picture, I am posing with the sunglass llamas en route to

Pastoruri (Photo by Anonymous Tourist, July 2008).…………………..……… 52

Figure 3.5 This picture shows the tourist crowds and glacier of Pastoruri (Photo by Sarah Wright July 2008)…………………………………….……………… 55

Figure 3.6 This is the view of the first lake of Llanganuco (Photo by Sarah

Wright, July 2008)……………………………………………………………… 56

Figure 3.7 The table gives the distribution of age..……………………………. 57

Figure 3.8 The occupation of participants varied greatly………………………… 60

Figure 3.9 The table shows the interviewees’ origins…………………………… 61

Figure 4.1 This pie chart illustrates the number of self-identified environmentalists…………………………………………………..…………… 65

Figure 4.2 The wreckage of an omnibus at Campo Santo is a popular photo spot

(Photo by Sarah Wright, July 2008)…………………………………………..… 66

Figure 4.3 Pie chart showing the proportion of answers to “How many tourists will there be in the future, if the glaciers are gone?”.……………………….…… 69

Figure 4.4 The perceptions of who uses the water in the region varied between interviews……………………………………………………………………….. 74

Figure 4.5 The river bank of the Santa in Huaraz, Peru is covered in trash (Photo by Sarah Wright, July 2008)……………………………………………………… 77

Figure 5.1 Ice climbing at Llaca is more expensive than other day trips (Photo by

Sarah Wright, August 2008)…………………………………………………… 84

CHAPTER 1

Climate Change, Tropical Glaciers, and Tourism

1.1 Introduction

Climate change, colloquially referred to as global warming, is one of the most important issues of our time. Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide have been slowly changing the composition of the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, although most human beings have only begun to take notice recently (Knight 2008). If the scientific predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come to pass, including the temperature increase illustrated in Figure 1.1, the landscapes of the world will look very different in 100 years (IPCC Working Group II (WGII) 2007). Sea level rise, glacial melt, and species extinctions are just some of the many effects of climate change that the IPCC WGII (2007) says the world is already experiencing, with increased amounts of each as the climate changes. Each region of the world will experience climate change differently, as local climatic patterns are shaped by local conditions.

One place already experiencing environmental change resulting from climate

change is the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Anthropogenic global climate change is causing

the glaciers to recede, which creates social vulnerability, as well as physical changes

(Mark et al. 2005). The glacial melt moderates the highly seasonal precipitation regime,

supplying water during the dry season. The social context also surrounds the glaciers as

the region partially depends on tourists to the glaciers for economic support. Within the

context of global warming, glaciers, and tourism, I explored a number of questions

regarding Peruvian glaciers including: How are native Peruvians perceiving and

understanding climate changes? What are their reactions to these changes? What are the

relations to broader socio-economic and environmental processes? How do they

understand the contributing factors? Where do they place blame and who do they hold

responsible? How do we explain these patterns?

These questions frame this thesis. In the first chapter of the thesis, I present a

literature review of modern global climate change and its relationship with tropical

glaciers and tourism, specifically within the Cordillera Blanca in the department of

Ancash, Peru. In the second chapter, I provide a comprehensive overview of some of the

important issues surrounding climate change in this area, including a discussion of the

global environmental discourse surrounding climate change. I also relate the study

results to the global literature on other communities’ reactions to and perceptions of

climate change. In the third chapter, I provide the methodology of the study, as well as

more specific background information on this particular research study. Throughout the

fourth chapter, I review the results of my fieldwork and discuss the regional implications.

Chapter five organizes the results’ eight main findings into three themes, including the specific case study of Pastoruri. In chapter six, I conclude the thesis with a summary of the research, exploring three themes that emerge from the literature and results, and provide some suggestions for further research.

This chapter will, specifically, provide a brief description of modern global climate change and the role of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other

‘greenhouse gases’ in section 1.2. Then, I will provide background information about the study location, the Cordillera Blanca mountain range in Ancash, Peru, and the tropical glaciers located there in section 1.3. This section will include how these glaciers are being affected by global climate change. The next section, 1.4, has demographic information about Peru and Ancash, followed by some introductory information about the tourists visiting Ancash (section 1.5). Section 1.6 specifies this information for tourists visiting the Cordillera Blanca region of Ancash. The last two sections, 1.7 and 1.8, give the details of tourism as an important economic source that is being threatened by climate change. The chapter then concludes with important questions that help frame this particular study.

1.2 Introduction to Global Climate Change

Figure 1.1: This diagram illustrates the model predictions of different climate change scenarios, including the business-as-usual curve (red) and the immediate reduction of emissions (orange) (IPCC WGI 2007; p. 762).

Modern, anthropogenic global climate change (which can sometimes be referred to with the phrase “global warming”) refers to an increase in the globally averaged temperature and associated other climate changes due to increased amounts of 4

atmospheric greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and

methane, are released into the atmosphere through industrial and other activities (IPCC

WGI 2007). These gases then absorb and re-radiate heat within the Earth’s atmosphere, increasing/maintaining the temperature (EPA 2008). It is worth noting that climate change is not the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ which is a natural characteristic of the atmosphere that keeps the planet in a livable state. Without a natural atmospheric

greenhouse effect, the Earth could have ended up like Mars, with no atmosphere and no

life (Britt 2005). Also, although many people use the phrase “global warming” to refer to

anthropogenic climate change, this refers only to globally average temperatures

increasing. Some places are actually expected to cool as ocean currents change (IPCC

WGI 2007). But the shorter phrase of “global warming” is easier to use, so in this thesis

it will sometimes stand in for the phrase “anthropogenic global climate change”.

The key difference between natural climate change and anthropogenic global

climate change is that humans are changing the system by adding more greenhouse gases

to the atmosphere, making the temperatures rise. The evidence for this comes from many

forms of analysis including, but not limited to: atmospheric observations, ice core data,

dendrochronology, and sediment cores of lakes (IPCC WGI 2007). That global warming is occurring is not debated within the scientific community, and the idea that it is anthropogenic is stated with 90% confidence according to the latest Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC WGI 2007). The IPCC has a conservative policy of using only model based analyses to predict climate changes, illustrated in Figure 1.2, as

well as large numbers of scientists and politicians. So, combined with the large amounts

5 of peer review needed to produce the document, 90% confidence is at a point of extreme confidence in the minds of most scientists.

Figure 1.2: The graphs compare the IPCC models with observations (IPCC WGI SPM 2007, p. 6).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses models to demonstrate that anthropogenic forcings are necessary to retroactively predict the previously recorded observations of historical climate measurements. The radiative forcing values model the various natural and anthropogenic factors that affect climate in a way that is easier to 6 quantify and calculate the relative effects of each factor (IPCC WGI 2007). In Figure

1.2, the blue area illustrates the predictions using only natural forcings, while the pink area illustrates the model results that use both natural and anthropogenic forcings. The black lines plot the climate averages for that region. The observation line primarily follows the model predictions that use both forcings, which is strong evidence that future predictions will fall close to the model predictions (IPCC WGI 2007).

Looking at the predictions in Figure 1.1, the amount of radiative forcing will depend on the various emissions scenarios. If the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases immediately, the orange curve shows that we would still see a rise in temperature afterwards due to residual effects. However, immediate reductions are not feasible for the world right now. Indeed, the IPCC has found that:

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by almost 100 ppm in comparison to its preindustrial level, reaching 379 ppm in 2005, with mean annual growth rates in the 2000–2005 period that were higher than those in the 1990s. (IPCC WGIII 2007; p. 97)

The rates of increase are actually increasing for carbon dioxide, even while people are actually implementing policies to cut carbon emissions due to the overwhelming demand of fossil fuels worldwide. The IPCC also predicts how the global average temperature will be affected by different emissions scenarios in the future, from business-as-usual causing a 3.5 degree Celsius increase by 2100 to half a degree increase with immediate reductions (Figure 1.1).

1.3 Introduction to Tropical Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca

The tropical Peruvian Andes have been called a 'canary in a coalmine' since accelerating glacier recession heralds a response to global warming with grave

consequences for local populations (Dougherty, 2004). The Cordillera Blanca (8-10ºS) contains more of the world's tropical glaciers than any other range, and they are receding

very rapidly (Ames, 1998). The glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, illustrated by the

shaded in Figure 1.3, covered an estimated 600 kilometers squared in 1996 (Silverio and

Jaquet 2004) and 570 kilometers squared in 2003 (Racoviteanu et al. 2008), but this area

is likely less, given the ongoing loss of glacial mass.

Tropical glaciers, particularly those in South America, are very sensitive to

climate changes (Kaser and Georges 1997). Temperature and precipitation changes

shrink the amount of glacial cover every year. These tropical glaciers buffer streams

from the highly seasonal precipitation runoff, and this increased glacier melt causes

increased runoff (Mark et al. 2005). This increased amount of water is not permanent

because, depending on the severity of climate change, many of the tropical glaciers could

disappear in the near future. This could lead to a host of problems, including an

increased vulnerability to water scarcity (Mark et al. 2005).

Figure 1.3: This map depicts Peru and the Cordillera Blanca. The gray areas are glacierized (Mark and Seltzer 2005 p. 2267).

Within the Cordillera Blanca, the glacial area was estimated at 721 kilometers squared in 1970 (Silverio and Jaquet 2005), but at only 570 kilometers squared in 2003

(Racoviteanu et al. 2008). This is approximately a 23% reduction in area. Since about

70% of the glaciers within the Cordillera Blanca are relatively small (less than one kilometer squared), this great reduction in volume means that many will probably disappear within the next 20 to 30 years (Silverio and Jaquet 2005, p. 350).

One glacier disappearing rapidly is the locally famous glacier of Pastoruri, pictured in Figure 1.4. The glacier retreated approximately 17.2 meters annually between

1984 and 1996, based on aerial imagery and corroboration with measurements by

Peruvian glaciologists (Silverio and Jaquet 2005, p. 347). This is also an increased rate of deglaciation from the period between 1970 and 1983.

Figure 1.4: These are two remote sensing images of Pastoruri from 1987 (left) to 1996 (right) (Silverio and Jaquet 2004, p. 348).

Hundreds of thousands of people, including many subsistence-farming mestizo

and indigenous Quechua (Byers, 2000), depend on these glaciers for their water supply during the dry season. As the glaciers disappear, future dry season water availability becomes a serious issue for local people.

1.4 Demographic Information

Peru has a population of 29,546,963 that is 45% Amerindian, 37% mestizo

(Amerindian and white), and 15% white with 3% falling into an ‘other’ category (CIA

2009). The literacy rate for the country is 92.9% (CIA 2009). Unemployment is 8.4% in

Lima and the coastal areas, but “widespread underemployment” dominates all other regions (CIA 2009). Inequality plays a major role in Peru, with household income/consumption of 1.3% of total shares for the poorest 10% of the population and

40.9% for the wealthiest 10% in 2003 (CIA 2009).

The population of Ancash is 1,039,415 (INEI 2006). Of these, approximately

67% live in the mountainous region of Ancash.1 According to the CIA World Factbook

1 Since the official Instituto Nacional de Estadística E Informática (National

Institute of Statistics and Information; INEI) data do not separate the population by the

location within the mountains or jungle, I performed a crude calculation to estimate the

population of each. I used the 2006 census data that lists the population for each

province within the department of Ancash, as well as the data listing tourist sites with

their location in either jungle or mountains. If a majority of the sites were mountainous,

the province was classified as mountainous, and if a majority of the sites were listed as

jungle, the province was classified as jungle. Using this information, the population in

2009), this is the region with higher levels of poverty and inequality compared to the

coastal region.

1.5 Economics of Peru

In terms of development, Peru is often portrayed as successful. The GDP (using

Purchasing Power Parity or PPP) was $238.9 billion in 2008 (CIA 2009). The estimated growth rate for 2008 was a phenomenal 9.2% with GDP per capita (PPP) rising to $8,400

(CIA 2009). However, this growth was based primarily on higher global prices for minerals and high levels of trade liberalization by the government and is not considered stable. Also, the benefits of the rapid economic growth have not extended beyond the coastal region, enlarging the gap in inequality between the coast and other regions (CIA

2009).

Peru’s “success” story, like many others around the world, is discussed by the

International Monetary Fund and United States Central Intelligence Agency in a way that

highlights the very superficial measure of GDP as the most important part of

“development” (CIA 2009, IMF 2006). As Porter and Sheppard (1998) discuss, GDP is

not a fair measure of development because it leaves many important aspects out of the

equation, such as life expectancy, literacy, or infant mortality, which are addressed in

other measure of development. Indeed, GDP hides even economic discrepancies, such as

inequalities within an economy.

the mountainous region is around 600,000, while the population within the jungle/coastal region is a little under 470,000.

According to the World Bank’s Trade Brief on Peru from 2007, gold, copper, and

copper ore accounted for 35% of the country’s total exports in 2005. Service exports,

primarily international tourism, accounted for 9.2% of the exports to foreign countries

during the same time period. Exports account for 50% of the Peruvian economy. In the

Ancash Department, specifically, mineral extraction accounts for 21.4% of the regions’ gross domestic production, almost double any other category (Ministerio de Economía y

Finanzas 2006; 25). Hotels and restaurants (markers of tourism) only accounted for

3.75% of the total production within the economy of the region in 1999 (25), which leads

some researchers to say the region has very low amounts of tourism due to unequal

investments by the government in infrastructure (O’Hare and Barret 1999).

1.6 Introduction to Tourism in Ancash

The projected amounts of tourism given by O’Hare and Barret (1999) are

misleading as other data have shown that tourism is the second most important industry

in Peru (INEI 2005). As Byers (2000) notes, Huaraz, the capital of Ancash, is now an

extremely popular visiting site for tourists. The department itself had 713,951 overnight

stays in 2006, with a little less than half in the mountainous province (INEI 2006). This

compares to Machu Picchu that has a maximum admittance of 2500 people per day

during the high season, which would yield a maximum of 912,500 visitors within the

ruins. However, the numbers are drastically reduced during the rainy season, especially

in February, when the Inca Trail is closed (Benson et al. 2007, p.269). So, the ruins of

Machu Picchu would receive less than 912,500 visitors. The number of overnight stays

would be even less because of day trips. Most of these are international tourists.

The proportion of international tourists in Ancash is also much higher in the

mountain regions with 35,166 international visitors in 2006 and only 3,053 international

visitors to the coast (INEI 2006). This is a much larger number than what O’Hare and

Barret found in 1998, as the region, especially the mountain provinces, has been

attracting increased numbers of tourists. In 1997, a total of 295,179 visitors arrived for a

total of 386,727 overnight stays. In 2006, 579,841 visitors arrived for a total of 713,951 overnight stays. This is an almost 50% increase in number of tourists and a 45% increase in the number of overnight stays. Approximately four percent of the visitors were international tourists, although the international tourists tended to stay overnight longer

(INEI 2006). The vast majority of visitors are national tourists. I classify these national tourists as ‘elites’ throughout the rest of this thesis based on their financial ability to travel within the country.

To better quantify the effect of these tourists within the region, a larger number of economic sectors should be counted, including its transportation and communication category (6 % of the regional economy) (Minesterio de Economía y Finanzas 2006; 25) due to the typical bus trips that bring in the tourists, national and foreign, as well as the charter planes’ airport and communication service centers marketed to tourists. I would also include a part of the service category (totaling 21%) because I observed that the leading consumers of services in Huaraz are the tourists taking day trips, visiting spas, hiring guides for mountain camping trips, etc (Minesterio de Economía y Finanzas 2006;

25). This brings the total up to 31% of the Ancash economy that could be impacted by

tourism, not to mention all of the businesses that support the people working in the tourism sector.

However, the numbers above could vary drastically between the coastal and

mountain regions of the department. Many of the provided services and transportation

sectors included in the total percentage of the economy would also be used by locals, so

these numbers are far from definite. But, in the mountainous portion of the department of

Ancash, tourism is extremely important to the local economy (Bury under review),

although specifying a percentage is difficult.

Also, while the amount of money generated by tourism is greater in departments

like Lima, more of the hotels and restaurants in departments like Ancash are owned

locally. This means that the profits stay in the region in the hands of smaller scale

capitalists, rather than the foreign owned, trans-national corporations (O’Hare and Barrett

1998).

1.7 Introduction to Cordillera Blanca Tourism

In the region of Ancash near Huaraz, the Rio Santa divides the Andes into two

mountain ranges, the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra. As a Spanish speaker

might guess, these two ranges are named after their very different appearances, one is white, and the other is black. This difference is based on the glaciers and snow caps that cover the Cordillera Blanca, giving it a very distinct appearance (Encyclopedia Britannica

2008).

Few tourists travel to the Cordillera Negra, perhaps because of its lesser height, but more likely because the range “is snowless and often eclipsed by the stunning, snow-

covered crown of the Cordillera Blanca” (Benson et al. 2007). Looking through two

tourist guidebooks for foreigners, the Cordillera Blanca is much more heavily

emphasized than the Negra. More towns, water, and tourist attractions exist on the

Blanca side of Ancash. This is also emphasized in the 2006 census book on tourism in

Ancash, which lists popular tourist routes, all of which take the traveler in view of the

Cordillera Blanca, if not deeper into the range (INEI 2006).

Another hint at the popularity of tourist destinations is the official map handed out to tourists in the region by iPerú, the official government agency for assisting tourists at no charge. Seven locations are listed on the Cordillera Negra side of the map. Over forty destinations are listed near the river that cuts between the two mountains, including

Huaraz, the capital city of the department. However, all of these locations have the

Cordillera Blanca in sight, so even this area benefits from spectacular views. Regardless,

more than one hundred and forty locations are listed within the Cordillera Blanca itself, from lakes to mountain peaks to rivers to camping locations (iPerú 2008). The popular tourist destinations are in the Cordillera Blanca or at least in view of it, with over one hundred and eighty map destinations listed in that area versus the seven listed within the

Cordillera Negra.

The Cordillera Blanca range is a very popular destination for national tourists from wealthier regions of Peru (INEI 2006). This is known as ‘regional tourism’ where people from a region, such as within South America or even the same country of Peru, travel to a different area within that same region and participate in tourist activities

(Ghimire 2001). In this case, the tourists come from within Peru (INEI 2006). Although

the national trend has been massive increases of international tourists to Lima and Cuzco

that outpace local tourism, the Cordillera Blanca is still dominated by these national

tourists (INEI 2006).

The national tourists come to the mountainous portion of Ancash for the beautiful

scenery. The Lonely Planet Guidebook, called a “staple for any tourist” by one of my

international interviewees, lists four major tourist day trips that are mostly populated by

national tourists. The four are: the ruins at Chavin de Huantar, Lagunas Llanganuco,

Laguna Parón, and Nevado Pastoruri. All of these trips offer spectacular views of ice-

capped peaks as their primary attraction, although Pastoruri also allows visitors to

interact with the remnants of the glacier (Benson et al. 2007).

One of the top two destinations, according to both Lonely Planet (Benson et al.

2007) and Moon (Wehner et al. 2007) guidebooks is Pastoruri, which is a relatively easily

accessible glacier in the heart of the Cordillera Blanca. Although it has the highest

elevation of all the major tourist destinations (INEI 2006), it still receives large numbers

of visitors. National tourists come from all over the country to visit the Cordillera

Blanca, and most of these tourists want to visit the Pastoruri glacier, if possible (INEI

2006). However, seeing the glaciers from afar is also important in establishing the feel of

the region and drawing tourists in to see the mountains (Benson et al. 2007).

From the dozen brochures I picked up from various tourist agencies along the

main strip, all of them had Chavin and Llanganuco listed as popular day trip attractions.

All but one listed Pastoruri as an available attraction, although it was only available for a short time during my stay. The one that did not list Pastoruri had updated their brochure

17 after they learned it would not be available to tourists. Laguna Parón was not heavily emphasized and not even mentioned in the small day-trip brochures I collected from tourist agencies. Judging by the guidebooks, brochures, and also the plethora of signs available on the street, Chavin, Llanganuco, and Pastoruri day trips are the most heavily emphasized.

Within the Ancash portion of the Cordillera Blanca, the availability of employment for local people is greatly dependent on the tourism industry. Due to the remote nature of the area, the businesses that provide services to tourists are generally locally owned (O’Hare and Barrett 1999), although this is changing as the increased popularity of eco-tourism draws national and international trekking companies (Bury under review). However, due to an increased popularity of tourism worldwide, locals’ participation in the tourist industry has followed the upward trend in most mountainous tourist destinations, which leads to changes in local economic structures (Price 1992).

This means that the economic dependence on tourism continues to grow as people shift away from agricultural production to participants in the tourist economy with a migration to tourist locations (Price 1992, O’Hare and Barrett 1999).

1.8 Economic Importance of Tourism as compared to Mining

The World Bank’s Human Opportunity Index (De Barros et al. 2008) states that

40% of Peru’s disadvantaged people, denied opportunities based on factors such as birth, ethnicity, location of birth, etc., live in the inland areas of the Sierra (mountain) and Selva

(jungle) regions from mid-Peru northwards (166). To have an industry like tourism, with more opportunities than an industry like mining, is especially important in these regions.

Due to the more remote location and lack of a big city, resulting in little notice from

international tourists, the location has focused on national tourists taking family vacations

or weekend retreats from Lima. Thus, within this region of the Cordillera Blanca, the

large transnational hotels have traditionally focused their attentions elsewhere, leaving a

space for locals to develop their own hotels and restaurants (O’Hare and Barrett 1999),

although the number of nationally and internationally owned businesses have been

increasing (Bury under review). The downside is that the local hotels are not above three

stars and so do not attract the extremely wealthy travelers that bring very large cash flows

into the system (O’Hare and Barrett 1999).

The service industry, especially tourism, is seen as a way to sustainably

incorporate economic growth and the elusive concept of development in many less

developed nations (Ricúpero 2001). The industry has potential for small and large

business owners and workers (O’Hare and Barrett 1999), and it can last after the mines

have shut down. So, while the GDP measure of development favors growth in areas like

mines, the economic future for the less well off population of Ancash, Peru is more likely

better served by an industry like tourism.

1.9 Tourism and Global Climate Change

As the importance of tourism to local livelihoods in the Cordillera Blanca has

been established, it is time to look at the changes that have been occurring in the system.

Global climate has been warming for many decades (IPCC WGI 2007). These changes,

although not entirely noticeable at first, have been reshaping the microclimates of the

19 world over the past century (IPCC WGI 2007), especially the microclimates of Peru, which are considered “highly vulnerable (Lagos 2007, p.1)”.

Most researchers are predicting that climate change will increase the vulnerability of the region to water shortages (Thompson 2000, Mark et al. 2005). The loss of glacial runoff means that residents of the region will have to do with less or import more water, at a cost, into the mountains. Logically, less water would most likely decrease the amount of green spaces in the natural environment (resulting in less vegetation and more dust), increase the poverty of the region as subsistence agriculture grows more expensive, and probably increase the price of electricity as the local hydroelectric dam has less with which to work (IPCC WGI 2007).

The decrease in water, although it will have a big impact on local livelihoods, is only a side note in the story of tourism, however. Most tourists are relatively wealthy, especially compared to locals in this region (O’Hare and Barrett 1999), so paying more for water will probably not decrease the amount of tourists (although it will have detrimental effects on the local populations which will be discussed later).

A list of more general impacts of climate change that will affect the entire country’s tourism comes from the World Tourism Organization under the United

Nations. The risks to tourism associated with Peru are: “an increase in extreme events, land biodiversity loss, marine biodiversity loss, and travel cost increase from mitigation policy (UNWTO 2008, p. 43)”. They also list the three biggest factors that affect a tourist’s desire to travel to a location: “climate, natural environment, and personal safety

(UNWTO 2008 p.43)” and then discuss how climate change will affect all three

throughout the world. These three will be specifically affected in this region, as well.

The climate will, obviously, be affected by climate change. However, these

temperature and precipitation changes will also be the cause of the glacial melt (Vuille et

al. 2008). In this case, the climate of the Cordillera Blanca is directly linked to the natural

environment characteristic that the UN World Trade Organization lists as a major factor

of tourism. The warmer climate will lead to more insects at the higher elevations that

currently have few or no insects (IPCC WGI 2007), which also fits into the natural

environment category.

Personal safety is a very important factor in tourism studies. Many tourists

choose to avoid areas that they feel would be unsafe (Barker et al. 2003). This often refers to crime rates and perceived safety for tourists, but it also encompasses natural

hazards, which can give a high level of vulnerability to the tourism sector (Méheux and

Parker 2004). The area of Ancash has had several deadly aluviónes (mudslides) in its

history, caused by avalanches of snow, ice, water, and rock from the glaciers and glacial

lakes in the Cordillera Blanca, sometimes activated through a burst moraine dam (Benson

et al. 2007). Three such events have occurred in the past century alone resulting in

massive loss of life, with over 70,000 deaths in 1971 and decreased economic stability

(Benson et al. 2007). The overall risk of glacial lakes bursting through dams and calving

of glaciers is also much greater as the de-glaciation continues (Vilímek et al. 2005). So,

in this category, as well, the economic stability of tourism is threatened by climate

change, if tourists feel unsafe in the region based on experiences or learning about this information.

Overall, given the three categories of “climate, natural environment, and personal safety” from the World Trade Organization, as well as the importance of glacial tourism to the tourist industry in Ancash gives the impression that tourism is very likely to decrease as the glaciers disappear. This could happen within the next twenty years, in the case of Pastoruri (Thompson 2000). However, this leads to a whole host of questions.

Although scientists within the United States see climate change as a problem for the area, do the national Peruvian tourists traveling to the area perceive this problem? All of these predictions illustrate a decrease in tourism to the area, but do locals feel these decreases?

Do tourists themselves believe that they or other tourists will refrain from visiting the area? Beyond this, how do people perceive climate change in the region and its relationship to the glaciers? Who is held responsible for the changes being seen now?

What do tourists see for the future? These questions will be further explored in the following chapters.

CHAPTER 2

Conceptual Framework

Global climate change will affect the entire world, but not all places will be affected equally. Some places, such as small island states, could become entirely uninhabitable according to the worst case scenario laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (2007). Meanwhile, other places, such as southern portions of Canada, will likely enjoy added agricultural productivity. Peru’s Cordillera Blanca seems to be one of the many regions that will face serious problems in the short and long terms. According to the IPCC, the region may lose most of its glaciers by the end of the 21st century, which increases the country’s economic and environmental vulnerability.

How global experts, like the IPCC, understand climate change and predict its long term effects is very different, however, from how local people perceive, understand, adapt, and prepare for their changing surroundings. In this chapter, I review literatures that address the differences between understandings and discourses related to climate change. The first section details the three literatures I used to frame my conceptual approach for this study.

2.1 Conceptual Approach

To address the issue of climate change and glacial melt, I turned to three literatures that each, and in combination, offer insights into perceptions of climate change. The first literature is political ecology. Using Bryant’s definition from 1992, political ecology is the study of “political sources, conditions, and ramifications of environmental change” (quoted in Robbins 2003, p.643). This literature provides an ideal framework for this study because of the integral relationship between power and the environment in political ecology. The ‘real world’ is inherently political (Haraway

1997), and political ecology incorporates that notion into its ontology and epistimology.

This literature differs from other “apolitical” ways of looking at and knowing the interactions between humans and their environment by rejecting the common perceptions that environmental impact in the developing world is caused by population pressures and a lack of technological modernization (Robbins 2004).

Instead, political ecologists look at problems on a variety of scales to analyze the power structure that produces environmental changes. They also base research on the assumption that people will be affected unequally by environmental change, which can either exacerbate or lessen inequalities that already exist within the system, at a variety of scales. This ideology is used to “‘denaturalize’ certain social and environmental conditions , showing them to be contingent outcomes of power, and not inevitable”

(Robbins 2004, p.12).

Political ecology also has an ethical dimension within its framework. Political ecologists do not focus one exclusive "Truth" but rather apply a critical approach to

human rights and environmental injustices that involved multiple stories and relative

conceptions of what is right or wrong. Political ecologists also work towards ethical

applications of research, remembering a person’s self and biases in the midst of research,

but also acknowledging the differences between researcher and people being researched

(Jarosz 2004). The aims of the literature are often to present and address issues of power differentials between the scales of environmental and social justice issues (Bryant and

Jarosz 2004). Using these major elements of political ecology has been integral to shaping my understanding of the issues and the context within my research results.

The second literature from which I draw is the environmental tourism literature.

This literature offers eco-tourism as a mode of economic development for developing nations with natural and cultural resources that support it (Ricúpero 2001). This literature helps to understand who will visit the area and how tourists respond to environmental change, for better or worse (Ghmire 2001). This is also the literature that shows the importance of elites traveling to Ancash as tourists. People living hand to mouth are not going to be the ones with the ability to take a weekend trip. While Peruvian elites may not fit the global definition of elite, they do within this context.

The third literature that I use in trying to understand the Peruvian context is the

literature surrounding local understandings of and responses to environmental change. In

particular, I am focusing on Inuit and Small Island States’ understandings of environmental change caused by modern global climate change. This literature is important because the Inuit and Small Island States are in similar situations to Peruvians.

It also emphasizes the importance of local understandings within the context of

environmental change.

The environment around the Inuit is being fundamentally altered as ice flows melt

and permafrost disappears (Laidler 2006). Sea levels are rising around the Small Island

States in ways that could leave these islands uninhabitable or inundated (Chambers and

Chambers 2007). Climate change is seriously altering their landscapes, yet the Inuit and

Small Island States are not the cause of climate change. They are also not in a position to

solve their problems alone. If island colonies are inundated, the residents of the islands

will have the opportunity to return to the motherland. Yet, when Small Island States are

inundated, they have nowhere to go, unless they appeal to international aid or refugee

programs. Peruvians are also in a disadvantaged state within the global political system

when dealing with climate change. If climate change causes water scarcity, Peruvians

will have to purchase water from elsewhere or do with less. They cannot appeal to a

higher power. So, using other local understandings of environmental change will

enhance my ability to interpret Peruvians’ understandings.

The overlap of all three of these literatures is where this study lies, pictured in

Figure 2.1. These overlapping areas, however, have yet been unexplored within the

literature and will be explored further in this chapter. The chapter will start with the

overlap between political ecology and local understandings of environmental change in

section 2.2. This is focused on a portion of literature that includes discourses of

environmental change. This section discusses the globally dominant environmental discourses, as well as the groups that participate in those discourses. The following

26 section, 2.3, discusses the role of the United States in shaping the global discourses as an example of the dominant discourse. The next section, 2.4, discusses a minority discourse and its participants, followed closely by a discussion in 2.5 of the Inuit’s relationship with climate change. Section 2.6 details the relationship of Small Island States and climate change. The second to last section, 2.7, illustrates differences between the case studies, and then section 2.8 begins to approach how this case study fits into the global system of discourses.

Figure 2.5: Venn Diagram showing the overlapping areas of the literatures used in framing this thesis

2.2 The Global Environmental Management Discourse

Around the world, people are discussing, perceiving, and creating discourses about the environment in general, and climate change, specifically. I will be defining discourse broadly as “a shared meaning of a phenomenon” (Adger et al. 2001, p. 683).

Drawing heavily from Adger et al.’s Political Ecology of Global Environmental

Discourses, I will explore the three environmental discourses surrounding climate change: the denial discourse, the profligacy discourse, and the mangerial discourse

(2001).

The denial discourse understands climate change and other environmental problems as non-issues that either do not exist on a level that should concern humans or will be adapted to without any state intervention. The dialogue within this discourse also claims that science is not yet sure of the outcomes of climate change and people should wait until science is sure before taking drastic action (Adger et al. 2001). This discourse is the least prevalent of the three discourses, although the vocal nature of discourse participants, often funded by oil and car companies, has created a significant bias, especially within the United States. A media tenet is to show both sides to every argument, so during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the denial discourse was given equal weight and media time as the discourses discussing global climate change as a problem.

While presenting ‘unbiased’ news stories, however, the media gave equal weight to peer- reviewed journal articles and news releases from oil funded think tanks. Thus, the actors within the denial discourse changed the United States’ approach to global policies and agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004).

The second most prevalent discourse, the profligacy discourse, poses climate change as an outcome of consumption patterns within the global hierarchy of stratified wealth. While it does accept the concept of anthropogenic global climate change as a global problem that no one country can face alone, it provides a critique of capitalist mass

consumption. High consumption levels are not available to all and are not widely

practiced uniformly throughout the world, so the profligacy discourse refers to solutions imposing equal restrictions as unfair. For example, many climate change agreements try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to previous levels. However, if a country has only recently started emitting carbon dioxide, reducing their emissions to previous levels can be detrimental to their development plans. The discourse participants are often developing nations, non-governmental organizations, and social science academics.

Within this discourse, climate change and the global solutions become social justice issues (Adger et al. 2001)

The profligacy discourse fits within the overall global framework of what Adger et al. call the populist discourse. The populist discourse is generally a reaction to dominant global discourses that use Neo-Malthusian viewpoints that blame poor citizens of developing countries at an equal or greater rate as external factors for environmental degradation. The populist discourse is often more concerned with the negative effects of global policies on the local level when dealing with actors with different amounts of power (Adger et al. 2001).

The discourse that dominates the rest in terms of global prevalence is the managerial discourse that comes under the heading “Global Environmental Management” discourse or GEM (Adger et al. 2001). This refers to global environmental problems that need global solutions coordinated by multinational agencies. The solutions are usually neoliberal and use the market to determine fair use. However, participants within the

framework of the discourse often ignore historical, geographical, and political context

within the environmental degradation (Adger et al. 2001).

The GEM discourse currently dominates the dialogue within international policy developers, such as the World Bank (Mitchell 2002). Throughout the many international conferences dealing with humans’ interactions with their environment since Stockholm in

1972, the GEM discourse has remained prevalent, with some dissent from the profligacy and denial discourse participants. In terms of climate change, the managerial discourse discusses the problem as a worldwide phenomenon that depends on how people use resources and how many people use resources. Neo-Malthusian ideas are at the forefront of most discussions. Solutions within this discourse are based on technological advances and pricing carbon and fossil fuels in a way that drastically cuts down on use without questioning the inequalities present in the market based system (Adger et al. 2001).

2.3 The Global Environmental Management and Denial Discourses: The United States

Within the context of global climate change, policy-makers and companies working within the GEM discourse see global emissions as the problem and the need for a worldwide reduction in carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases. While global climate change is one of the environmental issues felt on a global scale, these groups overlook who has emitted the most emissions over the longest time: the United States

(Vidal and Adam 2008). While China has surpassed the United States in total emissions, the United States still dominates them in terms of per capita use, although some small countries emit higher numbers per capita than either (CDIAC 2008).

Since the United States contributes 18.7% of total carbon emissions, it is

important to understand how its citizens and policymakers think about climate change

(CDIAC 2008). The United States’ media held a large role in propagating the denial

discourse on a wider scale. Most of the denial discourse comes from big business think

tanks that generate a lot of articles that poke holes in the peer-reviewed science. Then,

the media’s fundamental tenet to portray both sides to every argument gave equal weight to peer reviewed science and think tank publications throughout the 1990’s and into the

21st Century. This led to confusion among public officials and average citizens about the

status of scientific consensus about the issue of climate change (Boykoff and Boykoff

2004).

The confusion among the public, as well as politicians’ calls for better scientific

understanding before any action should be taken, stalled any decisive stance on climate

change by the United States (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004). This confusion and

politicization of the issue then led George W. Bush to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol,

arguing that the onus was on scientists to create a better understanding of climate change.

Another central theme to the withdrawal was also the argument that the Kyoto Protocol

would cause unnecessary ‘economic hardship’ to the United States as it had to reduce

emissions at a faster rate than most countries. Politicians within the United States were

also angry that the U.S. should have to reduce emissions while developing countries

would not be included in the emissions reductions strategies (Hovi and Skodvin 2008).

In essence, although the Kyoto Protocol had many elements of the GEM

discourse, with neoliberal, market based solutions approached in a top-down manner, the

United States professed to find the stratified levels of emissions reductions (out of the

populist discourse) too hard to manage. However, with the recent change in administration, the United States will be participating in the global mitigation strategies

once more, according to an announcement by Secretary of State Clinton in April 2009

(Cappiello 2009). However, since the Obama administration is working primarily

through the GEM discourse with their proposed cap and trade policy, this may only

further the discourse worldwide by forcing developing countries to participate to a similar

extent as developed countries, despite different historical patterns of emissions and large

gaps in available funds.

2.4 Profligacy Discourse

To illustrate examples of the profligacy discourse and how it is mobilized, I will

look to two groups of peoples affected by climate change: the Inuit Peoples of Northern

Canada and Alaska and the Small-Island States. These are two populations already

affected by climate change that are most likely to feel some of the most severe effects in

the near future. Yet, neither could be considered in any way responsible for much of the

greenhouse gas emissions. Even since 1990, about 80% of all greenhouse gas emissions

have come from developed countries, and that does not even include the long history of

industrialized activity in the developed world (Leduc 2007). However, the perceptions

are not uniform and result in different actions and responses.

Some differences exist between these case studies and the primary focus of this

study, Ancash, Peru, but I do not believe these differences make the elite Peruvians too

different from the other two. The Inuit have a long history of interacting with their

environment (Leduc 2006) while my study uses tourists visiting for a matter of days.

However, the watershed dependent on the glaciers does extend to the sea, traveling through and supplying water to Lima (Byers 2000). These Small-Island States also differ

from the Peruvians because their environment is also their everyday home. However, the

elite Peruvians do depend on the water resources, at least partially, and use the location as

a get-away from the congested urban areas, due to the nearby location. The Inuit and

Small-Island State citizens would also seem to hold less power on a national level than

the elite Peruvian tourists do, simply due to a lack of financial resources to travel to a

different location. However, on a global scale, the three groups are fairly comparable in

terms of available power and resources for addressing climate change both in the form of

mitigation, as well as adaptation. By exploring the Inuit and Small-Island States

perceptions of climate change, I seek to not only give examples of non-GEM discourses

but they will also provide perspectives of people in a context outside of the dominate

discourse participants like United States’ media and politicians given above.

2.4.1 Inuit Perceptions of Climate Change

The linkages between scientific understanding and traditional Inuit knowledge

have made news around the world, as different Inuit peoples provide scientists with direct

evidence of sea ice melt based on their complex understanding of the interrelationship

between their livelihoods, the ice, and the animals some hunt (Leduc 2007). The Arctic

Ice Cap melting is one of the most well-known examples of climate change, and many

people in the United States immediately associate climate change with images of polar

bears on ice bergs floating into the wide, open ocean. There is also a well-developed

33 literature around the interactions between the Inuit peoples and the scientific researchers studying the northern parts of Canada and Alaska (Krupnik and Ray 2007).

As more research is completed within Inuit communities, more Inuit conversations include key terms such as “thinning sea ice” and “global climate change”

(Krupnik and Ray 2007). The traditional knowledge sources describe sea ice patterns and walrus and whale hunting to exactness beyond modern science, however the descriptions are changing to include references to global climate change within Western scientific terms. Many Inuit hunters can accurately predict sea ice formation and movement with a degree of accuracy and intricacy based on local weather patterns such as wind and tides

(Laidler 2006). This has been important in increasing the accuracy of scientific knowledge in the Arctic. The most experienced Inuit hunters give extremely accurate knowledge of previous ice formations and current changes. Scientists have used this information to improve their data and understanding of the sea-ice-atmospheric system and improve future predictions (Laidler 2006).

Recently, climate change issues have affected certain Inuit people as homes have been inundated and eroded to an unlivable state. In Point Hope, Alaska, ice retreat left the “Old Town” exposed to the erosive effects of the Bering Sea, forcing the entire village to relocate to “New Town”. The perceptions of the Inuit affected by the loss of their homes are significant. The Inuit use traditional storytelling to explain their changing situation, and the current adaptation strategy is simply to move the location of their housing. However, this is primarily because no other strategy is available to them

(Sakakibara 2008).

Inuit knowledge is complimenting Western research in Arctic data collection.

Their knowledge has strengthened scientific understanding of climate change in the arctic, but they are still left alone to deal with the problems stemming from this climate change (Laidler 2006). This leads to more questions about what is being done to help the

Inuit peoples living with the day-to-day realities of climate change since they are not the cause of the changes (Leduc 2007). However, their voices are heard only through the lens of scientific understandings and media portrayals in the world. Everyone knows there is a problem, but there is a lack of participation of the global community in addressing the problems for the groups that are purely victims. We are immersed in a history of Global North ignoring Global South’s needs in favor of their own, evident in the Inuit story. They are relegated to second priorities in the minds of the people causing the global problems.

If the global community does try to address the needs of those on the frontlines of climate change, it will be, most likely, from Western sources that try to force system into economic, neoliberal model of internalizing externalities. The traditional pattern for dealing with crisis in marginalized societies is to use the World Bank and International

Monetary Fund’s loans for projects to decrease vulnerability. However, since the Inuit are located in the United States and Canada, government intervention is possible, but not likely with the long history of ignoring the problems of the disadvantaged, especially minorities. For example, Native Americans often have the highest rates of poverty within the United States (Geib 2001).

A quote from the IPCC Third Assessment Report is telling:

For indigenous communities following traditional lifestyles, opportunities for adaptation to climate change appear to be limited. Long-term climate change, combined with other stresses, may cause the decline and eventual disappearance of communities. Technologically developed communities are likely to adapt quite readily to climate change by adopting altered modes of transport and by increased investment to take advantage of new commercial and trade opportunities (Anisimov and Fitzharris 2001, p. 831).

The quote is specifically addressing the possibility of climate change opening the

Northwest Passage, which would be beneficial to the business interests of the United

States and Canada. This would increase the economic opportunities for shipping industries and shipped goods. The opening of the Northwest Passage could be a major economic boost for countries controlling this passage, but indigenous groups could be obliterated as they lose their homes and livelihoods (Leduc 2007).

One response to this increased vulnerability was the lawsuit submitted to the

Intergovernmental Panel on Human Rights in 2005. The Inuit’s explanation was that a disproportionate amount of harm from climate change was affecting Inuit peoples without their contribution to the problem. They sued the United States for negligent behavior with their large amounts of emissions into the atmosphere in order to raise funds to help Inuit adapt and spur the United States to action on climate change. The

Intergovernmental Panel on Human Rights refused to rule on the issue because of insufficient proof of harm, despite a large body of academic evidence stating that harm is occurring and will occur at even greater rates (Revkin 2006). This was also in the political climate under President George W. Bush where climate change was not an issue that needed to be addressed, following the denial discourse.

The next section will discuss the Small-Island States’ situation and perceptions of climate change. This is followed by a section relating the case studies to each other, as well as their relationships with the Global Environmental Management discourse. The chapter concludes with a discussion of where Peruvians are predicted to fit in terms of the dominant discourse.

2.4.2 Small-Island States’ Relationship with Climate Change

The Small-Island States are in a unique position in the world. Most Small-Island

States, like Fiji and Tuvalu, are “developing” nations, located primarily in tropical regions. They are also one of the most at-risk groups of peoples in terms of climate change. The people on these small islands could lose the land under their homes as low- lying islands are inundated by the sea. Some already have as storms intensify and sea levels have already risen to the point where large waves eat further into the shoreline

(Chambers and Chambers 2007). While this is true of all low-lying islands, Small-Island

States are particularly at risk because they do not have another homeland to travel to in case of emergency or total evacuation.

Some of these islands are very flat. Many have high points less than three meters above sea level (Chambers and Chambers 2007) and could be inundated with water in the near future, depending on the emissions reduction scenario the world follows (IPCC WG

II 2007). However, before inundation, there most likely will be a loss of water, increases in water borne diseases like cholera, increases in malaria outbreaks, and decreases food security. On a very basic level, there will be a drastic reduction in resilience to climate change on a day to day level, coupled with an increasing vulnerability to large disasters

37 like more drastic tropical storms and tsunamis that penetrate further into the islands

(Becken 2005).

Because of these very real and prevalent dangers, many of the Small Island States have been among the most vocal protestors around the world with petitions for help to the

United Nations about climate change issues. The local understandings have transferred to an identification of a global cause. For example, the island nation of Tuvalu has been described as the “poster child” of small island states in the face of disaster stemming from climate change (Chambers and Chambers 2007). Like some of the Inuit interact with scientists, many citizens of Tuvalu interact with documentary film makers illustrating the problems of climate change in Tuvalu. Many documentary films have been made about the island, illustrating various perspectives about climate change from the residents and scientists studying the island. These films illustrate the prevalent discourse of the interviewees, but also create their own dialogue that adapts the filmmakers’ ideas into the natives’ perspectives. Tuvaluans agreed to participate in the documentaries in order to approach the residents of larger, industrialized countries with a plea for action (Chambers and Chambers 2007).

Members of Tuvaluan society explicitly recognize the current problems associated with sea level rise with climate change and, specifically, the “lifestyles in larger industrialized countries” (Chambers and Chambers 2007 p. 295). However, the

South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission Environmental Advisor embodied a different approach when she recommended that Tuvaluans restrict their use of fossil fuels

to help contain the problem, although she went to acknowledge that the Tuvaluans have little impact on atmospheric carbon levels (Chambers and Chambers 2007).

However, scientists’ vocalizations of Tuvaluan society range from sympathetic to

slightly condescending as certain stereotypes about the “primitive other” are portrayed.

While Tuvaluans ask larger nations to reduce carbon emissions, perspectives coming

from Western science evoke a feeling of hopelessness that the effects of anthropogenic

global climate change are inevitable. The only solution offered is the complete

evacuation of the entire chain of islands (Chambers and Chambers 2007).

The very vocal protestors from the Small-Island States have given many

presentations to the United Nations about their issues. The Small-Island States have put

up a strong front against the problems of climate change with various alliances and

presentations (United Nations 2008). Even within the islands, climate mitigation plans

have been developed in order to reduce carbon emissions and create carbon sinks in an

effort to reduce the impact of the large tourist industries (Becken 2005). The impact,

however, is still very small. One common concern is that while tourism is incredibly

vulnerable to climate changes in these nations, tourism is also a contributor to climate

change. This is especially true for island nations that require large imports of tourist

goods, as well as incoming airline travel from rich, international tourists (Becken 2005).

It is this impact that nations like Fiji are attempting to offset, since locals emit much less

carbon than their tourist counterparts (Becken 2005).

2.5 Summary of Case Studies

There are many differences between the United States, the Inuit of Northern

Canada and Alaska, and the Small-Island States, although all will face dangers as climate change affects the globe. However, the Inuit, Small-Island States, and Peruvians are in a different position than the United States. The U.S. is a very large emitter currently and dominated emissions in the past (CDIAC 2008). The Inuit and Small-Island States will be greatly affected by climate change to the point of losing their homes and cultures.

They lack the financial and technological capabilities to adapt to climate change as emissions from the Global North continue.

The different perspectives of the Inuit and the Small-Island States also reflect where they fit within their discourses. They both use the profligacy discourse as the two groups protest their situations to international organizations. Their fierce determination to create change in the global system shows that they are desperate to halt climate change before their homes are destroyed. They are taking action to spur action by the international community.

2.6 Where Peruvians fit

Between these two viewpoints, I would expect most Peruvians to fit with the perceptions and ideas of the Inuit and Small-Island States due to their similar plights.

While Peruvians are not in danger of losing the land beneath their feet, as these two are, they are facing a whole host of vulnerabilities (detailed in Chapter 1) from a problem that is largely the fault of other countries. The role environmental tourism plays in the area’s economic system is large, and it is also very dependent on the glaciers for its survival.

Beyond tourism, the loss of glaciers will be detrimental to the water supply system during the dry season, and the Peruvians will be losing a great deal of their natural beauty with the loss of the glaciers. Before my trip, I had expected and hypothesized that Peruvians would be angry at the large emitters of carbon for the changes in their ecosystems.

However, in order to examine these theoretical expectations, I asked the question,

“What do Peruvians think about climate change?” This led to a host of other questions that I was able to address in my research: Which environmental discourse do Peruvians use to discuss their changing climate? Who do they blame for their problems? What do they want their government to do about climate change? The next two chapters will address these questions in the context of the Cordillera Blanca’s disappearing glaciers.

CHAPTER 3

Methodology

Drawing on a variety of literatures, from tourism studies to political ecology, I chose to research the Cordillera Blanca as a fascinating nexus of climate change and tourism. The conceptual idea from the study came from my initial knowledge of the Cordillera Blanca being on the frontlines of climate change. I learned about this particular climate region during my undergraduate education at Michigan State University, but I received further details from one of my advisors, Dr. Bryan Mark. In conversation with Dr. Mark and his research partner and honorary committee member, Dr. Jeff Bury of University of

California Santa Cruz, I was introduced of the droves of tourists that visit this region as a get-away trip to see the glaciers and relax away from their hometowns. These conversations led me to delve deeper into the literature to understand the interactions between these tourists, the locals, and the surrounding environment. The previous chapter’s literature review then helped me understand my data that I gathered with the methods in this chapter.

In this chapter, I will introduce my methods and motivations in the first section. I then explore my relationship with the research and interviewees in an attempt to express my positionality and address my reflexivity in relation to the validity and reliability

42 section. I describe the interview locations and the reasons for choosing them. I end the body of the chapter with the demographics of the participants. The final section, however, provides a segue between the methods and actual research results that are provided in the following chapter.

Figure 3.6: This tourist map is a copy of a map I picked up in Huaraz. I found this online (Focus Software 2008). The map features the Northern part of the study area. The map is most likely not to scale.

Figure 3.7: This is the Southern half of the map above (Focus Software 2008).

3.1 Methods

My initial intention for the research was to interview only Peruvian elites and tourism workers. As is typical in fieldwork, I encountered some unexpected hurdles.

Some Peruvian tourists were harder to access. However, I took this opportunity to also interview some foreign tourists, which gave a contrasting set of perspectives.

To answer my research questions, I used a multi-method approach to try to reach the maximum number of perspectives possible within the Peruvian elite tourists, which I continued with international tourists.

Specifically, I used three methods.

1) Sixty of my interviews were semi-structured survey questions asked of a broad range of people, particularly tourists. This included a standard set of questions that

I sought to ask each interviewee. The survey design focused on broadly covering the topic with open ended questions to get a general idea of what people thought about climate change and the glaciers. However, if the interviewee moved into another subject area of interest to the study, I would continue that discussion.

I approached interviewees in a number of ways. My first technique was sitting next to a person on one of the many tourist buses and talking with them a bit before bringing up the interview. The second technique involved waiting in the bus station or at key tourist locations for the tourists to be dropped off. After the bus pulled in, I would approach the bus door and ask people if they would allow me to interview them. Many people, especially those with young children, would tell me no or “another day”.

However, usually a few would oblige me with an interview, although this varied by day.

The third technique I used was the snowball approach (Ellis 2000) where I gathered future interviews from other interviewees and contacts I made within Peru. The snowball approach is an accepted methodology when a researcher is not collecting a random sample. Sampling in this way allowed me to gather contacts that were more pertinent to my research study, such as one of the resident glaciologists at INRENA. However, this method was more applicable in my second method.

2) I also conducted more semi-structured, in –depth interviews with six key informants, including three government officials, two tourist guides, and one gate guard.

These interviews were kept broader in scope and with them, I asked questions that “dug deeper” into issues like the political situation surrounding the glaciers.

3) My third method was participant observation: I took each of the popular tourist bus trips recommended by the government-provided tourist service called iPeru traveling to Llanganuco, Chavin, and Pasto Ruri (Figure 3.1). As I talked with tourist agencies to figure out my itinerary, they confirmed that these were the most popular day trips. The trip to Llanganuco lakes included stops at other points including Carhauz for ice cream, Caraz for a dairy-based sweet with the consistency of butter, Yungay to see

Campo Santo- the ruins of Old Yungay, and Tarica for the artistic pottery. The route can be followed on the map in Figure 3.1. The trip to Chavin included the city of Recuay and a stop at Querococha Lake which doubled as a rest and snack stop (Figure 3.2). The

Pastoruri trip included the city of Catac as a place to purchase food and use the bathrooms on the way up and back from the glacier.

I also traveled on some of the less popular routes that seemed important to tourism, increased awareness of glaciers, or increased the availability of certain demographics of tourists, including local people from Huaraz participating in tourist activities. This included a bus trip for ice-climbing at Llaca and trekking up to Pitec. I also traveled separately to certain locations to catch tourists on their way to other tourist sites. Although I traveled primarily to interview people during these trips, I tried to remain aware of my surroundings and take notes on how people behaved and interacted

with each other and the tourist location. I estimate that I spent 160 hours directly in

interviews and participant observation of tourist activities. This does not include my time

around the city of Huaraz in cafes, shops, or sitting in the central plaza where I also had

the opportunity to observe tourists and their interaction with the people of Huaraz.

Also, living in a hotel, with privileged access to the family of tourist workers

allowed me to gain insight into their experience; I also interacted with many different

types of international tourists. While I felt that we had discussed my project too often to

ask for an interview that would not be biased, I was able to practice participant

observation within the hotel. This experience also gave me unique access to a variety of

people within the community since the proprietor is a very well-respected member of the

community.

3.2 Survey Design

A copy of the general survey used in Spanish is found in Appendix A. The

survey structure covered seven aspects in sections: a) demographic information about the

interviewee, b) travel information and interviewees’ views on c) glaciers, d) water issues,

e) climate change, f) government policy, and g) future issues such as the economic future of tourism in the area. Section a is the most basic and simply designed to gather a count

of who was coming to visit the mountainous region of Ancash as well as to explore

relationships among respondents. Similarly, section b follows the same logic to

determine the motives and planning behind respondents’ travel to the region.

Sections c-e focus on gathering what the interviewee’s perceptions of various topics, particularly those related to their observations or understandings regarding the

glaciers. I then tried to determine the interrelation of each topic within each individual’s frame of understanding. For example, some people took each question separately and did not relate water issues to glacial melt. However, other people became excited by the questions and would bring in examples of how different topics were related in their mental framework. Sections f and g were designed to elicit the subjects’ thoughts about policies they would like to see implemented and what they see for the future of the region, especially in regards to tourism, one of the economic mainstays of the mountainous portion of Ancash (INEI 2006).

Each section was created to be complementary to the others by eliciting overlapping information to see if people carried their ideas from one topic to another, as well as to gather information that might have been missed earlier. The questions were also supposed to elicit information about the underlying structural patterns that inform the decisions of the tourists (Winchester 1999). For example, responses show the scientific understanding the interviewees have of climate change.

The open-ended survey questions were designed to ask elite Peruvian tourists about their experiences and opinions in order to explore the possibilities of future policy decisions within the country regarding the glaciers throughout the Cordillera Blanca.

Open-ended questions are useful for “studying people’s opinions and attitudes about social, political, and environmental issues” (McLafferty 2003; p. 88). The surveys ask specific questions in a way that directs the tourists’ thoughts towards particular issues without confining their thoughts.

3.3 Validity and Reliability

Elite interviewing is acknowledged throughout the social sciences as creating issues of validity and reliability, as well as often being more difficult than interviewing non-elites. The issues stem partially from differences in position between the interviewer and interviewee, as well as the standard difficulties that arise from interacting with humans (Berry 2002). “Interviewers must always keep in mind that it is not the objective of a subject to be objective and to tell us the truth” (Berry 2002; p. 680). This is true in all interviews, but is even greater with elite interviews. However, in writing my questions, I made sure to include some checks to see if the answers were consistent and people are not simply giving me the answers they think I want hear. For example, I asked interviewees about what they thought of the glaciers without mentioning them shrinking or talking about climate change. Then, later, I asked the specific questions about each of those topics to see what else the interviewees wanted to say. Also, the questions were kept jargon-free to avoid leading or confusing people outside the discipline (McLafferty 2003). Also, given the less personal nature of the topic, people were much less likely to lie or mislead me to protect themselves as they might in a study of disease or sexuality.

The validity and reliability of qualitative interviews stem not from their statistical generalizability but from their increased depth and quality that gives insight into underlying social structures and assumptions (Winchester 1999). The best interviews are good conversations (Berry 2002). However, achieving a conversation was difficult for me given that most of the interviews were not in my native language. I had only two and

half years of college Spanish that was a bit rusty from disuse. However, in order to

compensate, I spent two weeks at the beginning of my fieldwork in an intensive Spanish

language course in Cuzco, Peru with 40 hours of classes followed by group activities in

Spanish and a home stay with a family that only spoke Spanish. This was a rapid way of

reintroducing me into the language and gave me a much greater proficiency than I would

have otherwise had. While I did not know every word I was presented with in the interview context, I was able to have conversations about the glaciers and the tourist experience. However, to make sure I captured the full context of each question, I asked each participant if I could record their survey/interview. I then had a native Peruvian transcribe all of the recorded interviews so I could translate each word at my leisure.

While my non-native Spanish is something to keep in mind, I do not believe it affected the results of the study in any major way.

The validity of participant observation is more affected by my positionality than the other methods. Maher and Tetreault define positionality as the “knower’s specific position in any context as defined by race, gender, class, and other socially significant dimensions” (1994, p.22). My position as an outsider, working as an observer as participant (rather than full observer or participant) (Kearns 2000) within the tourist

context, meant that I affected people just by being within the situation. But, since many

young, Caucasian Americans and Europeans do travel within this context, I do not think I

changed the dynamic until I revealed my identity not as tourist but researcher. Although

I was a complete outsider within the situation, even in terms of the basic language,

tourism is a situation in which everyone is living outside their everyday context.

However, this did put me at a disadvantage for interacting with people in Huaraz and gathering data through those interactions because they do not encounter tourists in everyday life. In these circumstances, I relied on “gatekeepers”, such as the family that ran the hotel where I stayed or members of the research team, to gain access to certain situations (Kearns 2000). For example, I had difficulty gathering statistical data from the

Ancash branch of the official office of statistics at first. Late, after the matriarch of the hotel’s household made a couple phone calls, I was able to gather the data without any problems. Reflecting on my positionality within the context of the fieldwork has been key to understanding how my results have been influenced by my own opinions and my interactions with the interviewees in context, which is explained more fully in the limitations of the study in Chapter 6.

3.4 Interview Locations

Huaraz 29 Bus Station 13 Tourist Agencies 5 Other locations (restaurants, offices, 11 etc.) Tourist Sights 37 Llanganuco 15 Chavin 2 Pitec 15 Pasto Ruri 2 Llaca 3 Overall Total Number of Interviews 66

Figure 3.3: The distribution of interviews sorted by their locations throughout study area.

Interview locations were spatially diversified in an attempt to elicit a broad range of responses to reach as many types of tourists (in terms of age, gender, amount of environmental concern, athletic abilities, etc.) as possible (see Figure 3.3). A majority of interviews were located in the central city of Huaraz because it is a gateway to tourism in the Cordillera Blanca part of Ancash (Benson et al. 2007). There is a bus station next to the main avenue where buses drop the tourists after day trips. This was a key interview location because it gave me access to tourists traveling back from many different locations that I might not have encountered if I had taken only one specific trip myself.

Figure 3.4: In this picture, I am posing with the sunglass llamas en route to Pastoruri (Photo by Anonymous Tourist, July 2008)

My original plan was to interview people while taking the bus tours, but that was not possible with most locations. The tour guides spent most of the time talking with no large, uninterrupted break that would make an interview possible. When taking most tours, including the tour of Llanganuco, I was usually only able to get one or two interviews due to the constant conversation and informative talks from the guides. Also, most of the tours included a few different stops to give people good photo opportunities and a place to stretch their legs. So, the bus station turned out to be an asset to overcoming these barriers but still accessing the people that took these tours.

The interviews located at actual tourism sights such as Chavin, Pastoruri, and

Llaca were all done while I participated in the bus trips with the other tourists, as were two of the interviews at Llanganuco. However, getting a larger number of interviews on each trip was more difficult for reasons that varied with each trip. For example, although the bus trip to Pastoruri included long descriptions of scenery and glacial melt interspersed with off-bus activities, like stopping to see hot springs and take pictures with llamas wearing sunglasses (Figure 3.3.), plenty of time existed on the trip back from the glacier. However, despite these ideal circumstances, something else entirely made me rethink interviewing people that day. After the bus stopped, I found tourists unwilling to stop for interviews because of a 1-2 km hike to the actual glacier itself. Most tourists were from low-lying areas of the country and took the trip (up to 5000 meters) after little acclimatization, so the hike was typically tiring. I therefore thought I might interview people at the end of the hike or on the bus, but this turned out to be impossible. To explain why, I will share part of my online blog entry from that day.

Everyone threw up at the top of the glacier, on the way down from the glacier, by the bus station, by the food stands, by their cars, on their cars.... EVERYWHERE!!! I may have just missed it on the way up, and I only noticed someone throwing up right as I started going down from the top. However, after I saw that first person, I kept seeing vomit. Vomit was everywhere!!! People would just turn a little as they were walking down and then they'd hurl. Projectile vomiting, exorcist style, too. So, it was like playing a very disgusting video game on the walk down. Like Frogger, except it was me trying to get down the road without getting hit by the vomit. All right, it wasn't quite THAT bad, but there was a lot of vomiting going on. Plus, I think some of it was a chain reaction. If you feel sick and then see someone else throwing up, you have no choice anymore. It certainly became a chain reaction later....

… I noticed the bus smelled funny. I was worried I knew why when a guy went running from the back to get out the door just in time for his own vomit experience. Well, that set everyone on the bus off. No less than 8 people on our bus joined the epidemic. EIGHT!!! Out of about 30. Luckily, five of them actually made it off the bus to vomit. Of the remaining three, one had a bag and one made it out the window. The eighth person, a woman from Lima, was not so lucky. Or rather, the rest of us were not so lucky. And these were just the numbers I was counting!! The insanity had started before I got there!!! Plus, I didn't count anyone who had not gotten on the bus first. You couldn't even look out the window while we waited for everyone to get on the bus because everyone outside was throwing up, too (Blog posted July 29th, 2008).

The post continues by describing the subsequent reluctance my fellow passengers and I felt about interviews after this, although I managed to do two at rest stops. Soon after I returned, I discussed the phenomenon with Dr. Jeff Bury from the University of

California, Santa Cruz. His personal theory was that the lack of acclimatization by the visitors combined with the very large holiday celebrations the day before made for a deadly combination creating “the vomitorium” that was Pasto Ruri. He also suggested that this demonstrated the lack of respect many Limeños (the origin of the majority of visitors to the region) had for the altitude. After this time, I decided to do interviews only

54 with those who had gone to Pastoruri after their bus returned in the evening. However, those potential respondents seemed the most reluctant to participate, even when the interview time was not the day after a large holiday.

Figure 3.5: This picture shows the tourist crowds and glacier of Pastoruri (Photo by Sarah Wright July 2008).

I had other options for interviewing tourists at certain locations that increased my opportunities for encountering tourists. While taking the tours myself allowed me to participate in that aspect of tourism, going separately to certain locations allowed me to maximize my time. For example, I spent two days at Llanganuco interviewing people

55 from bus trips or personal outings during their hour-long visits. Instead of taking a cab up to the Llanganuco lakes from Huaraz each day, I spent the night in the nearby town of

Yungay at a local hostel. This was a very productive strategy, yielding eleven interviews the first day. Unfortunately, on the second day, I was forcibly ejected from the park after only two interviews. This was due to an encounter with a park official over whether I had the correct documentation of permission to interview people. I did indeed have permission. However, my eviction was possibly the result of my failure to negotiate a bribe with the official, and possibly that I was unknowingly caught up in a conflict between the INRENA agency office of UGRH (our official hosts) and the Huascaran

National Park.

Figure 3.6: This is the view of the first lake at Llanganuco (Photo by Sarah Wright, July 2008). 56

I was also able to take taxis up to Pitec to catch tourists including local day

tourists from Huaraz hiking up to the lake, Chirrup. This location was by far the closest

mountainous tourist site to Huaraz, so many people hiked from the city up to the lake and

back down to Huaraz in one day. This location was interesting because people who lived

in Huaraz would participate in this tourist activity. However, attendance at this site was

predicated on good weather to a degree not seen elsewhere, particularly because many

visitors were locals. My first trip to Pitec on a sunny Saturday, I had literally hundreds of

possible interviewees to approach and I completed ten interviews within a couple hours with a total of sixteen participants. Yet, on my second and third trip to Pitec, the rainy weekends only allowed me to finish a total of six interviews

3.5 Demographics of Participants

Age Range Number Percent of Total 15-19 22 19% 20-29 45 39% 30-39 18 16% 40-49 14 12% 50-59 10 9% 60-69 1 1% 70-79 2 2% Unknown 3 3% Total 115 100%

Figure 3.7: The table gives the distribution of age.

I completed 66 separate interviews, featuring 115 participants. This was because some people seemed more comfortable being interviewed with friends and/or family;

others were interrupted by members of their family or party. These latter participants had

varying levels of involvement in the interviews. Within one interview, two participants

may have separate answers to all but three questions, although the sentiment would

usually be very similar. Other people would only interrupt when they had a different

opinion to add. I tried to treat all of these interviews consistently by using the primary

response by the main interviewee as the principle respondent in subsequent statistical

analyses. However, I included the input of ‘secondary’ interviewees in the qualitative

analysis, since many of the responses were highly relevant. In this demographic

overview, I am including all participants, unless otherwise specified.

The fact that the sample favors younger people, under the age of 29, rather than

older people, over 30, reflects my observations of the actual distribution of visitors.

Quite a few young people take adventure trips from Lima up to Huaraz to go ice climbing

or to visit one of the many attractions, such as Pastoruri. Also, interviews with middle

age couples often included interjections from their grown children (i.e. older people were

taking family trips that boosted the total number of younger people.)

However, the interviewee age is, perhaps, biased towards the younger end of the

spectrum because of these cohorts’ increased willingness to participate in an interview.

Quite a few families with young children did not want to participate because they were

busy with the children. Also, middle-aged tourists were less tolerant about what I was

asking before walking away. A group of middle-aged Limeñas berated me for a solid

five minutes about ruining their vacation with my nonsense before they accepted my

apology and walked away. So, although I tried to keep my sample as diverse as possible,

the category of people between 20 and 29 has more than twice the number of participants

than every other category.

Gender is split almost evenly between 57 males and 58 females total participants.

However, in 41 (62%) of the interviews, the primary respondent is male, even if they

were not approached first. Twenty-five of the lead respondents are female (39% of the

interviews).

Interviewee occupation varies, with the largest category being students (Figure

3.8). This is not surprising given the large number of young people. Based on my

observations, the category ‘tourism worker’ includes individuals with a range of incomes and education based on position. For all others (i.e., tourists), a majority of the interviewees have occupations that generally require professional degrees, suggesting that

the sample includes those considerable formal education. For example, the first and third highest occupations of interviewees are students, usually of higher education, and people working and/or owning their own businesses (Figure 3.8).

Interviewee Occupations Number Percentage of Total Student 38 33% Tourism Workers 13 11% Business 11 10% Student Missionaries 10 9% Engineer 6 5% Government 6 5% Teacher (including 54% professors) Unknown 5 4% In Charge of Household 4 3% Administrator 2 2% Finance 2 2% Lawyer 2 2% Peace Corps 2 2% Retired 2 2% Dentist 1 1% Doctor 1 1% Environmental Assistant 1 1% Geologist 1 1% Mechanic 1 1% Pharmacist 1 1% Tailor 1 1% Total 115 100%

Figure 3.8: The occupations of participants varied greatly.

Almost all of my interviews were with Peruvians from other areas of the country, with only 14 international interviewees. I interviewed 15 tourism workers that add to the total of people from the Ancash region, as do the three interviews with government officials. The rest of the interviews were with people from Peru participating in tourist activities (Figure 3.9.)

Place of Origin Number Percent of Total International 14 13% United States 6 5% Britain 3 3% France 2 2% Netherlands 1 1% Iran 1 1% Andorra 1 1% National 101 87% Lima 51 44% Ancash (incl. Huaraz) 30 26% Arequipa 9 8% Trujillo 2 2% Chiclayo 1 1% Currently Expatriated 4 3% Unidentified 4 3% Total 115 100%

Figure 3.9: The table shows the interviewees’ origins.

The sample of collected interviews is not necessarily indicative of the population of Huaraz or Peru, but does crudely reflect the tourist population based on the populations I witnessed over two months. However, the representativeness of the population is not necessarily a requirement, as long as the interviews can illustrate underlying social structures and positions within society (Winchester 1999). However, 61 the sample is as representative as possible, demonstrating that a majority of national tourists come from Lima, as the official from the Department of Statistics confirmed

(Interview 1, 7/8/2008). Also, in 2006, 11.5% of total tourists to the Huascaran National

Park were international tourists, corresponding closely with the number within the survey

(INEI 2006). Although the more detailed information collected here is not available at an aggregate level for total tourists, the data are fairly representative compared to what is available. I consider the sampling size more than adequate for addressing the research questions.

CHAPTER 4

Survey Results

To present my results, I will be using two levels of analysis. The first level includes the main findings from the questions presented in the surveys and interviews. This level is on a smaller scale, utilizing answers from only a few questions for each topic. The second level of analysis is much broader. This level puts the topics from the first level of

analysis into broader themes. This second level interrelates the seven significant findings

and analyzes the case study of Pastoruri. In this chapter, I will focus on the first level of

analysis, while the following chapter will present the second level of analysis.

This chapter will present the results from the surveys, interviews, and participant observation. I use a combination of basic statistics and quotes from surveys and key interviews to highlight the unique set of responses that give insight into the complicated

thought structures tourists have about the glaciers. The responses came from the basic

question set I created in the beginning. I wanted to find out what Peruvian tourists

thought about the glaciers and climate change. I intended to discover how interrelated

these two topics are within the Peruvian mindset. I also chose to ask about the future,

both in terms of action and in terms of future visits to the glaciers. I aimed to discover

who the Peruvians blamed for climate change and the problems occurring in the area. All of these goals are reflected in the questions I asked and the answers summarized below.

The data from the study show eight significant findings from the surveys and interviews. I summarize the findings for each of the eight in separate sections below.

The sections cover these topics: 4.1, self-identified environmentalism, 4.2, the association between glacial melt and climate change, 4.3, confusion about what climate change means, 4.4, the perceived effects on tourism, 4.5, the perceived responsibility for climate change, 4.6, the perceived effects of climate change, 4.7, the water issues for the area, and 4.8, government responsibility. These sections are followed by a summary of the results and a presentation of the three themes that are presented in the following chapter.

4.1 Peruvian Tourists say “Yes!” to the Environment

In response to my question, “do you consider yourself an environmentalist?” 70% of those interviewed said that they considered themselves environmentalists in some way, demonstrating a concern and desire to protect the natural world around them, illustrated in Figure 4.1. An elderly man from Arequipa, Peru, who labeled himself as a “defensor de la medioambiente” (or defender of the environment) said, “It’s only a small world; we need to protect it. The world is nothing on the universal scale, but it is ridiculous to destroy our only home (Interview 6, 7/15/2008)”. Seven out of the sixty-six or 11% said that they were not environmentalists. Nine (14%) said maybe, and four (4%) did not answer the question.

Are you an environmentalist?

Environmentalists Maybe Not Environmentalists No Answer

Figure 4.1: This pie chart illustrates the number of self-identified environmentalists.

4.2 Associating Glacial Melt with Climate Change

When asked what was causing glacial melt, the majority of all respondents

quickly referred to global warming, while others brought up the subject only after I

referred to climate change in some way. 100% of interviewees acknowledged some

association with glacial melt and climate change, although three of the people

interviewed disagreed with the concept of anthropogenic climate change. This is one of

the most significant findings of all the research.

A noteworthy phenomenon was that bus tour guides to Llanganuco typically

offer tourists an interpretation of glacial change. One of the many stops on this tour is

Campo Santo, the remnants of the original town of Yungay that was completely covered

in a landslide in 1970. The devastation makes the danger feel very real to the people that visit, with twisted and intertwined vehicles sitting on top of rocks (Figure 4.2) and the

remnants of the church near a replica that demonstrates what it used to look like. The tour guides emphasize the precarious nature of life in the Cordillera Blanca where one earthquake could set off a similar path of destruction at any time. Part of the standard tour guide talk uses this spot to discuss the increased risk of landslides and mudslides due

to global warming. According to the guides, the glacial melt means that parts of the

glaciers are much less stable than they once were. Based on my conversations with

tourist guides and two trips through Campo Santo, it appears that this story is fairly

standard for bus tours. Many interviewees in the bus station also specifically mentioned

Campo Santo after traveling to Llanganuco.

Figure 4.2: The wreckage of an omnibus at Campo Santo is a popular photo spot (Photo by Sarah Wright, July 2008).

Surprisingly, at least one respondent had an alternative view: “At least there

won’t be avalanches when the snow is gone. You have to look on the positive side as

well (Interview 3 7/14/2008)”. This type of thinking might cause people to underestimate

the magnitude of the other problems or perhaps shows an optimist, although this was not a common sentiment.

However, other tourists, who did not visit Campo Santo, were also very aware of

climate change and its effect on the glaciers. All interviewees were aware of climate change and agreed that some sort of climate change or global warming was occurring in the present. Three people claimed that although climate change was occurring, it is primarily natural. Two of these three also said that humans were speeding up the cycle.

Two of the three ‘skeptics’ were Americans on a trip to Peru. Only one Peruvian declared that climate change was natural with humans probably speeding it up.

Beyond this minority, I found most people were very savvy about ways in which humans were causing climate change that was then melting the glaciers. Comments like this one from a 75 year old man from Arequipa were typical: “We need to find a way to conserve the glaciers. Right now, we are frying the globe. We need to invest in the world’s environment like companies invest in the economy (Interview 6, Retired

Professor from Arequipa, 7/15/2008)”.

4.3 The Ozone Layer

The next level of association with global climate change, however, is less clear to many of the interviewees. For example, several erroneous associations were made between particular phenomena and global climate change. While respondents made clear

that global climate change is in the forefront of their minds, several went on to blame

plastic bags, or other people walking on the glacier as the primary cause of the decline of

the glacier of Pasto Ruri. For example, one middle-aged man from Huaraz said, “People

doing bad things cause global warming. People are throwing plastic bags into the river.

Bad people are throwing out too much stuff… People should not keep the lights on so long (Interview 1 7/8/2008)”. Several respondents mentioned an important solution to climate change included recycling (i.e. Interview 11 7/19/2008, Interview 65 8/12/2008)

or sorting garbage (i.e. Interview 15 7/20/2008, Interview 20 7/20/2008 Interview 29

7/23/2008 Interview 30 7/23/2008).

Ten interviewees describe the destruction of the ozone layer as synonymous with

climate change or very closely related. For example, when asked what he thought of

climate change, one Limeño responded, “We have already seen that the reason, the

motivation of the factories, the businesses’ carbon dioxide, are the cause of ozone

changes (Interview 10, 7/19/2008)”. Two young male students from Huaraz said,

“Developed countries have large corporations, factories that pollute the environment and

that is the main cause of the destruction of the ozone layer which causes global

warming… (Interview 16 7/20/2008). This was actually a fairly common misconception

with ten different people mentioning the “capa de ozono” during their interviews, usually

in place of climate change, greenhouse gases, or global warming.

4.4 Effects on Tourism

Forty-eight people (73%) said that they believed fewer tourists would come to

Huaraz and the surrounding areas with decreased glacial cover. A few went even further

and said that this was already happening with the closure of Pasto Ruri the previous

December. A Peruvian man that I was interviewing as a tourist, but who worked in a

different park said, “There are many cancelations (of trips to Ancash) because Pasto Ruri

is closed. There are no visitors (Interview 30, 7/23/2008)”. On the other hand, a

minority of six people (9%) said that they did not believe that the changing glacial cover

would affect the number of tourists visiting Ancash because tourists would still be drawn to the cultural sights and/or mountain climbing activities in the area. No one thought that more tourists would come without the glaciers.

Future of Tourism

Fewer Same More (None)

Figure 4.3: Pie chart showing the proportion of answers to “How many tourists will there be in the future, if the glaciers are gone?”

4.5 The Blame Game: Who is responsible for climate change?

A very surprising result of the interviews is how many people blame themselves

and their fellow Peruvians for glacial melt and climate change. They blame themselves

at an equal rate as someone from the United States or another industrialized country. For

example, a young man from Huaraz said, “Everyone is responsible for climate change,

69 from the children who kick trash in the street, the family that doesn’t sort their garbage or those who burn it (garbage) to industries and large companies who benefit a few but affect everyone globally (Interview 16 7/20/2008)”.

Out of the total tourists interviewed, 65% said that humanity as a whole

(including Peruvians) was responsible for the melting glaciers and climate change.

However, this number is deceptive. Once the data is divided between the international tourists and Peruvians, a whole new aspect is revealed. Absolutely no international tourists said that humanity as a whole is the cause. Rather they cited specific people or countries, although that includes two young lawyers from the United States that believe that climate change is a natural, cyclical process. One went on to say that industrialized contries might be speeding up that process. Specific countries like the United States and

China, the developed world, or the industrial world were named by the foreigners, but humanity as a whole was not invoked. However, 86% of Peruvians said “Nosotros mismos,” “Ser humanidad,” (humanity) or similar expressions demonstrating a feeling of shared responsibility between Peruvians and the rest of the world. A middle-aged

Limeña said, “But it is our fault, with our inventions, with the things that we are doing, we, human beings, are doing this (interview 10 7/19/2008)”. “Of course, ourselves the same, humanity, is simply failing to protect nature. For this reason, the task of rescuing nature falls on all of us because we see today that things are changing, there is much heat, much cold, and it is the consequence of nosostros mismos (Interview 29 7/20/2008, italics added)”.

Three female university students directly related climate change to their situation,

“Principally, the glaciers melting is a consequence of our actions. We are very worried

about global warming, and the first consequence is that we cannot go to see the glaciers because they are closed (Interview 7 7/18/2008)”. The women were relating their

inability to see the glaciers with climate change. The phrasing here seems to suggest an acceptance of the closure of the glaciers because of the worry of climate change. This seems acceptable, in part, because they blame themselves for the problem, and thus must pay for the consequences themselves.

Another interesting response came from people who blamed themselves first and then followed it with blame on corporations or particular sectors, such as mining:

I think we are all responsible, we have not known how to take care of or protect our environment, so many things that we say that are good for us, such as the organization of the materials that we use, do not help the environment; even the environmentalists, the instruments that we use do not help to make the environment good enough; the garbage that we throw away, we should not only recycle it, but also when we pick it up, we must make sure that the garbage does not contaminate. Besides us, I think that it is the mining industry that affects the environment because of the materials that it uses, for example, in Conococha they have cleared a whole mountainside and nobody says a word about it. Mainly this is concealed with money and bureaucracy (Interview 18 7/20/2008).

Throughout the interview responses, there are hints of issues beyond personal responsibilities, like blaming the mines for environmental destruction. However, such considerations almost always follow statements in which respondents blame themselves.

Even then, however, many interviewees would go on to discuss policies that involve making people more aware of their problems or recycling their garbage.

A woman who did not identify herself with environmentalism gave one of the

most savvy responses as to what causes climate change, although she went on to say that

she, personally, did not take action to help prevent climate change. “The cars are the

worst in Peru. They are all so old with black clouds. The government needs more public transit, and people should walk more. Cars here are awful (Interview 27, 7/23/2008)”.

Although the woman claimed to know nothing about environmental issues, she made the above comment after being asked what the cause of climate change is, illustrating a pretty good grasp of what kind of emissions cause climate change. This issue is explored further in the discussion section with the case study of Pastoruri.

4.6 Who will be affected by climate change?

When asked who would be most affected by climate change, a majority of respondents felt similar to the previous sentiments about who caused climate change: everyone the same, although there is more diversity in this set of responses. A woman from Lima currently working for a transnational corporation said,

Everybody is affected; there is nobody and no country that is not affected. I was living in Chile and the desperation for gas was shocking. An Argentinean company closed off the supply and Chile had one or two days with only what was left in the pipelines. It is impressive, Peru has gas, and we still are without resources, we are very far from knowing how to operate and handle them ourselves. We need support from outside. We are at the point at which in some years the collapse will be evident. The raising prices of fuel, the raising prices of food. Everything is a chain, a system that is moving based in already existing problems and that is not being repaired (Interview 45, 7/28/2008).

A professor from Lima said, “Everyone will be more affected by climate change, every living being (Interview 31, 7/23/2008)”.

Some of the interviewees, including a university professor, businessmen, and several students, associated climate change effects with more specific people, especially those of lower socio-economic status. A 20 year old female student said, “The most affected will be the people that live in extreme poverty … they will have to be fed, live in our environment. The people who live in the poor zones in all of the world are going to suffer more, are going to have the necessity of eating (Interview 18 7/20/2008)”.

Other Peruvian elites specifically named the campesinos and their agriculture as becoming more vulnerable. For example, a young environmental advocate said, “There is an effect on the people, and those that are going to suffer the most are the campesinos

(Interview 40 7/27/2008)”. One man spoke of himself, “The campesinos (will be most affected), us (Interview 33 7/23/2008)”.

Other interviewees followed my own train of thought and worried for the local tourist economy. A student from Lima said, “Many tourists want to see the glaciers, but we need to conserve them as best we can. However, glaciers must be closed to tourists to conserve but then the tourists don’t come here, and there is no money. How do the tourism workers survive? (Interview 7 7/18/2008)”. In general, if the answer was not

“everyone the same,” the person would name a group of people like the campesinos or tourism workers as becoming more vulnerable.

Who uses the majority of Number Percent water here? (48 answers) age Everyone 13 27% Hydroelectric Companies 6 13% Mines 5 10% Campesinos 5 10% Lima 4 8% Cities 4 8% Communities 2 4% People who have more 2 4% Industries 2 4% Huaraz 1 2% Agriculture 1 2% Industrial Countries 1 2% Tourists 1 2% Unsure 1 2% Total 48 100%

Figure 4.4: The perceptions of who uses the water in the region varied between interviews.

4.7 Water: “Agua es vida”

In conversation with a Peace Core volunteer that I interviewed, he mentioned the scarcity of water had already hit a nearby village in which he worked. He said that he had taken to traveling to Huaraz to shower in a hotel every few days because he felt he could not use the water in his village when things were so bad. He went on to describe that the village did not have enough water for basic necessities like cooking or drinking two out of every three days. I asked what the cause of this was, and he replied that the water level was below the stream level because the water was being directed elsewhere and so little was in the stream to begin with (Interview 49, 8/6/2008).

A Peruvian from Arequipa said, “there is less water now, but specifically, less

sweet (potable) water (Interview 6 7/15/2008). This same interview used the phrase

“Agua es vida” which pervaded my interviews in many different forms, particularly by

the Peruvians. A businessman from Lima said, “The glaciers have life in them: water

(Interview 14 7/20/2008)”. A young man from Huaraz said, “Seeing that the glaciers are

disappearing, I think specifically of Huaraz. They are a source of life because the

glaciers give us water. Very precious to us are the snow covered mountains, the glaciers

(Interview 16 7/20/2008)”.

A theme throughout many interviews, domestic and international tourists, is also

that war will be a consequence of a lack of water globally. A tourist bus driver from

Huaraz said, “The water will be very expensive. There will be wars (Interview 19,

7/20/2008)”. A French engineer said,

Yes, glaciers are a kind of measure for the climate, and it’s a big reserve of water. And probably the fights in the future will not come from larger land but probably from water, to have some to drink. And I think here in Peru, they were not using a lot of water before, but now you have a lot of tourists and at the hotel, you take a shower once a day, twice a day. You ask to have your towel changed every day, and so it will increase the use of water. Here the water is going from the glaciers, also. The glaciers are becoming smaller, and it may affect a lot of people (Interview 21, 7/20/2008).

Several Peruvians acknowledged that less water is now or will be available, but

then went on to describe that the dirtiness of the water is really what was causing the

problem. Referencing Figure 4.5 might give the reader an idea of what this means. The

picture was taken in the main city of Huaraz at the Santa River where Sarah Fortner, a

graduate student from The Ohio State University, was taking a water sample. While we

both had expected the river to be less clean than that to which we were accustomed, I

know that I, for one, was not expecting this level of obvious contamination. Sarah almost fell into the river while sampling after seeing a floating, rotting pig carcass. However, across the river from us, four young women washed their clothes and themselves in the

same river water.

Another question I asked people was who used most of the water. I left it open-

ended so people could interpret it on any scale, local, national or global, but many people

would tell me that everyone used water, which typically ended that line of thought.

Others would say communities or cities or would list industries as Table 5 lists above.

However, two different people, an elderly retired man from Lima and a young British

woman brought in an interesting perspective when they said, “the people with more

[water] (Interview 28 7/23/2008, Interview 51 8/6/2008)”.

Figure 4.5: The river bank of the Santa in Huaraz, Peru is covered in trash (Photo by Sarah Wright, July 2008).

4.8 Government Actions, Current and Future

Due to the somewhat cloudy nature of the responses regarding the actions and

people causing climate change, the interviewees had a mixed bag of responses for what

the government should do about climate change. One man from Huaraz said:

The government is taking complete action now to prevent global warming. They have reforesting programs and are damning the rivers and lakes to keep water here. The higher dams are better because the water stays here. I’m not sure if this takes care of the entire problem, but the government is doing all it can. Maybe they will build more dams later, but right now, it’s everything (Interview 1, 7/8/2008).

This is interesting because of the use of the term preventing climate change, rather than mitigating it, although that seems to be what is described. This is also in full support 77

of what the government is currently doing. It is worth noting that this respondent was

employed by the government.

When asked what the government should do, interviewees responded with a range

of responses from a little bit more regulation in a casual way to greatly increased

regulations or even very strict control of resources. These understandings of glacial melt

prioritize local action. A student from Chiclayo said, “A little more regulation, they need to recommend the national and foreign tourists of what to do and not to do so that they do not deteriorate our climate and our glaciers and tell them where to throw the separated

organic and inorganic waste (Interview 29, 7/23/2008)”. Another professor from Lima

said that the Peruvian government needed to “ration the water, regulate how to use the

water. There is a misuse of water, the same habits. There is much neglect, much loss of

water. There is not much distribution of water and the cost of water is very low in

comparison of other, superficial products (Interview 31, 7/23/2008)”.

Peruvians and international tourists alike have a negative impression of what the

government or the people of the world are already doing. One of the gate guards for the

Huascaran National Park said, “In terms of warming, now there is a lot of interest, albeit

very late, but we are not doing anything to avoid polluting the atmosphere, to reduce the

amount of pollution and contamination (Interview 22, 7/20/2008)”.

Another sentiment expressed by several interviewees was that the government

should educate and explain the situation to all of the “ignorant people”. A young student

from Huaraz said, “The government needs to organize talks with the people telling them

not to contaminate. They need to consider the people of Peru first, not their salaries

(Interview 15 7/20/2008)”. Another student expressed, “less contamination, more

publicity, more campaigns, more technical talks to stop contamination (Interview 17,

7/20/2008)”.

However, among many respondents, especially those from Huaraz, a certain

fatalism pervaded their responses. Three Limeños in their mid-twenties said, “I think that

now is too late to apply a rule or something. There is no time to go back for the melting

glaciers (Interview 12 7/19/2008)”. A stay-at-home mom from Lima doubted that big business would allow governments to take action,

“With respect to caring for the environment, I see the difficulty in changing the powers that be. For example, Al Gore, who was a candidate for president of the United States and a great activist for the environment. But there are big businesses and interest groups that don’t let him act. Remember that Hurricane Katrina happened in the United States, and it was terrible and could have been a result of global warming (Interview 58 8/7/2008)”.

The interviewee went on to state, in a number of ways, that she did not believe action would take place before disaster struck, but also probably not even after disasters in Peru.

She discussed that it was a global problem and that Peru was not high on anyone else’s priority list.

A 31 year old engineer from Lima said, “It is very worrying, not just here but around the world. Nobody does anything and what anyone does is very little. So, we see the future is not promising and don’t want to have children because we are not the losers, but this is detrimental to those who are to come” (Interview 38 7/26/2008).

4.9 Summary of Findings

This chapter has detailed the main findings from the surveys, interviews, and

participant observation from my summer in the Cordillera Blanca in 2008. I learned that

a majority of Peruvians self-identify as environmentalists. As a whole, they associate

glacial melt with climate change in some way. However, this association does not

include the technical details of exactly how climate change works, leading to some

confusion about what to do. A majority of Peruvians believe that the economic staple of the region, tourism, will be adversely affected by climate change. The Peruvian tourists also blame themselves at an equal level as the rest of the world, despite evidence to the contrary. However, they also believe that everyone will be affected by climate change equally. The interviewees also predict water problems in the future as the glaciers disappear. The questions about what the government or what individuals should do led to many different responses, however, a certain fatalism pervaded the answers. Solutions seemed either very simple, like sorting trash, or too complex for anyone to truly address, in the interviewees’ opinions.

These responses fit within three main themes: Peruvian relationships with their environment, fatalism about the future, and who is to blame for climate change and glacial melt. These three themes will be further explored in the following chapter where the study results are organized and interrelated. The sixth and final chapter will follow with the final conclusions.

CHAPTER 5

Survey Discussion

In the previous chapter, I presented the main results of my fieldwork. However, while I presented each finding individually, I did not illustrate much interrelation between topics.

In this chapter, I organize the results into three main themes. The first theme centers on the relationship Peruvians have with their environment, including their perceptions and understandings of the glaciers and climate change. The second theme encompasses the fatalistic attitude that pervades many of the responses which includes the perceived future effects on tourism and what should be done. The third theme revolves around who is to blame. To explore these, I will elaborate on the particular case study of the “closure” of the glacier at Pastoruri. I will follow this chapter with a final conclusion chapter that will summarize this thesis, detail the limitations of this study, and provide suggestions for further research.

5.1 Theme One: Peruvian Relationships with their Environment

Firstly, tourism is predicted by the literature and interview responses to decrease as the environment changes. The economic impact of decreased tourism would decrease the resilience of the communities within the Cordillera Blanca. One tourist agency owner said his business had already decreased by a third with Pastoruri closed. He discussed

81 people being unwilling to come to Huaraz and the surrounding area without Pastoruri as a draw for bus trips (Interview46, 8/4/2008). Bus trips dominate the activity list for the average Peruvian tourist, however, long camping trips and day trips that include things like ice climbing should also be considered. While these trips involve greater start up costs for tourist agencies to acquire equipment, they also potentially yield greater profit once the sunk costs have been covered. Some of the most expensive activities in the region, however, are treks or adventure tourism activities that involve glaciers. For example, the trip I took to Llaca was specifically to see the glacier there and for some people to go ice climbing (see Figure 5.1).

In another example, the trip to Pastoruri cost 30 soles (a little more than 11 US dollars), and the trip to Llanganuco cost 25 soles, unusually inexpensive compared to other tourists’ trips. However, the day trip to Llaca, including the ice climbing, cost 100 soles (slightly more than 37 US dollars), although the bus trip is actually shorter than either Pastoruri or Llanganuco. This included all equipment rental and one more guide than the other two trips. The extra guide also performed the physically exerting duties of belaying and climbing the glacier first to drive in the stake for the rope. However, in comparison to the ten hour long trips to Llanganuco and Pastoruri, the approximately five hour long trip was half the amount of time. Unless a factor unlisted here is affecting the situation, this ice climbing activity would be more profitable for the tourism agencies, but would also be in a more precarious position than trips toLlanganuco with the projected glacial melt. It is also performed on a much smaller scale, due to the necessary exertion and price. Even more expensive (and most likely more profitable) are the multi-day

82 hiking trips that take tourists up snow-covered peaks or through valleys, although these trips are dominated by the few international tourists. These trips are the most vulnerable to being cancelled due to shrinking glaciers but are the most profitable per tourist.

Figure 5.1: Ice climbing at Llaca is more expensive than other day trips (Photo by Sarah Wright, August 2008).

The statistic that 70% of Peruvians think of themselves as environmentalists is significant because it shows that most of the respondents are people that self identify with caring about environmental problems. They have demonstrated an interest in the

Peruvian glaciers by traveling to Huaraz, and then they are also self-identified as interested in the environment. So, these people would be more likely to possibly direct political action in an environmental movement by their votes or by increasing awareness of the issues facing Peru right now. However, the answer to this question did not always correspond with actions (or non-actions) relating to environmental problems.

A noteworthy finding is that 100% of interviewees referred to global warming in the discussion of glacial melt. This is a significant finding considering the media’s portrayal of climate change as a debate until recently, as well as the large disbelief prevalent in America where many more people have access to regular news sources

(Boykoff and Boykoff 2004). Many of the people, such as campesinos working at

Llanganuco, are also distanced from many mainstream media sources like television or regular newspaper access, which makes this finding even more surprising.

However, despite a strong association of climate change being a cause of glacial melt, a lack of understanding of the actual process of climate change pervaded the majority of respondents’ answers in two different ways. First, many interviewees seemed to be confused as to what contributes to global warming. Ten people discussed the ozone layer as synonymous with climate change, and a large portion of interviewees listed sorting garbage as an important solution. This is an important finding because even if people make the connection between climate change and glacial melt and identify

themselves as environmentalists trying to change, the fight to makes changes will be a

losing battle from the beginning if they do not understand what causes climate change.

One of my goals for this research is to predict what will happen in future policy

decisions. This would indicate that the environmentalists will be looking to create laws

about telling concerned citizens the glaciers are melting because of climate change and

making sure everyone sorts their garbage.

Second, 86 % of Peruvian respondents said that everyone was equally to blame

for climate change. This also demonstrates an unclear relationship in the Peruvian

consciousness about the causes of climate change. This reflects the dominant discourse of

global responsibility pervading the world, especially in the United States called the

Global Environmental Management discourse by Adger et al. (2001). According to

Adger et al., while on the surface, global responsibility seems fair, it actually misleads the global consciousness into forgetting the dominating emitters of carbon in the world and assigning blame to everyone. This viewpoint ignores the historical, geographical, and political differences that exist around the world because it blames the victims for their problems.

Saying everyone is equally responsible plays into the discourse of global environmental management (Adger et al. 2001), but it does not adequately reflect the

situation occurring in the world. According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis

Center, the preliminary analysis for 2007 puts Peru at the 65th highest emitter of carbon

with just about 0.1% of worldwide emissions, but the United States was second with

18.7% of the world total (CDIAC 2008). While inappropriate blame seems wrong in and

of itself, theme three displays some consequences of misguided thinking and blame. The

solutions taken to conserve the glaciers assign blame to the wrong people and do not

solve the problem. They also put innocent communities that depend on tourism at a disadvantage. While reassigning blame would not immediately solve any problems, it would be a step in the right direction. For example, the case of Pastoruri, explained below, demonstrates that the current “solution” is not based on scientific reasoning and

ends up hurting the economic viability of the region without any benefit. When blame is

assigned to the wrong group of people, action cannot be taken to correct the people who hold the actual responsibility for the problem.

5.2 Theme Two: Fatalism in Inaction

The second theme reflects on a fatalistic sensibility that seems to exist throughout the responses. People know this change is coming and feel helpless before it. An expatriate, living in the United States, who was visiting her family said that the future looked bleak for Ancash with less food, less water, death, suffering, and disease-

“practically chaos overall (Interview 9, 7/19/2008)”. A middle-aged couple from Lima said that life as we know it would change forever (Interview 10, 7/19/2008). Wars over water became a common theme throughout many of the interviews (i.e. Interview 18,

7/20/2008, students from Huaraz , Interview 19, 7/20/2008, a tourist bus driver, Interview

45, 7/28/2008, businesswoman from Lima). Predictions of various disasters or extremely negative consequences said with a rueful grin became common occurrences when people were asked about the future.

This is also reflected through the projected effects on tourism. 73% of those interviewed thought that tourism would decrease in the future. Some of these predictions were slight while others predicted utter disaster, but overall, most interviewees felt that the region was in for some sort of economic hit that would follow a major decrease in tourism. All of the tourist agencies said that they were having fewer tours and less tourism than ever before with the closing of Pastoruri in 2008. Most followed this with a fear of what would happen in the future to them, to their businesses, or the tourism economy of Huaraz.

An interesting contrast to this, however, is found in the two government officials that I talked to that had access to the local statistics on tourism numbers. Both officials stated that tourism had definitely increased in 2008 to the Huascaran National Park, although there probably would have been even more if Pastoruri was open. I replied, surprised, with a question of why this would be. They stated reasons such as the natural beauty of Huaraz, the interesting archaeological sites, and that people from Lima like to get away to Huaraz. However, when asking other people within the research study and non-interviewees I encountered, they mentioned that the new park director was increasing security into the park. More employees are being assigned to guard the entrances into the park that have never been monitored before. This would, of course, document people that would not have been counted in previous years.

An example of this came at Pitec, one of my interview sites. The location itself is outside of the park, but it is located at the entrance to the trail to Chirrup, which is part of the park. My first trip to Pitec coincided with one of the mass interview days of Dr. Jeff

Bury’s team, so I shared the taxi up the hillside. Jeff also waited with me for quite some

time as the sun rose and I waited for tourists. Between eight and nine in the morning, two

men drove up on motorcycles to the park entrance. They were park officials collecting

entrance fees to the park and documenting how many people came through Pitec. Jeff

was surprised because they had not done this the year before or any other year he knew

about. He went on to explain that the new head of Huascaran National Park was trying to increase the number of tourists paying the park fees, which also increases the number counted. So, although the official numbers of park visitors are increasing, I do not think this is an accurate reflection of total tourist numbers.

The actual increases in numbers of tourists may never be known. The official numbers, once they are released, will not reflect the actual increases in tourist numbers, but the tendency for exaggeration within the local tourism workers may mean that the situation is not as dire as they may say. This may mean that although 73% of interviewees think that tourism is and/or will decrease, that may be more of an exaggeration. However, the key message to take away, whether or not people are exaggerating, is that most tourists and all tourism workers believe and tell other people that they believe things are getting bad and will get worse.

5.3 Theme Three: The Blame Game

The third theme will be best explored through the case study of Pastoruri in the way it demonstrates what consequences exist if there is no basic understanding of how the climate change process works. Misguided policies followed by misinformation

leaves the story a jumble in people’s minds with little action taken towards a productive

change.

5.3.1 The Mystery of the Closed Glacier: Case Study of Pasto Ruri

Throughout my time in Peru, I heard different versions of the same story. The

facts are these: Pastoruri (or Pasto Ruri) was closed by a gate for most of 2008 starting in

December of 2007. No tourist agency offered bus trips, and the sole access road was blocked. There was a brief re-opening for the Fiestas de Patrias from July 26th to August

19th, 2008(Interview 66 8/13/2006) after which access to the glacier was promptly severed. Beyond that, however, my interviewees did not agree on who was discontinuing access or why they stopped allowing people to visit. I spent quite a bit of time confused whether the glacier was closed to protect it, to protect the tourists, or because of a dispute

between local communities and the Huascaran National Park officials or INRENA

officials.

A newspaper story from February 2008 says that the government closed the

glacier in December because of global warming. The article goes on to describe how the

glacier will disappear within the next 15 to 20 years, and it needs as much protection as

possible to make it last longer. The article then declares that Pastoruri had been and

would be closed between December and March for the protection of the tourists. The

next assessment, then, would decide if the glacier had to be closed longer in 2008

(Nacion Noticias 2008).

The article then goes on to discuss the importance of Pastoruri to the tourism

economy for the region. “The snow, with an altitude of 5240 meters, has for decades

been the tourist center for adventure sports in the Huascaran National Park. It receives

about 60,000 visitors a year (Nacion Noticias 2008)”. The final paragraph of the article

discusses how the closing could very negatively affect the tourism in Ancash, especially

for small communities like Catac that depend on Pastoruri for their income (Nacion

Noticias 2008).

An article from another news source in February declared that Pastoruri would

stay closed through March solely for the protection of the glacier. It went on to discuss

INRENA and the staff for the Huascaran National Park’s role in protecting and closing

the glacier, as well as some suggestions from the mayor to possibly open the glacier

without people being able to touch it (Perú Noticias 2008).

However, by the time I arrived in Huaraz in June, the glacier had not yet

reopened. Most tourists said that it was because of contamination by tourists, but

numerous other reasons were given by other people. Students from Huaraz said that

Pastoruri was closed because it was dangerous to visit and would only further the

contamination (Interview 18, 7/20/2008). A tourist bus driver said that it’s “for the good

of security (Interview 19, 7/20/2008)”. A thirty year old male tourist guide, angrily

discussed a seedier version, “Well, this is a problem between the community of Catac and the state that is on trial because the community wants to administer Patsoruri and so does

the state. They cannot reach an agreement, but I do not know why if there already is no

Pastoruri (Interview 57, 8/7/2008)”.

In an undated journal entry from the 4th of July weekend, I wrote down a

conversation I had with one of the glaciologists from Canada that came with the Ohio

State team. He said that he talked with “the engineer” (the title of Marco Zapata, head of the INRENA branch in Ancash) to find out why they closed the glacier. He said he was told that tourists would damage the glacier, which, in his opinion, was “total bullshit”.

He went on to describe the effects of people clamoring on the glacier as “miniscule” and

“probably beneficial if they scrape off the dirt- an increase in albedo”.

Another clue into the mystery came when I asked two young, male gate guards what their opinion was of Pastoruri being closed. They responded, “It is for the loss of the glacier, for the contamination and same neglect by the people. Most all are local or foreign with their lack of training that have created loss (of ice) and have had bad use and waste management in the tourist area. They have made a total loss of the glacier, and there are consequences between the communities and the park (Interview 20,

7/20/2008)”.

At the end of my stay in Huaraz, I was able to interview two different government workers from the agencies of INRENA and Huascaran National Park (HNP), which seem to have a competition of power over the glaciers. HNP is technically operating under the

INRENA office, but it seemed more independent during my stay. When I asked the HNP official to tell me about Pasto Ruri’s closure, he said:

… we have seen that people don’t bother with conservation. They don’t behave appropriately, and there is no support from the people that benefit from the area. So, I believe that it is time we had clear policies for visiting Pasto Ruri. The specialists tell us that it is not a glacier, but an ice cap, and that what remains of it can be enjoyed, but if we have the mindset that we can go in in an uncontrolled manner, without rules, without the conservationist attitude to protect, it will be gone in less than 10 years (Interview 66, 8/13/2008).

The interview went on with a clear support for the idea that although the glacier

was melting because of global warming, the tourists’ lack of care was accelerating the

deglaciation. The official stated that the people that do the most damage to the glaciers

come from the tourist agencies that organize big trips to the glacier without providing all the services they advertise so their customers damage the glacier. An example he used is

the tourist agencies that offered ski trips on Pastoruri (which used to be allowed). If families planned on those types of activities at the glacier, they will have snowball fights or roll around in the snow instead. We also discussed the community of Catac to a lesser extent. He complained about how the community took over and shut down the Pastoruri office by force, but now that the judicial system is fed up with the community, the state is forming compromises. He then emphasized that with a clear agreement with the communities, everyone could then work towards increasing regulation for conservation

(Interview 66, 8/13/2008).

The INRENA official was a little more candid in his interview about motives of various actors, partially because we had some contact before that day to get acquainted.

However, in the discussion of Pasto Ruri, he unequivocally stated that global climate change was causing the glacier to melt and tourists were not having a very large effect, if

any. His personal opinion was that the glacier should be exploited to teach all of the

visitors about global climate change by setting up markers of where the glacier used to be

for every five years since 1980. He said that they had the exact location on the trail to set

up this system, and this would help protect glaciers by allowing “people, scholars,

93 national and international tourists to visit the place and be conscious of what is happening with climate change and how it is affecting our peaks (Interview 64 8/11/2008)”.

My next question was “But it is closed now?” He agreed, but said that the decision was only in the hands of the National Park of Huascaran. I asked why the glacier was closed, and he responded with, “One of the reasons that they mention is that tourists are causing the glacier to melt faster. In order to prevent more melting, they say that people should not visit it. But this is not completely true because where we control the glaciers and only we have access, the same thing is happening. The deterioration is similar to what is seen in Pastoruri. This gives us the idea that it is not the amount of tourists that affects the glacier, but rather it is a climate related issue (Interview 64,

8/11/2008)”.

This seems to solve the mystery. Both officials discuss the tourists damaging the glacier as the official version of the closure, although one does not agree with it.

However, even if the glaciologist from Canada and the INRENA official know and disagree with this version, the people affected, tourists and tourism workers, do not all know the official reason for closing that part of the Huascaran National Park. I think this would cloud people’s judgment of how to react to the closing, especially when some tourism workers react so angrily to the community of Catac in their responses. With a clearer depiction by the government of what their reasoning is, tourism workers would be less likely to blame communities.

However, the “official” reasoning also reflects the very unclear nature of the perceptions of climate change from even those people in power. The official story is that

the glacier is closed so that tourists cannot damage it. While everyone who told this story

also reflected on the effects of global climate change, they blamed tourists for damaging

the glacier. While Pastoruri was open, a self-disciplining crowd would berate and

physically manhandle people that tried to climb on the glacier. Some of the people

yelling were tourist guides, but the whole crowd would join in to give advice or even boo people that wanted their pictures from atop the icy piles. Large, long lines formed around

“safe” picture points inside glacial caves or behind a six foot long snow pile that formed in front of the glacier’s edge with irate screams for anyone seen cutting. Of course, part of the irritability could be that many of their stomachs would soon be heaving, but most seemed genuinely sure that anyone who climbed atop the glacier was contributing to its demise.

From the standpoint of “scientific reasoning”, the glaciologists working with the

Ohio State team from across the United States and Canada all seemed to think that tourists walking on the glacier would have no discernable effect. However, another professor at Ohio State did discuss the poor judgment of some native peoples near other glaciers that would take some snow back with them in their sacred ceremonies.

However, this practice has now been prohibited, although this was most likely not much of a factor in glacial recession.

Although I cannot know which came first, the official government statement or the perceptions of most people, the thought that tourists damage the glaciers is very pervasive in quite a few of the people I interviewed. This perception has led to keeping

the Pastoruri glacier closed for almost all of 2008, which may or may not have damaged

the tourism economy.

5.4 Conclusions

The survey results reveal some conclusions that support the hypotheses laid out

before the Peruvian trip, however, the results also hold some very surprising conclusions.

While I expected that Peruvians would be aware of the relationship between climate

change and glacial melt, I also expected that the Peruvians would blame the United States

and developed countries for their problems. That a majority of Peruvians are holding

themselves equally responsible as people from the United States is very surprising. It

also leads me to question the global discourse that has lead to these thoughts becoming so prevalent, which will be discussed in the following chapter. Another surprise comes in the form of that everyone was familiar with and “believed” in climate change, but did not necessarily understand what it meant.

However, most of the Peruvians visiting Ancash self-report that they care about the environment. They are also very savvy about the term climate change, if not exactly what it means or how it is caused. This does generate the possibility that the people visiting the Cordillera Blanca will be willing to take action on this issue now or in the near future.

The idea that people would take action is important because, according to popular opinion, as well as the theories discussed before the interviews, water is going to be a big problem in this area. Tourism, also, is predicted by residents and tourists to decrease as the glaciers shrink. This paints a bleak picture for the residents of the area that depend on

96 tourism for their livelihoods, but perhaps, with action, the future holds a brighter hope than currently available.

CHAPTER 6

Summary and Conclusions

6.1 Importance of Research

The world has gone over the precipice of modern global climate change. Even with rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the world is already locked into a cycle that includes some climate change. Without serious changes to our current emissions patterns, modern global climate change could be devastating to many areas of the world (IPCC WGI 2007). The translation of these changes onto the ground varies by regional location. In the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, climate change already means glaciers are rapidly disappearing due to their sensitivity to climate (Kaser and Georges 1999).

The Cordillera Blanca is therefore on the frontlines of climate change and faces a difficult future. Water scarcity will become an issue as glaciers normally moderate the highly seasonal precipitation regime (Mark et al. 2005). The tourism that the region relies on could be greatly reduced as the glaciers disappear, as well.

These thoughts led me to ask my research questions: Although scientists within the United States see climate change as a problem for the area, do the national Peruvian tourists traveling to the area perceive this problem? All of these predictions illustrate a

decrease in tourism to the area, but do locals feel this on the ground? Do tourists

themselves believe that they or other tourists will refrain from visiting the area in the

future? Beyond this, how do people perceive climate change in the region and its

relationship to the glaciers? Who is held responsible for the changes being seen now?

What do tourists see for the future?

I took these questions and framed my research study in Peru during the summer of

2008. During this time, I asked 60 people questions from a semi-structured survey,

performed six interviews, and logged over 160 hours of participant observation in the

Cordillera Blanca, Peru. The findings, summarized in section 6.2, make an important

contribution to geographic thought because they bring together three previously

unconnected literatures. Each literature contributes a significant portion of the theoretical

framework for the thesis in a way that has not been attempted in previous studies. In the next section, 6.3, I discuss some of the limitations of this study and ways it could have been improved. In the last section, 6.4, I discuss suggestions for further study.

6.2 Summary of Findings

The previous chapter, displaying the results my summer fieldwork, describes how a majority of the interviewees perceive global climate change, melting glaciers, and other issues related to those subjects. While the conclusions cannot be generalized to the entire

Peruvian population, they do suggest how Peruvian elites are perceiving and interacting

with the world around them. In particular, they associate climate change with glacial

melt, but have trouble expressing the scientific details about it. One frequently occurring

error was to associate global climate change with the hole in the ozone layer. However, a

99 college text book from the United States that gives an introduction to the IPCC report also has a section to clear up the “common misconception” of associating the hole in the ozone layer with climate change (Mann and Kump 2009). So, not understanding the details of climate change is not unique to Peruvians.

Peruvians also equate their level of blame with that of everyone else in the world, including larger and smaller emitters. These perceptions of self-blame for climate change illustrate their mental framework of the issue and the overall discourse that informs their decisions, which appears to be the Global Environmental Management discourse.

As the GEM discourse continues to dominate the global arena of politics, it leads to questions of fairness and ability to cope with changes. Although this thesis deals more with perceived vulnerabilities than actual, many other researchers demonstrate the increasing vulnerability of locals in coping with these changes. Nevertheless, from the data collected here, Peruvians are astutely perceiving these vulnerabilities and feeling fatalistic about the ability to resolve the threat of global climate change in time for their communities.

This vulnerability is defined by Adger et al. as “a socially constructed phenomenon influenced by institutional and economic dynamics (2003 p. 181)”. The documented evidence that Peruvians are blaming themselves equally with the rest of the world, most likely, has been socially constructed within the Global Environmental

Management discourse. Since the GEM discourse is the globally dominant discourse, this could be due to the widespread prevalence of the underlying societal relations of the world. However, compared with other, fairly well-documented case studies in the Inuit

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and Small-Island States, Peru is an anomaly. The Peruvian interviewees do not follow

the profligacy discourse like the other two case studies of places currently affected by

global warming. The Peruvians follow key parts of the GEM discourse instead, although

they may be a hybrid of the two. Key differences must therefore exist between the Inuit

peoples, the Small Island States, and the people of Peru in order to have such different thought patterns occupy their populations.

Some small differences do exist between the Inuit, Small-Island States and

Peruvians. In this thesis, a majority of those interviewed are tourists from elsewhere in

Peru that did not live with the melting glaciers in their everyday lives. They describe the

glaciers melting but not the details. They cannot point and say exactly where the glaciers

have been in the past as the Inuit can. However, local people from Huaraz and those

working in the tourist agencies had similar feelings about the self-blame and understanding of climate change. This difference does not explain it, then.

Peruvians are in closer contact to “Western” knowledge systems instead of traditional ones, which could also change their interpretations. The Peruvians interviewed used Western science for their explanations of the glaciers melting, although they do not all have the full explanation of how the process of modern global climate change works or the science behind it. This could be a result of the close relationship

Peru has with the United States with the bilateral free trade agreement (USTR 2005).

Much of the media information comes from United States media sources. While in Peru,

I heard of a documentary that was played on one of the local channels that explained climate change, its problems, and solutions. I never had the opportunity to watch this

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documentary, but some speculation suggests that the documentary was from the U.S. and translated into Spanish. Since many television programs in the United States refer to climate change’s problems and solutions in a way that makes it “our” (i.e. humanity’s) problem, this could account for some people’s views. In the end, what matters is that

Peruvians are participating in the global discourse surrounding climate change in a way

that could be hindering their ability to adapt to and mitigate climate change. This is evident in their response to the shrinkage of Pastoruri, where the mitigation strategy is to allow only research teams to approach it. However, in terms of global policy, this could

lead Peruvians to agree to more stringent restrictions than other developing countries. At

this time, though, Peru has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but as a non-Annex I country,

they do not have any specific emissions targets (UNDP 2008).

6.3 Limitations of the Study

This study has been limited by several factors. Due to time and financial

constraints, I was only able to conduct a total of sixty structured surveys and six key

informant interviews. Although this has been adequate for addressing some of these

broader questions, more surveys and interviews could allow for a finer analysis of the

topics as well as greater statistical conceptualization. With the clarity of hindsight, I

would also prefer to have asked more questions about the case study of Pastoruri at the

beginning of my research. I did not specifically address this topic with a majority of the

first twenty surveys, so I did not gather as many perspectives as I would like.

Although this study is spatially stratified in interview locations, little exists in

terms of temporal stratification. All of the interviewees and surveys were conducted in

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July and early August of 2008. My contacts often mentioned the large number of school

groups that would visit during October and January. These groups could have an entirely

different perspective. Other groups of people may be more evident during other points in

the year that I would not know unless I was able to count them in my surveys. Without

time constraints, I would prefer having survey samples throughout the year.

Another limitation is my non-native status. Although I did my best to address this

by improving my Spanish and acting the role of a tourist, I could not be a Peruvian during the interviews. This could mean that people were more hesitant to blame the United

States or the developed world after I explained my student status. A native speaker of

Spanish would also be able to catch nuances and colloquialisms that I might have missed,

which could be a good opportunity for future collaboration. All of these factors could have influenced my data, but I will never know to what extent.

6.4 Suggestions for Future Research

After analyzing the data, there is clearly room for further research. Peruvians’ self-blame is an interesting perspective that is unexpected in this context. I would be interested in seeing if other Latin American areas affected by climate change have the same perspective or if this is Peru specific. Fatalism is another topic area that seems ripe for an ethnographic study. Does the fatalism come from the precarious position of residents in the wake of the mudslides of the 20th century? The relationships between the two governmental offices, UGRH and Huascaran National Park, proved complicated and conflicting in their information and source of experts. A study analyzing the creation of

103 policy and rumors in the area would be very informative of not only environmental actions, but would also give insight into the Peruvian governmental system.

Finally, the case study of Pastoruri would benefit from further study as the story has only begun to unfold. As the glacier continues to disappear and conflicts between the two departments escalate, a study of this glacial park would be able to capture the final days of Pastoruri. I would specifically suggest looking at the source of conflict between

UGRH and HNP, as well as whether the park remains closed and how people react to that. The tourism to the region will most likely decline, but looking at the actual extent of that decline versus the perceptions of it would be interesting. Also, the park entrance had only been closed for six months when I arrived in Huaraz, so the rampant advertising of Pastoruri was understandable. However, an interesting study could look at the extent of the advertisement as the glacier remains closed. These ideas are just a small portion of the interesting phenomena that surround Pastoruri. I hope that someone can explore further into the topic in the future.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A

Tourist Semi-Structured Survey Questions in English

As a visitor to the glaciers, I would like to ask you to answer the following questions: What inspired this trip? Why are you traveling to these glaciers? Are you going hiking or ice-climbing while you are here? Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Have you been here or to other glaciers before? What do you think about the glaciers? I’ve heard the glaciers are getting smaller very quickly. Do you agree? If Yes, why are they getting smaller? Is anyone to blame? Do the smaller glaciers have any effects on people? Is there less water? Who uses the water? Who will be most affected by the changes? What do you think about global climate change? What do you think will happen in the future? Have you changed your lifestyle because of global climate change? If yes, how? What policies do you think the government should make about the glaciers and climate change?

Questions about Individual characteristics: Do you work outside the home? If yes, what type of work do you do? Does your work take you around Peru? What age category are you: 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56-65? Where were you born? Where is your primary residence?

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APPENDIX B

Tourist Semi-Structured Survey Questions in Spanish

Como visitante de los glaciares me gustaría hacerle algunas preguntas:

¿Qué inspiró este viaje? ¿Por qué vino a estos glaciares? ¿Hará senderismo o escalada en hielo durante su visita a los glaciares? ¿Se considera usted un medioambientalista? ¿Ha estado aquí antes o en algún otro glaciar? ¿Qué opina sobre los glaciares? He escuchado que el tamaño de los glaciares está disminuyendo rápidamente ¿está de acuerdo? En caso afirmativo, ¿por qué está disminuyendo el tamaño de los glaciares? ¿Alguien tiene la culpa? ¿Cree que los disminuyendo glaciares tengan algún efecto en la gente? ¿Cree que hay menos agua? ¿Quién usa el agua? ¿Para que la gente usa el agua? ¿Quién o quiénes serán los más afectados con estos cambios? ¿Qué opina sobre los cambios climáticos? ¿Qué cree que pasará en el futuro? ¿Ha cambiado su estilo de vida debido a los cambios climáticos? En caso afirmativo ¿cómo? ¿Qué tipo de políticas cree que debe implementar el gobierno sobre los glaciares y el cambio climático? ¿Si no hay glaciares in esta región, quería visitar el mismo? ¿Si los parques de glaciares están cerrados, quería venir a Huaraz o Ancash? ¿Piensa que los parques de glaciares van a estar cerrados en el futuro?

Preguntas sobre características individuales:

¿Trabaja fuera de su casa? En caso afirmativo ¿qué tipo de trabajo realiza? ¿Su trabajo lo(a) obliga a viajar por el Perú? ¿A qué categoría de edad pertenece usted: 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56-65?

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