📋 Tender Overview
By Ricardo Zubieta, scientific researcher at the PGIEvery June 17, World Fight and Drought Day is commemorated, a date promoted by the UN since 1994 to raise awareness about these environmental challenges. In Peru, both phenomena are increasingly present and require urgent look.
Lets better understand these events. Desertification refers to the degradation of arid ecosystems by climatic factors and human activities. The droughts, meanwhile, are characterized by the reduction of rain to levels lower than usual. If this reduction extends over time, it manifests itself as a meteorological drought, which can lead to an agricultural drought that affects the moisture content in the soil and limits agricultural production.
The decrease in rain can affect the water cycle and lead to a hydrological drought, that is, a reduction in the flow of rivers below normal, as well as a lower groundwater recharge. For example, in the Amazon, the hydrological droughts of 2005 and 2010 drastically affected river transport, which produced the increase in prices of many products due to the limitations arising for distribution. A similar panorama was recently observed in 2024 in some rivers in the Loreto region, so the government decreed state of emergency in this region in the imminent danger due to water deficit.
In the Andean region, the delay in the beginning of the rainy season can affect dry drylands, those that depend exclusively on rainwater. Wild vegetation, such as grasslands, shrubs and forests, is also affected, because not raining, plants lose moisture, which makes them a highly flammable material and drastically increases the risk of forest fires. As in 2016 and 2020, in 2024 there was a severe increase in forest fires that left at least 25 people killed in the country.
Changes of intensity, duration and frequency of droughts can exercise strong negative impacts to the population. In response, Peru has established adaptation measures that involve carrying out a series of strategic activities in order to reduce its effects on Andean and Amazonian ecosystems. The Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) contributes to these actions developing new research about droughts and their consequences, to propose solutions that reduce the effects on the population. Thus, we continue to do science to protect ourselves, science to move forward.
Opinion column published in the newspaper Correo Arequipa
