LIMA, Peru — Global climate change threatens the complete disappearance of the Andes’ tropical glaciers within the next 20 years, putting precious water, energy and food sources at risk, according to a World Bank report presented here Tuesday. The study says glacial retreat has already reduced by 12 percent the water supply to Peru’s dry coastline, home to 60 percent of the country’s population. ‘In Peru, (the glaciers) are melting very quickly. More than 20 percent of the glacial ice caps have disappeared since the 1970s,’ World Bank climate change specialist Walter Vergara told reporters in the capital, Lima. The report says that in neighboring Bolivia, the Chacaltaya glacier has lost 82 percent of its surface area since 1982. Meanwhile the Ecuadorean capital of Quito could face increased water costs of up to $100 million annually in the next 10 years as rising temperatures deplete nearby glaciers, Vergara said. The World Bank study on climate change in Latin America warns of three other major threats besides glacier disappearance: the destruction of coral reefs by warming oceans, which could cause the Caribbean basin’s ecosystem to ‘collapse’; wetlands devastation in the Gulf of Mexico due to deforestation, pollution […]