Lecture by, Mark Carey, Assistant Professor of History, University of Oregon.

In the Peruvian Andes, climate change has unleashed a series of glacier catastrophes and generated an increasing number of conflicts over water supplies. Since the 1930s, Peruvians have grappled with continual outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which have killed thousands and still threaten local communities today. These inundations from shrinking glaciers in Peru represent the same processes occurring in mountain ranges worldwide, from the Andes and Alps to the Rockies and Himalaya. At the same time this deadly abundance of water has flooded communities, there is an increasing concern that water supplies are declining as glaciers retreat. This lecture shows not only how such variability unleashed death and destruction, but also how the real and projected water scarcity is felt unevenly among Andean people.