Venezuela's population is approximately 28.3 million (2023) people. The effects of climate change have already been experienced in Venezuela, which used to have five glaciers in 1991 and today, only one remains. The last glacier in Venezuela, the Humboldt glacier, is expected to disappear in less than a decade!
The Humboldt Glacier in the Andes has been melting rapidly and will be gone before scientists even got a chance to study it fully. Venezuela's government has announced plans to 'save' glacier which experts say is basically already gone. A small patch of ice among bare rock is all that remains of Venezuela's last glacier, which the government hopes to restore to its former glory using a geothermal blanket. The Andes is home to some of the fastest-disappearing ice packs in the world, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The region has lost 60 per cent of its ice cover in less than 50 years. 10 percent of land area on Earth is covered with glacial ice, including the Thwaites Glacier called the "Doomsday Glacier"
If Thwaites located in the Antarctic collapsed, it would trigger a cascade of melting that will raise global sea levels 10 feet. Already, the melting Thwaites contributes to 4% of global sea-level rise. Since 2000, the Thwaites has lost more than a trillion tons of ice. The speed at which the Andes melts directly correlates to what we can expect in other regions, currently scientists are seeking 50 billion dollars from 29 countries to stop the melting but it is highly unlikely for their is no guaranteed technology in existence to do so.
Despite paying lip service to the ideals of “eco-socialism,” the regime in Caracas has presided over a significant decline in environmental standards. The problem is simple...greed. Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (acronym PDVSA), English: Petroleum of Venezuela) is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil as well as exploration and production of natural gas. It also is in a constant battle with foreign interests on who controls Venezuela's natural resource and neither side cares about the people of Venezuela who do the actual work. In short the more money these people made the more corruption they allowed on multiple sides.
In Venezuela, race is seen as a biologically invalid category and a highly negative word due to its historic relation with racism and segregation. They pretend that racism doesn't continue to exist. During the month of May, Venezuelans celebrate Afro-Descendant Month in honor of the social, political, economic, and cultural contributions Afro-Venezuelans have made in the nation’s 500-year history. Venezuelans celebrate their African ancestry with mass ceremonies and parades filled with song, dance, speeches, and displays of African-inspired artwork. While these expressions of ethnic pride seem fitting for a multicultural country like Venezuela, this was not always the social practice of the nation.
Climate change is set to worsen the world’s worst displacement crises. Venezuela registered more than 6 million refugees and migrants and millions more internally displaced people in 2022. This represents 20% of the country’s population of just under 28 million. There has been an 15,000% increase in the number of Venezuelans seeking refugee status since 2014, and a significant number of those refugees are coming to the USA. Most Venezuelans attribute cross-border flows of displacement to worsening governance, a failing economy and spiraling violence. add to that climate change and extreme weather events as an increasing deciding factor in decisions to move, that doesn't seem to be changing.
Venezuela is experiencing accelerating, chronic climate shocks and stresses, which are factored into people’s calculations of whether to stay or leave. One of the most significant is severe and prolonged drought. The country’s average temperatures have increased significantly in recent years. Rainfall declined sharply by 65% – between 2015 and 2020. In addition to disrupting agricultural production, this has severely depleted water levels at key hydroelectric installations, including the Guri Dam in Bolivar. The combined blow of dependence on hydro-power and declining oil prices resulted in knock-on effects including rolling blackouts and rationing of water and electricity in Caracas. The government responded with compulsory three-day weekends to save energy. Climate change has become yet another of the cascading miseries driving Venezuelans to pack up and go by the tens of thousands to US borders.
Venezuela is also experiencing rapidly rising sea levels. Rising sea waters risk triggering severe flooding in coastal areas, not least Maracaibo Lake, La Vela de Coro, Chichiriviche, the Barlovento coast, Afro-Venezuelans can be found all over the country, but the largest Afro-Venezuelan population is located in the Barlovento region, in the state of Miranda the most adversely affected by Climate change. In regards to the Amacuro delta and the Orinoco delta respectively. The Orinoco has been home to three large indigenous families, grouped by language: the sedentary and peace-loving Arawaks, speakers, the Carib speakers, former nomadic warriors, and the Chibchan speakers who are endangered.
The Delta of Amacuro, eastern Venezuela, is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. For the past 7.000 years ago Warao indians have lived there and call 20,000 km of water canals and swamps their home. Now contact with the West has threatened their existence as between 40% -50% of the tribe has been infected with AIDS. The Warao people are Venezuela's second-largest indigenous group and live in the low-lying grasslands of the Orinoco Delta, in the east of the country. They have been hit particularly hard by an outbreak of HIV/AIDS. Many look at their plight as part of an attempt of genocide. In a shocking confession, made on camera in 2019 a similar situation was revealed in Africa – Cold Case Hammarskjöld – a former member of South Africa's Apartheid-era intelligence service says that the Aids virus, and other diseases, were deliberately spread among the indigenous population in an effort to kill off as many as possible.
Tens of thousands of indigenous people in Venezuela risk losing their homes due to surging seas. Scientists have warned for decades (the first quantitative assessment was in 1995, followed by another study in 1997) that oil infrastructure, urban areas and tourist infrastructure would all be affected, with a particular threat posed to the regions of Costa Oriental del Lago de Maracaibo and Costa Oriental del Estado Falcón.“Our biggest challenges were health care, food and fuel for our canoe,” A Warao Fisherman Riva says. “We were fishers and we made a living by selling the fish. But it became very hard because we’d take the fish to the city to sell, but people no longer had money to buy it. That’s when we decided to leave because we couldn’t take it anymore.”
Venezuelan citizens like Riva will be able to identify as European white once they get to the USA. Venezuelan citizens who self-identify in the national census as white. According to new laws affecting the official census report may do so regardless of phenotype or appearance, although "white" literally involves external issues such as light skin, shape and color of hair and eyes, among others, the term "white" has historically been used in different ways in different historical periods and places, and so its precise definition is open to interpretation in regards to Venezuelans.
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