Abstract
Embedded within the Cordillera Blanca, the world’s most glaciated tropical mountain range, the Quillcay sub-catchment is heavily affected by anthropogenic climate change. Warming temperatures and glacier retreat lead to increasing slope instability in the high-moutain, while ice-melt and changing precipitation patterns altern water supply. Water, both as a vital resource and as a source of natural hazard through GLOFs, is a major concern for local inhabitants and decision-makers. Based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project’s Phase 6 (CMIP6) Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), this work attempts to co-assess the negative impacts or ‘losses and damages’ (L&Ds) of climate change, related to changing water availability and GLOFs in the Quillcay catchment until 2050. Future river flow regimes are simulated with hydrological modelling, permitting an assessment of impacts of changes in water availability in terms of potential shortages and agricultural economic loss. Spatial analysis of GLOFs’ hazard zones permits to assess possible loss of lives, number of buildings and agricultural area exposed. While no water shortage could be simulated, agricultural economic loss is highest in SSP5-8.5, with a $319’054’345 USD estimated over the entire period. GLOFs’ L&Ds are differentiated, with more important L&Ds for scenarios of high magnitude and low probability of occurrence. With different metrics combined, this L&D co-assessment provides a better understanding of the impacts of climate change in the catchment area and contributes as a basis to develop appropriate mitigation strategies. Further, this study explores the relationship between social and environmental drivers—such as population increase and glacier retreat—and the L&Ds studied. From this exploration, a framework and suggestions for co-assessing cascading L&Ds emerge.