Mountain tour guide Enock Bwambale points at three sheets of ice lying between the ragged peaks of Mount Stanley, on the border of Uganda and Congo. A towering glacier once stood here, he explains, but today “this is all that’s left.”
A constant splashing accompanies Mr. Bwambale’s explanation, as a nearby waterfall drains glacier meltwater at high speed. During the dry season, some 5 million people in the foothills below depend on this water. But it is in increasingly short supply.
Since the first measurements were taken in 1906, the Rwenzori Mountains – whose name means “the place of snow” in the local Lhukonzo language – have lost more than 90% of their ice. Within a decade, experts predict it will be gone entirely.
Why We Wrote This
Glaciers in the tropics are rare and melting quickly, reshaping the lives of the people who depend on them.
Rwenzori’s glaciers are far from the only ones under pressure.
The world’s glaciers are melting faster than ever before recorded. But the tropical glaciers that hug the equator in the Andes, Southeast Asia, and Africa are especially vulnerable. South America’s glaciers are shrinking 35% faster than the global average, and a recent study of Indonesia’s Eternity Glaciers predicted they will be gone in five years. Meanwhile, the United Nations says that “according to available data,” East Africa’s glaciers will “very likely be gone by 2050.”
For communities below these towering rivers of ice, their retreat is already reshaping life in ways both mundane and sublime.
The taps guiding water to their communities from creeks have started to run dry part of the year, turning water collection into an hourslong journey.
The Rwenzori’s glaciers are also believed to be the home of Kithasamba, a powerful deity responsible for the fertility of both the local Bakonzo people and their land.
According to legend, when the snow and ice disappears, their god disappears, too.
“Even if individual glaciers have little effect [on sea level rise], they are immensely important for local communities,” says glaciologist Lander Van Tricht.
Glaciers in the tropics
The glaciers on Mount Stanley form part of the Afro-alpine zone, an unusual ecosystem found at high altitudes in the African tropics. Here, giant groundsel plants rise out of the ground like 20-foot-tall candelabras. They grow alongside tubular giant lobelias whose drooping leaves provide shelter for the iridescent sunbirds that pollinate them. Plants and animals alike have adapted to the extremes of a climate often described as “summer every day and winter every night.”
The glaciers that flow from the Afro-alpine zone act as natural reservoirs for the communities below, storing water during wet, cold periods and releasing it in warm, dry ones. In those periods, people living downstream from the meltwater of Rwenzori’s glaciers depend on it to bathe, drink, and take care of their livestock.
Simon Vera
Yosia Kibaya is a farmer in his mid-60s whose family has lived in the Rwenzori foothills for centuries. He grew up in a wide valley beside the Nyamwamba River, about a 45-minute drive from the regional capital Kasese.
In the dry season, the Nyamwamba is fed by glacier meltwater, and in Mr. Kibaya’s memory, the river flowed year-round – wild and roaring. Now it is a meager trickle seeping between rocks in the dry season. “We didn’t even know those rocks were under the water back then,” he says.
Meanwhile, in the mountains surrounding his valley, “there was snow … every winter,” he recalls. But he hasn’t seen white caps for years.
Nyesi Masike, who lives on the banks of the same river, rattles off a list of the foods she once grew year-round: sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, yams. “Now I can only give my children plantains and beans for most of the year,” she says.
Ms. Masike has 12 children, which is not uncommon here. In the last 50 years, the local constituency’s population has grown almost eightfold, according to local officials, accentuating the impact of the dwindling water supply.
A landscape drying out
Most people in these foothills have never seen the glaciers their livelihoods depend on. Between their villages and Mount Stanley’s peaks lies a vast mountain range of deep valleys and steep rock faces. Moss paints the rocks yellow, red, and green. Tough grasses grow from the mud, and towering lobelia flowers sway in the wind.
For the untrained eye, this is an awe-inspiring landscape. But after 20 years guiding tourists in these mountains, Mr. Bwambale notices something else. Dry clumps of moss crumble at the touch. Trees are dying of thirst, leaving behind leafless trunks. “Every year I discover new creeks which have completely run dry,” he says walking through a waterless riverbed.
Simon Vera
The tourists he leads come here to climb the snow-covered peaks of the UNESCO world heritage-listed Rwenzori Mountains. But those mountains are now facing a wide variety of challenges, including droughts, deforestation, and landslides. All of these environmental problems are amplified by the growing population.
Meanwhile, residents and activists say they need help blunting the effects of the water loss. Some communities have begun planting trees to help the soil better hold moisture. Despite major international pledges in recent years to channel money to developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change, people here say they have been left on their own.
That leaves people like Edrine Bagambe, who is in her mid-20s, wondering what the future holds.
“When food runs out, and the river dries out, I want to leave,” she says. “But where can I go? I don’t have money to buy new land somewhere else.”
As Mr. Bwambale descends from Mount Stanley, he speaks wistfully about the place he slowly sees disappearing. “I no longer recognize the Rwenzori,” he says. “It hurts to know the next generation will never see the beauty I enjoyed for so long.”
The changing climate has far-reaching consequences for the Bakonzo. “If the water shortage keeps increasing, we will have to leave,” Mr. Bwambale concludes as he descends through the tropical forest in the foothills.
This article was published with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund for Exceptional Journalism.