Completed Climate, Earth & Environment Engineering

Glacier retreat, water quality and climate justice: from citizen science to citizen-led science in Chile

Funder NERC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of Exeter Source-published name: University of Exeter
Funding £85K
Period Jun 2025 — Jun 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Glacier retreat in the Chilean Andes is poisoning water supplies with heavy metals and sediment, and local communities have no way to track it themselves. The problem is that glacier-fed catchments face competing demands from mining, agriculture, and domestic use, yet the people who depend on that water have no role in monitoring it. Current glaciological research largely ignores the social dynamics that determine who gets clean water and who does not. This project fills that gap by treating communities as co-researchers, not just data sources. If successful, the project will produce participatory mapping workshops, a co-developed socio-environmental analysis involving communities, scientists, and policy specialists, and an interactive digital landscape platform. The initial design of a grassroots monitoring system will follow. The practical impact is that communities gain the tools to document water quality changes themselves, creating evidence that can influence mining permits, agricultural water allocations, and infrastructure planning. This shifts who holds the data—and therefore who holds power—in decisions about shrinking water resources.

View original technical description
The aim of the project is to develop sustainable citizen-led science and international collaborations to address the pressing issue of declining water availability, access, and useability in glacierized catchments in the Chilean Andes. Glacier retreat threatens the quantity and quality of water resources for human populations and ecosystems in glacierised catchments worldwide (Huss and Hock, 2018; Milner et al. 2017). To understand the influence of glacier retreat on the availability and quality of water resources, it is essential to study not only changes in glacial water storage and run-off, but also how complex social interactions affect access to, and use of, glacier-fed water supplies. For example, there are a variety of demands on the water supply in glacierised catchments, such as from water-intensive high-mountain mining activities, and intensive agriculture. A community-led approach is required to address these challenges - something that currently is lacking in glaciological research (Carey et al., 2017; Carey et al., 2022, Drenkhan et al., 2022). Our project will provide this necessary research by creating participatory mapping workshops, socio-environmental analysis coproduced by diverse stakeholders (e.g., communities, scientists, and policy specialists) and an interactive digital landscape platform, all of which will be accompanied by the initial design of a grassroot monitoring system.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Ernesto Schwartz-Marin (Co-Investigator)Steven Palmer (Principal Investigator)

Related Research

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Integrated upstream and downstream thinking to mitigate water security challenges from Peruvian glacier retreat
WateR security And climate cHange adaptation in PerUvian glacier-fed river basins (RAHU)
GlacierMap: mapping glacier change in the Peruvian Andes
Deplete and Retreat: The Future of Andean Water Towers
Peruvian Glacier Retreat and its Impact on Water Security (Peru GROWS)

Original classification

Research and Innovation

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