Select a language
This article is reserved for our subscribers
The melting of Europe’s glaciers and permafrost is now an established fact. It is already taking a major toll on local communities, whether through depopulation or because of its effects on tourism. We report from Cervinia and Pietracamela (Italy), Chamonix (France), Zermatt (Switzerland) and the Zugspitze (Germany) on the various approaches to tackling the problem.
Caused by rising temperatures due to global warming, the melting of European glaciers is already having serious impacts. Faced with a phenomenon that is now irreversible, the responses are diverse.
To tell the story, we went to a few locations that illustrate different ways of coping with the current and coming upheavals: Pietracamela, in Italy’s Abruzzo region; Zermatt and Cervinia, at the foot of the Matterhorn, straddling Switzerland and Italy; Chamonix, a French resort next to the Mont Blanc; and the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany.
In Abruzzo, a glacier melts and a community evaporates
In the previous part of our report, we looked at how a community in central-southern Italy, Pietracamela, is facing up to the melting of "its" glacier.
Pietracamela is a village in the Abruzzo region, at the foot of the last glacial system in Italy's Apennines. This community, located in a protected area in Teramo province, is undergoing such a population crisis that its very survival is threatened. From 1,389 inhabitants in 1951, it is now down to 300, but that is only in theory: in fact, fewer than 30 residents live continuously in Pietracamela.
On the slopes of the Gran Sasso, the highest mountain in the Apennines, the Calderone has ceased to be a glacier. In parallel, the human community is disappearing at practically the same rate.
Is tourism the answer? The examples of Cervinia and Zermatt
A contrasting case is that of Zermatt, Switzerland. The tourist resort in the shadow of the Matterhorn continues to expand. It never stopped investing in infrastructure, which has brought new influxes of people, especially wealthy foreigners. This is reflected in a key indicator: the value of real estate.
While in Pietracamela the value of houses is at an all-time low, in Zermatt it has skyrocketed. Zermatt is the second most expensive municipality in Switzerland after Zurich, and about 50 percent more expensive than the well-known Davos. The cost of an apartment now starts at CHF 14,000 (about € 14,600) per square metre, rising to over CHF 25,000.
Over in Italy, Cervinia is only ten kilometres from Zermatt. It is even closer to the Teodulo glacier, whose melting is forcing Switzerland and Italy to redraw their border in the Testa Grigia/Plateau Rosa region. Cervinia is also halfway between Zermatt and Pietracamela in terms of social and economic dynamics: it has a real-estate market that is growing modestly after years of difficulties exacerbated by the pandemic.
"The property market has picked up. New properties cost €9,000 per square metre, with peaks at €12,000. Second-hand property is around five to six thousand euro per square metre. Prices have risen since the pandemic. There is the expectation and hope that Cervinia will develop in the coming years", observes Davide Brunori, head of the local Engel&Völkers real estate office.
This context has an impact on construction activity: at the time of our visit, there were three cranes in Cervinia, busy with the renovation of as many buildings. Meanwhile at least 16 were in operation in the neighbouring Swiss municipality, most of them used for new construction. "That is not an unusual number [16 cranes]. Major development in the city took place in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then there has been strong demand for houses and flats," says Romy Biner, mayor of Zermatt.
The Swiss town is also investing in infrastructure to fortify itself against climate change: "We are working to improve protection against avalanches and floods, and to increase the supply of electricity with new hydroelectric plants. To cover the need for drinking water, we are building an additional reservoir", Biner told us.
Both these communities – Cervinia in Italy and Zermatt in Switzerland – report excellent tourist numbers. "For our bar, last year's revenues were the best in the last 12 years," said Berry Pfennings, a waiter at Edward's Bar in Zermatt, on the first weekend of the summer season in mid-June. There were similar comments from other hoteliers and tour operators in Cervinia. But while Cervinia remains mostly a ski resort, Zermatt has also concentrated on summer tourism, whose turnover has now caught up with the winter kind.
Indeed, Zermatt is one of the few European resorts where it is possible to ski in summer. Many tourists prefer hiking, and Asian visitors are often content to spend a few days in a mountain village. Local hotels report that 49.7 percent of tourists now arrive in summer, the rest coming in winter.
Zermatt is also preparing for the eventuality that summer skiing becomes impossible due to the disappearance of the glaciers. It is a very plausible scenario.
"We currently have 1,400 glaciers in Switzerland, many of them small. Small glaciers are the first to disappear. In the last 30-40 years alone, we have lost about 1,000 glaciers. Many did not even have a name. But now we are losing glaciers that are considered important," explains Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) at ETH Zurich.
Chamonix, the choice to go local
The strategy of spreading tourism throughout the year is common to many European tourist resorts, including Pietracamela. However, not all of them have the same organisational capacity, the same resources and the same vision for the future. While many people working in Zermatt cannot afford housing, there are other cases where social sustainability has been put before economics. One example is from France.
Chamonix, which saw the birth of mountaineering in the 18th century and organised the first Winter Olympics in 1924, attracts 350,000 visitors a year, roughly as many as Zermatt. But, given the melting of the nearby glaciers and the associated risks, the French resort is setting itself new priorities.
"If we invest in tourism, it is above all to improve the well-being of our residents," explains Nicolas Durochat, director of the town's tourist office. He adds that over the past nine years, Chamonix has "stopped targeting customers from faraway destinations in favour of a more local tourism". For this reason, the municipality has decided to limit property development.
Océane Vibert, director of the association La Chamoniarde, emphasises the need to train hikers and climbers for the local environment. The number of tourists who are unfamiliar with mountains, and who are only looking for "Instagrammable" landscapes to photograph, is growing.
In Germany, companies try to protect their business interests
At the end of May, the summer season on the Zugspitze is already in full swing. Chanel handbags crowd the cable car to the summit. A visitor lovingly tells his dachshund dog that it is 2,962 metres above sea level. Here, just below Germany's highest mountain, lies one of the country's last four glaciers, the Nördlicher Schneeferner.
"In ten or fifteen years it will probably have disappeared," says Laura Schmidt, a geographer and spokesperson for the Schneefernerhaus environmental research station. In the mid-19th century, the entire Zugspitzplatt, the plateau near the mountain, was still covered in snow. Today the snow has almost completely disappeared.
Harald Kunstmann, deputy director of the Campus Alpin institute of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, works a few kilometres from the Zugspitze.
His simulations show that summers will become drier, while winter precipitation will be greater and will come in the form of rain instead of snow, which increases the risk of flooding.
The German case also tells us that glacial melting will have economic repercussions which go beyond the local communities.
"The proportion of glacial water in the Rhine is actually very low," explains Jörg Belz from the Federal Institute of Hydrology in Koblenz. At Cologne, it is usually around one percent. But the proportion changes when the water level is low, during summer heat waves.
In August 2018 it reached 15 percent. The banks of the Rhine near Cologne resembled a rocky desert. The water had receded, and barges had to reduce their load. Without the contribution made by glaciers, the water level near Cologne would have dropped by about 30 centimetres, causing even greater economic damage. Eighty percent of Germany's river-freight traffic runs along the Rhine.
According to a study by the Federal Institute of Hydrology and other authorities, extreme events like the one in 2018 used to occur every 20-60 years, but could happen every 5-15 years by the end of the century.
Conclusions
In Switzerland alone, 1,000 of the 2,400 glaciers that existed 50 years ago have already been lost. Given the current rate of temperature rise, skiing holidays could become a memory of past generations of Europeans. Some ski resorts will survive by adapting to the new conditions. Others will disappear.
Still uncertain, though likely important, is the impact on other economic activities that depend indirectly on glaciers, such as river navigation. The real challenge will be to adapt to changes that happen at a pace different to politics.
This article was written with the support of Journalismfund.eu
Do you like our work?
Help multilingual European journalism to thrive, without ads or paywalls. Your one-off or regular support will keep our newsroom independent. Thank you!
