Glacier Science and Technology in the Central Andes: The Quest to Control Natural Disasters and Climate Change, 1941-2008

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The project focuses on the Peruvian Andes, where nearly 30,000 people have died since 1941 from glacier disasters caused by climate change. Hundreds of scientists and engineers in several state agencies have been working since the 1940s to closely monitor over 600 glaciers and to drain and dam dozens of dangerous Andean glacial lakes. The proposed research will study the historical relationships among science, engineering, technology, and society in this context of global climate change and persistent environmental hazards. Proposed research focuses on three areas: (1) the capacity for the increasingly-technical scientific images used in glaciology since the 1940s to reduce local vulnerability to natural disasters; (2) the conflicts and negotiations involved in the historical maintenance of indigenous science and disaster mitigation strategies; and (3) a comparative and collaborative historical study of Peruvian and Swiss glacier control tactics. The project merges the History of Science, Engineering, and Technology with Environmental History by analyzing how socio-cultural contexts affected the historical development of glacier sciences and disaster engineering and technologies; how disaster prevention science, engineering projects, and technologies affected different social groups; and how experts historically mediated both state-society and human-nature interactions. By analyzing distinct local, scientific, and state agendas in the post-colonial Peruvian Andes, the research tests whether projects that appeared to be failures for experts could simultaneously be victories for locals. The project's working hypothesis is that the increased application of Western science, engineering, and technology by experts in the Andes only partially reduced local's vulnerability to glacier hazards. Part of the explanation for this "failure" lies in the political and socio-cultural contexts in which people engage experts and their technologies. For many Andean residents, increased vulnerability to glacier disasters was preferable to expanded state control over their communities and lives.This study will generate broader understandings of the growing influence of scientists and engineers in modern societies, particularly expert-local interactions through time and competing attempts to represent and manage the natural world. Most importantly, it promises to give historical depth to our understanding of human responses to climate change and natural disasters, and these are subjects of enormous contemporary interest. These broader impacts will be achieved through the wide dissemination of research findings in the US, Peru, and Europe.