RESIDENTS WHO DEPEND ON GLACIERS FOR WATER ARE SEEING THEIR OPTIONS DWINDLE

For decades, scientists have been warning that glaciers in Africa, Asia, and here in Latin America – particularly Peru are melting. Last year, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report concluding that rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years.

Glaciers have been disappearing throughout Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru

The impact is felt hardest in Peru, which is home to 70 percent of the world's tropical glaciers.

In Huallaccocha, near Cuzco, residents depend on water from a nearby spring that fills with rainwater. When it doesn't rain, they have no other alternatives.

Zozima Escobedo looks up at the blue sky and shakes her head: Her family couldn't grow corn this season, she says, because water levels were too low.

Julio Cano, who lives in the Sacred Valley and grows pineapples and oranges, says he believes adaptation is possible. River water now is plentiful, and if levels go down, his community will find a way to conserve water, he says. "We aren't worried."

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