BSR Our Insights
Tiffany Finley, Associate, Advisory Services
While climbing a glacial ice wall in a remote part of New Zealand eight years ago, I watched in horror as the supposedly immoveable wall shattered in front of me and dropped into a mile-long crevasse. I frantically threw my ice pick into the falling layers of ice and managed to launch myself onto a nearby ledge, falling 10 feet and breaking my leg but thankfully, not losing my life. National Geographic photographerJames Balog’s journey tracking the rapid deterioration of ice worldwide, documented in Chasing Ice, was a chilling reminder of what I witnessed that day—the fragility of one of nature’s seemingly indestructible assets: ice.
Beyond being visually mesmerizing, glaciers provide distinct and necessary ecosystem services. Storing 75 percent of the world’s freshwater and taking up 10 percent of the earth’s land area, glaciers play both a critical role for existing ecosystems and human development. While