Swiss people participate in “funeral march” commemorating Pizol glacier

MELS: People of Switzerland participated in a “funeral march” on Sunday, September 22, to mark the disappearance of another Alpine glacier. The loss of the glacier can be attributed to the growing global alarm raised by climate change.

The Pizol “has lost so much substance that from a scientific perspective it is no longer a glacier,” Alessandra Degiacomi, of the Swiss Association for Climate Protection, told AFP.

Around 100 people dressed in black participated in the two hour “funeral march” alongside the Pizol mountain situated at an altitude of around 2,700 metres (8,850 feet) near the Liechtenstein and Austrian borders.

The move comes after Iceland made global headlines last month with a large ceremony and the laying of a bronze plaque to commemorate Okjokull, the island’s first glacier lost to climate change.

“Since 1850, we estimate that more than 500 Swiss glaciers have completely disappeared, including 50 that were named,” Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the ETH Technical University in Zurich, told AFP.

Pizol may not be the first glacier to vanish in Switzerland, but “you could say it is the first to disappear that has been very thoroughly studied,” said Huss, who participated in the ceremony.

Pizol has lost 80-90 per cent of its volume just since 2006, leaving behind a mere 26,000 square metres (280,000 square feet) of ice, or “less than four football fields,” Huss said.

With this in mind, the Swiss Association for Climate Protection recently presented the 100,000 signatures needed to launch a popular initiative, to be put to a referendum, demanding that Switzerland reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

The date for the vote has yet to be set, but the Swiss government in August said that it supported the objective.