Pastoruri is one of 18 glacier-capped mountains in Peru suffering the effects of climate change, according Peru's National Environment Council, CONAM.

"If climatic conditions remain as they are, all the glaciers (in Peru) below 18,000 feet will disappear by around 2015," CONAM's President Patricia Iturregui told Reuters in an interview.

Pastoruri is a major tourist attraction near the city of Huaraz, 230 miles (419 km) northeast of Lima, and is the country's most popular mountain for skiing.

Peru has the most tropical glaciers in Latin America and has already lost 20 percent of the 1,615 miles (2,600 kms) of glaciers running through its central and southern Andes in the past 30 years, according to CONAM.

Climate change, caused by greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide, is considered one of the biggest longer term threats to mankind and could bring higher sea levels, devastating floods and droughts.

The world has been heating up in the past 50 years and the Earth is at its hottest in 10,000 years, scientists say.

"There are 18 glacial mountains in Peru and they are all experiencing melting," Iturregui said.

The mountains' elevation will not change much when the glaciers disappear because the ice on their tops is not very thick, according to Mario Aguirre, head of the glacier study unit at the government's National Institute for Natural Resources (INRENA).

MELTWATER THREAT

But there are bigger worries.

"There are already predictions that show that we will have too much water in the future, increasing the risk of disasters but also causing droughts (in other areas)," Iturregui said.

Peru is particularly vulnerable to climate change because some 70 percent its energy comes from hydroelectric plants, supplied mainly by meltwater from Andean glaciers.

The meltwater is also used for agriculture and industry and to supply Peru's desert coast, home to more than half the country's population.

But fast-melting Andean glaciers are also a hazard, causing catastrophes such as avalanches and floods. Thirty-five climbers died in Peru's Andes in the past five years after ice slabs and snow broke away from mountainsides due to melting caused by climate change, experts said.

In a major catastrophe in 1970, some 25,000 people were killed when a mudslide caused by melting ice submerged the town of Yungay in the central Andes.

More recently in 1998, a mud slide caused by melting ice at the Salcantay peak in southern Peru destroyed a hydroelectric plant near Peru's fabled Inca citadel, Machu Picchu.

TOURIST RISK

According to a study by Britain's East Anglia University, Peru is the country most at risk to global warming after Honduras and Bangladesh because of the proximity of its towns to glaciers and a lack of disaster prevention measures.

Many tourist towns have sprung up at the base of the stretch of peaks known as the Cordillera Blanca and the Huayhuash in Peru's central Andes in recent years to take advantage of the growing interest in mountaineering and skiing.

The mountaineering trend is also worsening the effects of global warming on the glaciers as thousands of climbers flock to the peaks, while locals collect snow from mountain slopes for ice, further eroding them, the government says.

"The melting (of the Pastoruri glacier) has been accelerated by man's presence, by littering, by hikers and by snow collection for ice," Aguirre of INRENA said.

Peru's cash-strapped government admits it does not have the funds to plan a major strategy against catastrophes or improve its water management overnight.

In the short term, the government is also unlikely to warn climbers away from Peru or move tourist towns for fear of damaging its fast-growing tourism industry, an important earner of foreign exchange.

But local authorities are evaluating whether to restrict visitor numbers to Pastoruri and CONAM says it is measuring water levels in glacial meltwater lakes in the Andes to be able to sound the alarm early if lakes threaten to spill over and cause mudslides.