A journey through the endangered ice world of the Alps

The “Glacier Caravan” travels through the Alps, documenting the inexorable retreat of glaciers due to global warming and reporting on it in real time: it took place for the fifth time in 2024. Legambiente, one of Italy’s leading environmental associations, organises the campaign together with CIPRA Italy and the Italian Glacier Committee as its scientific partner. Thanks to its collaboration with CIPRA, the “Glacier Caravan” has become more international in the past two years – in addition to Italian glaciers, the campaign also visited locations in Switzerland and Austria in 2023, and in France and Slovenia in 2024.

The idea for this campaign came about in 2019 during a conversation with a friend over pizza, as we were talking about the funeral of the glacier that had disappeared in Iceland that summer. At that moment, I thought it would be a good idea to organise a kind of “glacier funeral” in the Alps. We also wanted to raise awareness in Italy with a simple but high-profile campaign. So, on 27 September 2019, we organised seven Alpine vigils as part of Fridays for Future, as well as one in the Apennines at the remains of the Calderone glacier. The campaign was a resounding success and, thanks to extensive coverage in national and local media, quickly spread throughout Italy. We wanted to show people first-hand what is happening to our mountains, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average and the consequences of the climate crisis are most clearly felt – and we succeeded. On this occasion, we met some of the leading researchers from the Italian Glacier Committee and, together, we considered how we could build a structured campaign inspired by scientific environmental protection. The idea was to launch an initiative that would travel across the entire Alpine arc every year, combining scientific findings with artistic and emotional experiences.

In the five years that we have been on the road, we have collected a wealth of data, summarising it in five reports. The entire campaign aims to develop greater awareness that will lead to concrete measures and more responsible behaviour, from adapting to the climate crisis to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by both individuals and institutions. This is the only way to save the glaciers. Geotextiles and other artificial interventions to preserve glacier ice are expensive, ineffective and harmful to the environment.

2025, the International Year for the Conservation of Glaciers, offers a good opportunity to forge Alpine-wide alliances and to translate our proposals for protection and adaptation to climate change into political strategies and measures. An important step in this direction is the “Glacier Manifesto” for a Europe-wide coordinated political approach to glaciers and related resources. The fundamental goal is effective governance of these resources, which are vital for mountain regions, but also for regions further away from the mountains. The manifesto is backed by CIPRA Italy, Legambiente, the Italian Glacier Committee and the Italian Alpine Club.