Environmental issues in Venezuela include oil spills, illegal mining, deforestation, tourism, water shortages, pollution, poor waste management[1] and hazards such as earthquakes, floods, rockslides, mudslides, and periodic droughts.
Venezuela has 43 national parks and 36 natural monuments, and is the country in Latin America with the largest proportion of protected lands, with over 55 percent of its total territory.
Water quality deteriorated drastically starting from around 2000 with the beginning of oil activities offshore, which greatly increased the amount of both organic and inorganic pollutants.
[8] The Valencia Lake, formerly praised by Alexander von Humboldt for its beauty, is massively polluted due to the countless sewage systems pouring wastewater.
Historically nestled in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida at about 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) above sea level, the region was originally home to six glaciers, with the rest having vanished by 2011.
Despite projections that the Humboldt Glacier would persist for another decade, unexpected rapid melting accelerated by the recent El Niño-induced high temperatures led to its premature disappearance.
[14] This stark transformation, which climatologists describe as a significant indicator of modern climate change effects, places Venezuela as possibly the first country in contemporary times to lose all its glaciers.