Research published last year shows that the massive Himalayan glaciers have shrunk 10 times faster in the past four decades than in the previous seven centuries. It threatens agriculture and the water supply of millions of people across South Asia. Fred by Sam Lazaro reports on a project to mitigate the environmental impact of communities in the Himalayas.
Research published last year in the journal “Scientific Reports” shows that the massive glaciers of the Himalayas have shrunk 10 times faster in the past four decades than in the previous seven centuries. This threatens agriculture and the water supply of millions of people in South Asia.
Sam Lazaro’s Fred reports on a project to lessen the environmental impact, at least for some high communities in the Himalayas.
It is part of Fred’s Agents For Change series and is produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
It’s time for spring sowing in India’s Ladakh region, a tough rocky terrain plowed by farmers and the beasts they cheer on with song, a cross species between oxen and yaks.
This group of families working the land are part of a declining rural population along this 300-mile stretch of the Tibetan Plateau at about 13,000 feet above sea level. All around them are fields terraces that were once cultivated, their neighbors having migrated in recent years to the cities in search of work, increasingly pushed by unpredictable weather conditions.
Water is an ever-present concern, says Jigmat Chozeng, 42.
Jigmat Chozeng, Farmer (via translator):
The water comes from this glacier. It must be shared between several people. It didn’t reach us here.
This mountainous region is one of the driest places on earth. Historically, precipitation averages only three inches per year. People here have depended on water that runs off mountain glaciers.
But, in recent decades, these glaciers have shrunk and weather patterns have become erratic. Many scientists predict that these glaciers could completely disappear by the end of this century.
Sonam Wangchuk, educator/ecologist:
We are the first victims at the border.
Sonam Wangchuk, a local educator and environmentalist, came up with a solution called ice stupas that provide water in early spring.
Some would call these artificial baby glaciers.
In May, he took me to see one of these structures named for their resemblance to the Buddhist monuments that dot the landscape. It’s not so much a water shortage, he says. It’s about controlling when it flows.
There aren’t enough when you need them. There are too many when you don’t. So it’s a matter of optimization.
About nine years ago, Wangchuk and his students came up with the idea of storing water by freezing it during the cold months. Their first challenge, to keep it frozen and slow the rate at which it would normally melt, a problem solved by the conical shape of the stupa built on a base of brush and branches to help freeze water faster.
These shapes have a small area. This means that the sun does not have enough surface area to melt it. We are somehow tricking the sun.
So, suppose there is a mountain range like the one we are in.
Wangchuk is an engineer by training, but says it’s not rocket science, no pumps, no electricity, just basic physics and geometry.
So somewhere up here you put a pipe in and then bring it downstream to where you need it. When the water enters this pipe, it goes down and wants to go up and up and up to this level. Then it splashes the water in the air.
And, in this way, it falls and freezes.
He says stupas can reach heights of up to 160 feet and store many millions of gallons of water.
From April and May, it begins to melt, swelling streams, irrigating farms and helping green the dry landscape.
Jigmat Chozeng (via translator):
After the ice stupa was placed here three years ago, everyone receives the same water. It’s good for crops.
Do you live happily ever after in this area in terms of disappearing glaciers?
No way. We consider these adjustments very humble and insignificant compared to what we will face.
They are a short-term solution, he says. And the lack of a reliable water supply is not the only problem caused by climate change. Glacial water is replaced by rain falling on lands that cannot absorb it fast enough with disastrous consequences.
2006, there was a big flash flood. And I asked the laid back old man, when was the last time you saw such a devastating flash flood? He said, I don’t remember, not when I was alive.
And you know what? The next was in 2010, and with much fiercer devastation. The next was 2012, 2015, 2017.
The 2010 waterspout alone brought 14 inches in two hours, killing more than 200 people and causing widespread damage.
We even have to think about glaciers years later. And to prepare for that, we must sow seeds today, and that is why we are gathered here today.
Wangchuk helped lead an effort to plant native trees to help contain flooding.
The implications of climate change patterns have spread far beyond these mountains, which are the source of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra river systems that support the livelihoods of some 129 million farmers in a region of nearly one billion people. The future will be marked by uncertainty, says water expert Himanshu Thakkar.
Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People: There are times when there is sudden heavy rain or snowfall, and then there are other times when there are much drier periods , longer periods.
We don’t know if the increase in precipitation will offset the melting of the glaciers, to what extent it will. So it really depends. So these are big question marks. How much will the water flow decrease?
Anxiety over the flow of water even fueled some resistance to ice stupas.
Phey village chief Tsering Mutup has called on authorities to stop a greening project that would have been fed by a stupa, complaining that the diversion of water would come at the expense of his community, which is below in the mountain.
Tsering Mutup, village chief of Phey (via translator):
These trees would get big on taking on water in June and July, and our businesses would be dry. It would have been very difficult for the villages below.
So whenever there is a diversion, there is resistance. But the only problem is that, in this case, the diversion is done in winter, when nobody uses the water.
But it will take some time for people to get used to the idea that it’s just saving it for the summer, so they can have more.
And it’s not just the people here who need to embrace new ideas, he adds.
Perhaps the biggest solution lies in the hands of the people who watch this show, whose lifestyle in big cities like New York or New Delhi is causing climate change.
Our call should become an SOS call for the wider world. It is because of their activities that we suffer, through no fault of our own.
He invokes a plea once used by Mahatma Gandhi. Live simply, says Wangchuk, so that we can simply live.
For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Fred from Sam Lazaro in Ladakh, India.
And you heard it, an SOS call to all of us here.
Fred’s reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
