Building "Ice Stupas" Helps Farmers Cope With Increasingly Unstable Glacier Flows In Ladakh (India)

“If you cannot stop it, adapt to it.” This is the mantra of a tiny village — situated on the slopes of breathtaking Himalayan desert mountains of Ladakh — to survive climate change in the extreme north of India.

With the glaciers they depend on for water melting too fast in summer and not enough in the spring planting season, the farmers of Phyang struggle to grow the crops they need. Help is at hand from engineer Sonam Wangchuk, who has raised US$125,000 through US-based crowdfunding website Indiegogo to create a series of “ice stupas” that promise to solve the water scarcity crisis. “Though we have little or no contribution in climate change, we are the receiving end of it,” Wangchuk told RTCC.

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Wangchuk realised the melting speed of artificial glaciers was linked to the surface area exposed to sun and wind. “The challenge was make ice last (that too in the lower altitude through) May and June, when the farmers needed it the most. Then, I thought the shape of the ice was key.” The conventional glaciers would be 2 metres deep and spread over a wide area. Wangchuk’s brainwave was to make them taller, reducing the surface area for the same volume of ice.

The challenge was to store water vertically without pumps and power. Wangchuk figured out how to use gravity to get the shape he wanted. “Look, every Ladkhi village is sloping down and the water starts at a higher point and flows down towards the Indus,” he explained.

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http://www.rtcc.org/2014/12/29/crowdfunded-ice-stupas-help-ladakh-adapt-to-climate-change/