Global climate change has hit hard every place on earth and humans have been failing all their efforts to either restrict it or lessen its effects. Though humans have always been active in finding alternatives to the possibilities that the earth offers. These alternatives have often their own repercussions, inviting yet other challenges to be dealt with. This is largely due to the trampling of boundaries set by nature in the guise of the contemporary yet temporary ways of life. As Vidal De La Blache has rightly said that “Nature has set boundaries and has provided possibilities for human settlement but the way a person responds to these conditions or adjusts it depends on the traditional way of life”.

Humans have been so active in exploring the possibilities that now after ages of evolution of the philosophies of human-environment relation, it seems, that better humans would have been passive and should have followed what nature dictated. This is an ideal notion as in reality economic nature of humans instigates never-ending greed. Therefore, the economic human is at the driving seat of these changes which have led to a situation where every alternative is bringing yet other challenges to humanity.

The perpetual rise in temperature across the globe is testimony to humans ever-increasing greed and its consequences are also felt more severely in places that have not achieved any level of development. These poor highly vulnerable places are paying the price for the developments in other metropolitan places. One such place is Ladakh.

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Ladakh is a high-altitude dry and cold region, with very limited scope for industrialisation and scarce potential for agriculture. Tourism is often considered as a significant means of livelihood. It has proven to uplift the socio-economic status of people in Ladakh. But the exponential increase in the tourist population is putting high pressure on the water sources of Ladakh. It is pertinent to mention here that Ladakh is a rain deficit region and is fully dependent on its receding glaciers to meet its increasing water demand.

The conspicuous footprints of global climate change are being felt across India, Ladakh is not an exception. Many villages in the Kargil district of the Union Territory of Ladakh are facing water shortages and a few among them are on the verge of a drought-like situation. Very recently the residents of Chanigund, Kargil staged a protest at the Srinagar-Leh highway, demanding the authorities help the farmers irrigate their lands. Similar issues have been reported from other places of Kargil, including Sanko, Sodh, Sukutiyal, and Lahmochan. Of these Sukutiyal and Lahmochan have been severely affected.

Drought like situation in the two villages of Drass has left Sukutiyal and Lahmochan at the mercy of God as the authorities failed to functionalise the irrigation canal on time. The villagers had no option but to leave the lands fallow. It should be noted that most of the villages are labours with a small amount of wage. Water is so scarce in these two villages that the villagers have not even cultivated the “Tsass” (Kitchen Garden). The villagers are highly dependent on their annual agricultural products. As this summer has been dry for the villagers, they are forced to buy everything from the market.

Water crises in such places of Kargil are due to the incessant decrease in snowfall during winters, untimely precipitation, shortened periods of snowfall, and increasing temperature in summers. Glaciers which are the only source of water, are retreating at an alarming rate, particularly in Ladakh. According to the “State Forest Report 2021” by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ladakh will record a maximum increase in temperature mainly due to forest cover loss. Ironically government has recently decided to cut 40,000 trees to widen the NH-301. It’s almost a month now since it was made public but still, not a single voice echoed in Kargil. Had this been in any other place in India, protests would have erupted like the famous “Chipko Movement”. Water crises, rising temperatures, and glacier retreat are all attributed to the global climate change caused by anthropogenic activities to a large extent. There is an urgent need to stop the retreating of glaciers. To me restoring nature would be significant in restricting the global climate changes.

It would be surprising to know that not all the glaciers are retreating. Glacier stability is found in the central Karakoram and contrary to its adjacent regions its glaciers are increasing in size.   Insights from the study on the Karakoram anomaly revealed varying reasons. According to A.P. Dimri (2021), “the geographical and elevation positioning of the Karakoram makes its environmental conditions conducive for glacier stability and/or growth which otherwise is not the case in the Ladakh region”. Some researchers also discovered that increased irrigation in the foothills and lowlands of China, Pakistan, and northern India, has increased the amount of moisture in the atmosphere of the region. The Green Revolution in the second half of the twentieth century resulted in considerable agricultural intensification along the whole stretch. This extra moisture subsequently falls as snow, particularly during the summer months in areas where glaciers have been discovered to be spreading. The cooling effect of the clouds shutting out the sun makes conditions more favorable for glacier growth and reduces melting in the region.

Though these findings cannot be considered conclusive yet. But its implications would not disappoint humanity either. Therefore, its high time to identify significant glaciers and replicate the central Karakoram environmental conditions conducive to glacier stability around the identified glaciers. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for Spatio-temporal mapping of forest cover in Ladakh, so that plantation drives can be initiated to restore the natural forest cover of Ladakh.

Civil society has a major role to play in restoring a healthy environment. Government institutes, NGOs, and religious institutions need to emphasize the importance of trees and initiate plantation drives. The silence of people over the cutting of 40,000 trees for National Highway-301 from Kargil to Zanskar, reveals that people are not conscious of the environment and do not understand the pivotal role trees play in sustaining the earth worth a habitable place. Thus, awareness camps and workshops at the village level should be conducted.

“Being less economic and more environmental would help humanity a sustainable healthy life”.