Ice Stupas – A Third-Wave Revolution in Glaciercraft

Ice Stupas – A Third-Wave Revolution in Glaciercraft

Building Climate Resilience and Reclaiming Alpine Habitats with Sustainable Grassroots Innovation in Ladakh

By Pitamber Kaushik

An inquisitive young boy in a remote northern Himalayan village tucked away in the frigid desert of Ladakh witnessed water gushing out of a partially frozen pipe, accumulating in a small crater on the ground, and freezing, just like a glacier, on a chilly winter morning. A couple decades later, the boy, now a government civil engineer, would suggest using the same to solve his homeland’s water crisis, much to their disbelief, inviting ridicule and derision, only to successfully realise multiple such projects and go on to win the Padma Shri.

Just two years prior to this, when Norphel had already erected over a dozen glaciers, a fellow zealous Ladakhi engineer of the next generation, armed with a diploma in Earthen Architecture from Craterre, France, created a 6-foot-tall prototype structure of ice that would prove to be the pioneer of the second revolution in glacial harvesting in the region.

The Desert in the Skies

Ladakh is India’s largest union territory with a total area of about 117,000 sq. km, forming the greater part of what was formerly the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is the northernmost region of India. Ladakh is one of the highest regions in the world. The landscape majorly comprises high plains and deep valleys.

The eastern side is dominated by high planes which gradually diminish westwards. Rupshu, a region of sizable brackish-water lakes with a near-constant elevation of roughly 4,100 metres, is located in southeast Ladakh. To the northwest of Rupshu, is the Zanskar Range, which is inaccessible and where people and cattle spend most of the year indoors due to the cold. The Zanskar River drains Zanskar, and as it flows north, it merges with the Indus River beneath Leh.

Ladakh has a chilly and dry climate. The amount of precipitation is about 3 inches on average per year, with regular and occasionally heavy falls of dry, powdery snow. Ladakh is a high-altitude cold desert as it lies in the rain shadow area of the Himalayas which serve as a barrier to monsoon. Recent flash flooding in the region is a result of glacial retreat and erratic rainfall patterns, both of which have been attributed to climate change.

The Sun shines brightly through the rarefied atmosphere, stinging particularly sharply during the summer days. The only areas harbouring vegetation are valleys and sheltered spaces, where tamarisk shrubs, a type of legume called furze or gorse, and other stunted plants persevere and provide much-needed fuel.

Delimited by two of the world’s loftiest and most formidable mountain ranges, the Karakoram in the north and the Great Himalayas in the south, Ladakh is spanned by two other parallel mountain chains — the Ladakh Range and the Zanskar Range. Ladakh is traversed by the Indus River. The valley where the region’s heartland is located, lies between 3000 and 3,500 metres above sea level, while some of the nearby peaks are above 7,000 metres high. The Ladakh valley stretches 500 kilometres and is inhabited by roughly 300,000 people.

Since the entire region is still isolated from the rest of the nation by road, the territories on the north edge of the Himalayas—Dras, the Suru valley, and Zanskar—experience severe snowfall and are disconnected from the bulk of the region for several months each year. Despite being brief, summers are lengthy enough to allow for agricultural growth.

The summertime is dry and comfortable. Temperature during the Summer ranges from just over zero to 30 °C in summer and winter temperatures can dip as low as −35 °C, with average night-time temperature hovering around -20 °C. The temperature seldom exceeds 25 °C in the shade, even in the summer months. The minimum dips under zero for over half of the year while the average goes sub-zero from December to March.

From a geological point of view, this area is rather new, having been created only a few million years ago. Its fundamental features, which were raised by tectonic activity, have been altered over hundreds of thousands of years by the process of erosion brought on by the forces of wind, ice, and water, sculpting it into the shape that we see today.

Water Availability in Ladakh

Today, Ladakh is a high-altitude desert protected from rain-bearing clouds by the frontier-wall of the Great Himalaya. The remnants of the extensive lake system that once sprawled over Ladakh can still be seen on its south-east plateaus of Rupshu and Chushul, in the drainage basins of its rivers, or the Tso-moriri, Tso-kar, and Pangong-tso lakes. But winter snowfall is still the primary source of water, and for many habitations, the exclusive one.

On the northern sides of the Himalaya, Dras, Zanskar, and the Suru Valley receive a lot of snow in the winter. This feeds the glaciers, whose meltwater is then brought down by streams to irrigate the farms in the summer. The snow accumulated on the summits is essentially the sole supply of water for the remainder of the area. As the time of cropping draws close, the people of the region pray not for rain, but for the Sun to thaw the glacial ice and liberate their irrigation water.

A network of channels that carries water from the alpine snow and ice irrigates the area. Barley and wheat are the main crops. Prior to government subsidies, rice was considered somewhat of a luxury in the region but is now an affordable staple in the diet.

Agriculture in a Cold Desert

Farmers in valley communities in central Ladakh, farther to the north, cultivate using manuring and irrigation at heights ranging from 2,750 to 4,550 metres. In the upland valleys, which are too high for farming, shepherds herd sheep. Situated some 250 km to the east of Jammu & Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, Leh is the most well-connected town in Ladakh, serving as a vital commercial and transport hub for the entire region. A small percentage of Ladakhis work as merchants, pedlars, and caravan traders carrying out commerce in textiles, carpets, dyes, handicrafts, and various other artisanal goods.

Throughout Ladakh, naked barley has been the original staple crop. Growing seasons change significantly with altitude but crop cultivation in most of the region is a once-a-year phenomenon. The crop-fields at Korzok village, situated at the shores of the Tso-moriri lake, sitting at an altitude of 4,600 m, are generally regarded as the highest fields in the world, and represent the practical limit of cultivation.

Climate change has started to waver the cropping window for various regions. Furthermore, a general warming has seemed to expand the time window and altitude-scope of different crops. Certain crops can now be grown at slightly higher altitudes. However, this isn’t exactly a favourable alteration, given how climate change has affected multiple phenomena from precipitation to extreme weather events, which together have led to more losses than gains.

The fact that glacial retreat has enabled certain fringe areas to become exposed and colder areas to become more tolerable to certain crops isn’t a prospect that can be exploited given how the root cause, climate change, has also altered precipitation patterns and made the seasons cycles erratic, precarious, and unpredictable in general.

Most inhabitants suffer from acute shortage of water in the early summer months of April and May, following which the glaciers melt with the building heat, leading to a surplus of water.

Most farming activities run through the Summer, from March to mid-September. Streams running through the winter months thus go untapped. There is competition among the residents for the limited water during early Summer. As of late, the rainfall patterns have deviated from normalcy and become increasingly erratic. This has been attributed to anthropogenic climate and habitat change. Global warming is leading to hotter and staggered summers, affecting established rhythms of traditional farming practices.

Traditional Glacier Grafting

A glacier is a massive, persistent body of dense ice that is in constant motion under its own weight. Glaciers can be thought of as extremely slow-moving rivers of ice. A glacier is formed when snow accumulates such that the rate of snow accumulation exceeds the rate of its removal, typically over the course of several years, often centuries.

A glacier flows and deforms under the influences of stresses caused by its own weight. The glacier, in turn, changes the form of the substrate it moves over or brushes against. It drags along debris of rocks, pebbles, gravel, and dirt with it as it advances in its course. This debris influences the erosion it causes in its track, leaving various patterns in its wake. As it inches on, over the course of centuries it shapes the landscape it is in contact with, carving erosive features such as cirques, moraines, and fjords.

Artificial glaciers have been used by the people of Gilgit-Baltistan, a frontier region in northern Pakistan, to deal with the lack of fresh water during the dry season, for centuries. Both residential and agricultural needs are covered by the glacier melt. The Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush, three of the tallest mountain ranges in the world, intersect in this area. It is believed that the technique, which originated in the Karakoram region, travelled to Tibet and Kashmir and there was altered to fit local customs and conditions. The exact technique used to build glaciers have taken on distinct forms in every region, from the Pamir in Pakistan to Ladakh in India.

People in these areas personify and revere glaciers. Female glaciers are defined as being more fluid, light-colored, and mobile, easily releasing water, while male glaciers are described as being harder, darker in colour, and more sedate.

As is typical, a few months before winter, the locals collect little bits of the two types of glaciers, or “cultures,” and combine them. They place the samples in the appropriate or necessary location (ideally a place shaded from insolation) and provide thermal insulation by encasing them in a container made of materials like husk, sand, gravel, charcoal, and twigs. Then they are left undisturbed in their nuptial privacy “to reproduce and proliferate.”

This initial culture acts as the fundamental core and will accumulate ice, giving rise to a stable, resilient foundation upon which to build.

The basal, nuclear ice mass gains a new layer with each additional snowfall. Snow develops into hard, solid ice when it is compressed by pressure from the weight of the layers above it. The glacier survives because it accumulates over subsequent winters and receives more snowfall than it melts. To create long-lasting ice, snowfall and consistently low temperatures are necessary. The “glacier-let” that has been grafted on offers a sturdy shape for the ice to collect and deposit around, keeping it steadfast throughout the seasons. The glaciers continue to grow in size while the people redeem the snow-melt for irrigation.

Although this traditional method, known as glacier-grafting, affords sizable glaciers, and helps alleviate the water shortfall, it is not very dependable and suffers the downside of being a solution confined mostly to high-altitudes and difficult to systematise.

More than a Pipe-Dream – Norphel’s Pioneering Artificial Glaciers

Various kinds of glaciers are grown in Ladakh. In 1986, Chewang Norphel, a Civil Engineer with the Jammu Kashmir Rural Development Department took inspiration from the sight of water freezing upon being slowed down and set out to devise an ingenious solution to the seasonal water shortage in his homeland.

He designed a system of pipes with holes that divert water from high-altitude streams in winters to shaded regions of the hillside spouting them through the holes and gradually reducing the volume of the flow as it froze. The water from alpine streams is diverted using vertical and horizontal pipes, released through orifices, and channelled through a series of step-embankments that gradually check its velocity, guiding it into a shallow (a few inches-deep) depression, maximising its exposure to the subzero-cold winter air and allowing it to rapidly freeze.

This process takes place over and over again resulting in accumulation of sheets of ice piled and consolidated into a mass which gradually melts with the onset of summer and is tapped into by settlements in its proximity. He kept implementing and upgrading the practice in different locations and over the course of three decades, fine-tuned the water-flow and strategic location selection in order to optimise freezing and insulation to maximise glacial mass and resilience.

Norphel continued to lead and guide teams of volunteers in building glaciers in various villages struggling with water scarcity and helping disseminate knowhow throughout Ladakh and beyond. Keen on developing strategic capabilities and consolidating settlements at the Indo-China border, the Indian Army, among others, has funded and supported Norphel’s mission.

Norphel’s method has been widely implemented and replicated. It has enabled glacial growth at relatively lower altitudes (up to 1200 metres downhill) where natural glaciers don’t occur.

The artificial constructs grown at lower altitudes serve as a more readily-accessible source of irrigation and water supply, unlike the distant, often inhospitable locations of the natural glaciers. Moreover, since lower altitudes, in general, see warmer temperatures, these glaciers begin melting and thus start supplying water earlier than naturally-occurring glaciers. Thus, farmers can get water right from the close of the usual sowing period which occurs around May and don’t have to wait for the irrigation to begin at peak summer when the higher-altitude snow starts to melt, i.e., around the time of June or early July.

By allowing irrigation a couple months of head-start and providing more reliability, Norphel has facilitated the plantation of two crops in certain regions. Many farmers are able to squeeze in a secondary crop or even repeat the primary crop in one summer.

The ironic coexistence of droughts and floods poses the greatest threat to Ladakh’s magnificent but vulnerable ecosystem and its indigenous population. In 2010, the then 74-year-old Norphel expressed concerns in an interview that the glaciers were retreating more swiftly than before, the area was receiving less precipitation and moisture as compared to the times of his youth, and the place was steadily warming up.

“When I was small, if there was a foot of snow it would last for six months. Now it will melt in a week,” said Norphel. “That is the result of climate change.”

A survey by the Ladakh-based rural development organisation Geres India supported the engineer’s intuition. Between 1973 and 2008, it discovered a startling upward trend in average temperatures of 1 °C in winter temperatures and a staggering 5 °C in summer temperatures. In the same period, precipitation had shown a sharp decline – being almost halved over the decades, according to a statement made by the spokesperson of Geres to Reuters. While advocating for efforts to counter climate change, Norphel advises local communities to take advantage of the warming-induced increased geographical and seasonal range for various crop varieties.

Towers of Progress – Sonam Wangchuk’s Ice Stupas

Glacier Grafting was an ancestral practice which was improved by Norphel. In turn Norphel’s innovation inspired another young Ladakhi engineer, Sonam Wangchuk, to innovate further and bring glaciers even closer to his people. Wangchuk enhanced Norphel’s method by proposing a vertical conical growth design to maximise structural integrity by minimising the surface area exposed to insolation and refining the water-channelling network to optimise growth and retention. Ice-stupas enable storage of the winter water surplus in proximity to the villages to be utilised in the dry early summer months.

Glacial meltwater from high-altitude natural or artificial glaciers is conveyed downhill towards the village and then channelled upwards through a vertical pipe placed strategically in a sun-shaded area, ultimately emanating from a sprinkler-head being released into the air, typically at night-time. Solar pumps can be added to boost the process, but it is designed to work passively via gravity alone. As water exits the apertures and comes in contact with the cold winter air and freezes.

Over days, the ice begins to form around the base of the pipe and subsequently as this column rises, a conical structure starts to take shape. More piping can be added to raise the tower higher. When the weather warms around April, the ice begins to thaw and fill irrigation channels which precisely convey the melt to crop-fields through a drip-irrigation network.

Ice stupas are typically 30-50 metres tall and need very little active effort or investment beyond the initial pipe-laying. The vertical accumulation reduces the area it exposes to solar irradiation per unit volume of water stored compared to the usual horizontal accumulation, rendering the stupa a steadfast and fairly consistent source of water. Being gravity driven, the water flow required to build them consumes no energy.

Ice stupas are meant to feed the fields during spring and early summer till the natural glacial melt ensues. Building Ice Stupas was taken by Wangchuk’s organisation, the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) who subsequently partnered with the Government of India. Ice stupas have significantly enhanced food, water, and economic security in the region.

By helping build climate resilience, they have facilitated the rehabilitation of a number of villages facing risk of abandonment.

The creation of these structures has also helped curb disputes and conflicts within and between communities and reduced seasonal and permanent migration from water-scarce areas. Further, ice stupas have been both a direct as well as a direct driver of tourism, boosting economic growth and development. Ice stupa competitions and eco-tourism festivals such as the ‘Ladakh Ice Climbing Festival’ and the ‘Ice Stupa Tree Plantation Festival’ have been major tourist attractions in the past years.

This has helped boost economic activity in the region as a brisk growth in tourism sparks secondary and tertiary derivative economic activities. Tree Plantation drives, particularly of rich-timber species like willow and poplar, are underway to demonstrate the irrigation potential of the stupas, serve as an economic resource, and green the landscape to yield synergistic habitat reform benefits.

Working on ice-stupas serves as an avenue for collaborative work and provides an opportunity for local employment in itself when facilitated by the government, in addition to generating a compounding livelihood benefit chain through agriculture, tourism, artisanship, and community services. In a span of a few decades, extensive ice-stupa building can help holistically transform habitats in Ladakh, particularly in bringing many barren areas under vegetation or crop cover. Such habitat transformation would also enable sustainable population of certain desert areas.

The ice-stupa technique is relatively simple, convenient, and easy-to-replicate, an illustration of the effectiveness and optimality of community effort. It is being increasingly recognised as a globally-adaptable best practice – a non-intrusive, non-invasive community-oriented grassroots solution.

The number of manmade glaciers is increasing, in contrast to the world’s natural glaciers, which are quickly thinning off. This past winter saw the construction of stupas in at least eleven communities in Ladakh as part of the Ice Stupa Project, which started with a single prototype. Additionally, stupas have been constructed in the Alps, and Canada has expressed interest in the project. Experts have suggested that the innovation can be implemented in Himalayan regions of neighbouring nations like Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as well as in the cold deserts of Central Asia.

Challenges and The Way Forward

Climate Change is a multidimensional threat to the communities in Ladakh. By rendering weather patterns unpredictable and making extreme weather events more frequent, it is usurping traditional cropping patterns and preventing systematisation of agriculture.

Equitable, stable weather is polarising and rifting into the destructive dichotomy of droughts and flash floods, alternating spells of water scarcity and unusable, calamitous water surplus. The upset climatic balance has jeopardised the livelihood and food security of the populace.

Global Warming, a result of all-pervasive climate change, taxes innovations such as Ice Stupas, testing their integrity and resilience.

Researchers from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in collaboration with a Cryosphere and Climate research group from University of Aberdeen conducted a study that found in 2021 that an alarming 86% of the 2200 glaciers studied had seen a 300-metre climb of the snowline height over the past four decades. The study also indicated that the problem was aggravating as the rate of recession itself had risen to 10 metres per year, i.e. glacial recession was happening at a steepening rate.

With even winter temperatures rising and winters becoming drier, it is getting perceptibly difficult to build such structures, each stupa takes more time or more optimal insulation to build as there isn’t enough precipitation and cold during winters to consolidate a sizable structure to persist in summers. Climate Change has socioeconomic consequences as well.

Local communities have a strong attachment to their traditions and climate change has thrown their rhythms of individual life and society into disarray. There is a general sense of befuddlement in the community as established customs and practices seem to mismatch with the erratic natural occurrences.

Livelihoods and sustenances are likely to be adversely affected as climate change-caused vicious cycles take effect. Yet, as climate change causes glacial recession, it frees up more land or frees up land for the greater part of the year. Thus, fresh ground becomes accessible and new opportunities present themselves to the populace. With the right organisation, improved logistic capability, and expanded implement availability, farmers in the region can benefit from greater crop diversity in time and location while consumers can benefit from expanded food availability and diet diversification.

Certain farmers have also reportedly taken exception to water being diverted for building ice-stupas during the winter months and lodged their grievances with local authorities. However, quantitative models indicate that there is a sizable water surplus during winters and this excess goes unutilised. Such concerns seem to be largely down to analytical ignorance and uninformed apprehension, appropriating wider education, information-dissemination, and hands-on demonstration campaigns for the local populace.

However, grassroots sustainability innovations such as Ice-Stupas not only help us cope with the effects of climate change better but also fight it directly, affording us the potential to equip ourselves with a prospective virtuous cycle. Ice-stupas can help undo damage caused by climate change, for instance, by aiding reforestation efforts which in turn yield compounding restorative benefits and also enable us to optimise our water usage to maximise effective utilisation and minimise wastage.

Such frugal technology-agnostic sustainability measures require little investment and exert minimal footprint, making themselves sustainable as sustainability measures, taking us a step further on the road to climate justice.

About the Author

Pitamber Kaushik is a writer, journalist, columnist, educator, and independent researcher. His writings have appeared in over 170 publications across 50+ countries. Follow him on Twitter.