How Do You Find Water For Crops in the Desert?

Ladakh is located on the Tibetan plateau in the desert, and needs water for crops. Due to climate change and pollution, their glaciers are melting too fast. This causes flash flooding by mid June, yet they need water to water their crops in April and May.

These two months are when there is little water and they experience drought.

All of the surrounding villages are competing for the water for crops making it very difficult to live, eat, etc.

During the winter starting in September, there is a stream that continues to flow into the Indus river. They figured out this stream was wasting water, so they called upon help to solve the problem.

At the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, along with SECMOL, their engineers came up with an ingenious idea on how to solve this problem.

After two years of experimentation, they created what’s called an ice stupa from artificial glaciers. It’s a tall cone shaped ice mountain that stores the stream water. Based on the way they are designed, they ice mountain (stupa) melts only during the spring time, so they can now water their crops.

They plan to take this idea to other parts of the desert, and develop other sustainable ways to solve problems due to life in the desert.

https://www.facebook.com/himalayanuni/

You can watch their video below.