Iceman cometh

The Copenhagen climate summit may not have resulted in any concrete plan to save the planet, but a wizened 74-yearold man in Ladakh is literally moving mountains in a bid to save glaciers and combat global warming. Stirred by environmental challenges facing the world, Chewang Norphel displayed a rare combination of common sense and determination to hit upon a novel way of creating glaciers. The 'Glacier Man', as he is called now, taps snow and ice runoff, turning them into artificial glaciers that provide much-needed water for irrigation in the rain-shadow region of Ladakh. "Farmers often complained of water shortage that was eating into their livelihood. This bothered me and I would spend hours searching for a solution. That's when the idea of high altitude water harvesting occurred to me. Today, Ladakh has 10 artificial glaciers," says Norphel, a former civil engineer with the rural development department, Jammu & Kashmir.

He did not have to look far for his Eureka moment, which, like Archimedes's, occurred in the bathroom. "Here we keep taps running a little during winter nights to prevent water in the pipe from freezing. One morning, I noticed this water had accumulated and frozen in the nearby garden. I had found my answer."

Thus began a new journey. In 1987, Norphel created the first glacier in Phuktse village, 70 km east of Ladakh in Changthang valley. It took shape as a 1,000-ft white beauty, growing over time to spread across 6,000 ft.

"When snow and ice start melting during the summer, we use a network of pipes to divert the water flow into artificial lakes on the shaded side of the hills. The volume of water in the lakes is kept low to ensure that it turns into ice at freezing temperature," explains Norphel, adding that his "simple" technique costs between Rs 3 and 10 lakh, depending on the location and resources available.

While natural glaciers at higher altitudes thaw only by June-end, the artificial ones in the lower regions melt in April, just in time to quench parched fields during the sowing season. "Each artificial glacier, on an average, stores one million cubic feet of ice, which can irrigate around 200 hectares," Norphel says. "These ice blocks can make a huge difference to the local ecology and economy by turning parched land into fertile fields in Ladakh where only 0.25 per cent of the total 45,000 sq km is under cultivation."

There were setbacks too. The 2006-flash floods, unusual for this region, damaged five artificial glaciers. Undeterred, Norphel sought help from New Delhi's Department of Science and Technology, the Army and local residents to reconstruct them, all the while planning half-a-dozen new ones so that all 113 villages in Ladakh and 100 others in Kargil get enough water for farming through the year.

Norphel, who feels he is racing against time as far age is concerned, is busy filming the process of creating glaciers. This, he says, is to transfer his knowledge to the younger generation "which is at greater risk of an ecosystem breakdown."

Then, grabbing a chunk of ice, he smiles, "I want to make sure that when I am gone, Ladakh continues to remain green and its people prosperous."