In the union territory of Ladakh, the rest of India is referred to as “Down”. This is because the region standing at an altitude ranging from 2900 to 5900m above mean sea level is one of the highest and coldest. The union territory consists of Leh and Kargil.
At no point in Leh district, you would be less than three kilometres above the mean sea level. It’s India’s largest district and certainly most sparsely populated. Ladakh is called as the kingdom of sustainable development.
With some 15,000 sq kilometres of protected area, Ladakh has become synonymous with biodiversity protection in India. Specific regulations have been drawn up for the region to ensure the preservation of the natural environment.
Living in this harsh climatic region is not an easy affair. The limited water available in rivers and streams is the melted form of the glaciers. The temperature drops down to -200°C to -400°C in the winter.
All the roads through mountainous passes remain closed for more than seven months a year. Means of livelihood are restricted to agriculture and that too in the short season of summer. Livestock rearing is also a popular occupation in this cold dessert.
The soil there is sandy and retains little water, yet people prospered in this harsh climate and survived in the rarified air. Where nature plans new challenges every day people are still striving to live there best life in Ladakh.
The road connection of Srinagar came only in 1960. The key has been living with the harsh ecology and indigenous innovations and adopting them.
Ladakhis use dry toilets that turn human excreta into rich organic manure. They grow crops that use little water. As labour is difficult, they have cooperative farming.
Ladakhis had organised their society, Buddhists or Muslims along a structure that is essentially democratic. What is unique to this region is the paucity of resources has not created any conflicts, rather it has led to more cooperation and consensus.
Living in harmony with nature and people here is not ideal. It is in fact a prerequisite for survival. While agriculture is subsistence in nature, the armed forces have emerged as the biggest employers in the Leh district. Tourism also provides a much-needed means of livelihood and has grown rapidly in the recent past.
The biggest challenge of the present century is to maintain harmony with the environment in which we live. The environment consists of living as well as non-living components and there exists a delicate and intricate balance between those two components.
Unfortunately, the development activities are costing the environment in which we live. Men started playing with nature which resulted in havoc. The technology and some recent developments have also resulted in the already fragile environment of the area. Tourism being a big source of livelihood is also threatening to the environment.
Depletion of groundwater is already a major issue across India as well as in the water-stressed region of Ladakh. Water is a scarce resource in this area and thus due to an increase in a number of tourists and an increased number of hotels and other construction activities, the region now has depended upon the groundwater resource for everyday chores.
The Tourists outnumber locals by a huge margin during summer months and over the past few years, the average ratio has been three tourists per local. The indigenous communities had developed elaborate social, and cultural systems to manage and ensure optimal and rightful use of water. However, the big hoteliers exclude this idea of indigenous water conservation techniques like using dry toilets.
The inhabitants of Ladakh believe that practices like this would be hampered if people came from outside and got settled in Ladakh. They will not understand the local culture and value the traditions and hence they will be a threat to the environment.
With the recent abrogation of Article 370 and making Ladakh a new union territory by bifurcating the state of Jammu and Kashmir and by repealing article 35A, the government has also scraped the special land rights granted to the residents of the region allowing anybody from outside the territory to purchase land there.
This has created fear in those Ladakhis that it will lead to an environmental collapse as the Ladakhi ecosystem has to reconcile with the new situation.
Ladakhis are also afraid of losing their existing business and will not be a part of the region’s thriving travel economy. People will not just lose their businesses, but will also have the risk of losing their cultivable lands in the name of developmental activities.
