Climate fast: Wangchuk, lying under blankets, surrounded by supporters during his hunger strike, seeking protected status for the region’s people, land and ecology in Leh. — AP
Thousands of people in the remote region of Ladakh have been protesting for over two weeks in freezing temperatures, demanding constitutional provisions from the Indian government to protect their territory’s fragile ecology and to have autonomy over land and agriculture decisions.
Nestled between India, Pakistan and China, Ladakh has faced territorial disputes and suffered the effects of climate change.
Shifting weather patterns in the sparsely populated villages altered people’s lives through floods, landslides and droughts.
Top climate activist Sonam Wangchuk is taking part in the demonstrations in the town of Leh.
He has been on a fast since the protests started on March 6, in the open in sub-zero temperatures and surviving only on salt and water.
Wangchuk, also an engineer working on solutions for sustainability at his Himalayan Institute of Alternative Ladakh, has called his protest a “climate fast”.
“We’re already a facing climate disaster and these glaciers and mountains will be destroyed if there is not a check on unbridled industrial development and military manoeuvres in the region,” Wangchuk told reporters yesterday.
Ladakh’s thousands of glaciers, which helped dub the rugged region one of the “water towers of the world,” are receding at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply of millions of people.
The melting has been exacerbated by an increase in local pollution that has worsened due to the region’s militarisation, further intensified by the deadly military standoff between India and China since 2020.
He also said Ladakh critically needs ecological protection because “it’s not just a local disaster in (the) making but an international one as these mountains are part of the Greater Himalayas, intricately linked to over two billion people and multiple countries”.
Wangchuk said the Ladakh nomads were also losing prime pastureland to huge Indian industrial plans and Chinese encroachment.
In August 2019, Ladakh was split from Indian-controlled Kashmir after New Delhi stripped the disputed region of its statehood and semi-autonomy.
While restive Kashmir has largely been silenced through a crackdown on any form of dissent and a slew of new laws, demands for political rights in Ladakh have intensified with demands of statehood with local legislature to frame their own laws on land and agriculture.
The region’s representatives have held several rounds of talks with Indian officials, including with the powerful Home Minister Amit Shah earlier this month, without any results. — AP
