Why is 2025 designated as a glacier preservation year?
– 2025 is seen as a tipping point to preserve glaciers as every increase in temperature may have irreversible effects for glaciers. Facilitated by UNESCO and World Meteorological Organization, this statement calls for awareness, and advocates for action that we need to protect glaciers like our natural heritage, says Mine Islar, senior lecturer at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, LUCSUS.
The NATURICE project, funded by Formas, studies communities directly affected by climate change in various glacierized environments; ranging from Norway to Nepal and India.
Billions of people are dependent on glaciers for their survival, and glaciers and mountain ecosystems support societies in many ways: providing water for drinking and agriculture, generating hydroelectric energy, and driving tourism and other types of livelihoods.
– Most research on glaciers has focused on the physiological effects of glacial melt by quantifying the scale of change. Our aim is to identify what these changes actually mean for societies and ecosystem values, says Mine Islar.
Emma Li Johansson, who is a senior researcher in the same project, explains that a key motivation for the research is to identify and disseminate different ways to cope with glacial melt, which unfortunately will be inevitable. An important entry point is to identify what values different groups assign to glaciers since these values have important implications for how people deal with negative impacts on water, agriculture, hydroelectric energy, tourism and other types of livelihoods.
Based on field trips and interviews, including recent field work in the mountain desert Ladakh and an agricultural region Uttarakhand in Indian Himalaya, the researchers have identified several adverse effects from glacial melt. These include water scarcity, negative impacts on grazing and farming, as well as changes related to non-material aspects such as spiritual and recreational values.
The research team identified several coping strategies within the affected communities. Many communities build different types of ice structures to ensure water supply. Nowadays it is more common to build ice stupas which are conical structures of water that freeze to ice. These are placed at different key locations to serve agricultural needs in time for sowing.
According to postdoc fellow in the project, Mayank Shah, the case in Uttarakhand is relatively different than Ladakh as communities did not experience water scarcity. Instead they spoke of changes in grazing pastures for their sheep and goats. The importance of the sacred rivers, which glaciers feed, were also at the forefront. Coping strategies in this area are more about diversification of livelihoods.
Mapping change at different scales
In addition to interviews, the research project also strives to see how changes identified by communities can be compared and complemented to findings of geophysical changes. For example, Emma Li Johansson works with combining satellite data with local perceptions of change to see how they can be integrated to understand issues related to water scarcity, land use change and broader socio-environmental change. This is important to be able to understand the drivers and effects of glacial melt at different scales, both in time and space.
Reflecting on the results from the project so far, Mine Islar note that it is important to treat every region and community as a unique case study. While climate change is a global phenomenon, its effects will always be dealt with on the local level. That is why it is crucial to identify and highlight local knowledges and ways to address change.
– While it is important to be able to gather general insights and suggest coping strategies, we also want to emphasize how knowledges from each of these places are equally important for policy making in these fast changing environments. That’s one of the reasons we signed up for a task force in shaping the future research activities for the event of International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation says Mine Islar.
