The Role of Place in Adapting to Climate Change: A Case Study from Ladakh, Western Himalayas

Abstract

This research explores the nexus of climate change and socio-economic change with a focus on the significance that local conditions (physical and cultural) can have in influencing vulnerability and resilience. In order to better examine how climate change impacts interact with socio-economic changes and are experienced at the community scale, this research integrates household survey data with geospatial processing techniques. Two comparative study sites, one rural and one urban, were selected in the region of Ladakh; an area experiencing severe climate change impacts alongside rapid socioeconomic and political changes. Archival data was used to supplement survey responses and provide additional historical context. Survey responses were then combined with Hot Spot and Kernel density analysis in ArcGIS to identify areas of high and low spatial concentration and correlation. While climate change is widely perceived in many Western Himalayan mountain communities, impacts of climate change as an issue of high importance are moderated by other pressing socioeconomic, cultural, and political concerns. The role of locality and place-based themes such as community attachment, social cohesion, and sense of place, emerged as influential factors in enhancing social resilience and thereby reducing dimensions of local vulnerability to climate change impacts.

High Mountain Areas

“…Agriculture in Ladakh, a cold arid mountain region (~100,000 km 2 ) in the western Himalaya of India with median elevation of 3,350 m a.s.l. and mean annual precipitation of less than 100 mm, is highly dependent on streams for irrigation in the agricultural season in the spring and summer (Nüsser et al, 2012;Barrett and Bosak, 2018). Glaciers in Ladakh, largely located at 5,000-6,000 m a.s.l.…”

From climate adaptation to climate justice: Critical reflections on the IPCC and Himalayan climate knowledges

“…Third, we need to address the politics of scale (Ahlborg and Nightingale 2012 ; Barrett and Bosak 2018 ; Bergmann et al 2011 ; Harris 2013 ; Ojha et al, 2020a , b ). The Himalayas straddle two important socio-spatial processes that reveal how cultural, political, and ecological transformations are regionally woven together.…”

Drinking the Winds: Monsoon as Atmospheric Spring

“…In particular, the urban environment of Leh was not designed to handle high intensities of rainfall; and, as one architect on the LEDeG team explained, traditional building forms and the use of local construction materials For Leh, like other settlements in the region, glaciers and snowpacks serve as primary sources of freshwater. Since 1973, temperatures in Leh have increased by 1°C; and as a result, the past 100 years have seen the snow line recede by nearly 500 ft. and glaciers retreat by as much as 6.2 Miles (Barrett and Bosak 2018;Vince 2010). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other researchers, shifts in precipitation type, from snowfall to rainfall, have a negative impact on the annual renewal of the region's perennial snowpack zones (Archer and Fowler 2004;IPCC 2013); thus, strategies for rainfall retention are needed to slow the pace of change.…”

“…A center of activity and linkages between the landscapes and economies of the East with the markets in the West, Ladakh’s history and significance as a nexus of trade along the Silk Road helped to draw the Ladakh Range into western geographic imagination (Barrett and Bosak 2018 ). Such sites of exchange have long been grounds of cultural assimilation, bringing old customs into “new processes of modernity” (Brower and Johnston 2007 ).…”

“…Such sites of exchange have long been grounds of cultural assimilation, bringing old customs into “new processes of modernity” (Brower and Johnston 2007 ). Due to the geophysical characteristics of the Ladakh region, its history is entangled in networks of power, capital, and resource exchange (Barrett and Bosak 2018 ). Today, as economies and climates destabilize at alarming rates, the same features that bound Ladakh to international markets now draw the region into meteorologically uncertain futures and pioneering markets of power, capital, and resources.…”