Updated By: LatestGKGS Desk
Department of Post Releases Special Stamp Cover on Ice Stupas
Department of Post Releases Special Stamp Cover on Ice Stupas: Details, Features, Highlights
The Indian Department of Post released a ‘special stamp cover on Ice Stupa’. It was released by Jammu and Kashmir’s Chief Postmaster General during a function organized at the Ice Stupa site at Gangles Village in Leh.
These special stamps cover on Ice Stupa aims to create awareness about depleting glaciers and affect the ecology around the Himalayas. Global warming and ecological imbalance have caused irreparable damage to the Himalayas in the past many years.
Background
Ice Stupa team of Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL) with support from Leh-Phodo society and Army, has built an Ice Stupa at Gangles with an aim to reduce the shortage of water in Leh.
The team also plans to build more such artificial glaciers (Ice Stupas) in Leh, so that problem related to water supply, faced by Ladakhi farmers due to the 0receding of glaciers, can be reduced.
About 12 villages across Ladakh have built Ice Stupas on an experimental basis and on 22nd March, ‘World Water Day’ will be celebrated at Ice Stupa at Shara, where teams from other villages, who have built Ice Stupas, will be felicitated.
Climate change in Ladakh has shrunk glaciers and made rainfall and temperature unpredictable. Water is required to irrigate fields of barley, apples and other crops during spring but glaciers do not melt till summer.
Engineer Sonam Wangchuk (recipient of Rolex Award 2016 and Ramon Magsaysay 2018), to help farmers from dry-spell and barren yield, has invented a way to bring irrigation to people in the form of glacier grafting technique that creates artificial glacier, used for sharing winter water (which otherwise goes waste) in the form of conical shaped Ice Stupa.
