For Indian Farmers, Artificial Glaciers Are a High-Altitude Antidote to Drought

Farmers in Utah practice no-till farming to improve soil health and water retention amid an ongoing drought.

Colorado is only now recovering from a 16-year long drought that resulted in the aquifer irrigation system becoming increasingly dry. Until the farmers decided to tax themselves for water consumption, realizing that saving water now and taxing themselves would protect their farms and livelihood in the long run.

Utah is ditching the “use it or lose it” water rights doctrine to encourage farmers to conserve water amid severe water shortages. Instead, it’s encouraging farmers to use less water while allowing them to keep their rights to it. The government is awarding funding for efficiency upgrades and creating a system for farmess to lease out the saved water.

A federally-funded water conservation program, the System Conservation Pilot Program, is paying farmers in the Upper Colorado River Basin to not use the river’s water during the irrigation season. Leaving their fields dry for the program can earn them more money than they would get from growing crops.

The Utah state government is offering grants to encourage and enable farmers to invest in water-saving technology amid a severe drought. A farmer who wants to install a better irrigation system, like drip irrigation, will pay for half of the upgrade and the state will pay for the other half.

A hydraulic network of man-made water tanks built 2,000 years ago, called an ellangawa, collects rainwater that locals in Maeliya, Sri Lanka, can release during the dry season to support the rice crop and recharge the groundwater.

The village of Lamkani, in India, was lush but became barren after years of droughts. In 2000, Dhananjay Newadkar, initiated a multi-pronged approach that was supported by the community. It included watershed development, a ban on grazing and felling trees. However, the bans were not enforced. Instead, artists incorporated messages about conservation in their performances and educated the community. Finally, the grasslands were restored through rotational grazing. Now, the town is water-sufficient, even in droughts.

A government scheme in Pakistan involves the construction of water-harvesting dams in areas that experience droughts, which allows farmers in the region to use the irrigation water from the dams for their crops. One farmer is growing onions and wheat and because of the access to water, his income has increased more than 60 percent. There are concerns about how helpful the water from the dams will ultimately be in the arid region, but there are plans to build more dams in the next few years.

Bhojdari, a town in India, faced a severe drought in the early 2000s. The town doesn't have a river or canal nearby. However, after implementing an ecosystems-based approach, the town has reliable access to water, even in the dry months. Some of the methods that were incorporated in this approach included the creation of irrigation models, planting bamboo trees, and creating fish ladders so that fish can move up the stream. Ultimately, the model led to an increase in cultivation for local farmers and sufficient water for the town.

Nearly a billion people living in the arid regions of the Himalayas depend on glaciers for their water supply. But with climate change, glaciers have been retreating drastically every year, threatening the life source of villagers like those in the Ladakh region of Kashmir. One engineer, Sonam Wangchuck, has come up with an ingenious feat of engineering to help the villages store glacier water by constructing stupas - or towers - using thorn branches that retain ice in tall structures, which melts and provides clean water for drinking and agriculture during the dry season.