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O SERIJIA

V zadnjih nekaj desetletjih so skupnosti, ki živijo v himalajski regiji Ladakh v Indiji, postale podnebne begunke, ki so bile zaradi težav z vodo prisiljene zapustiti svoje doline. Himalajski ledeniki se namreč vztrajno manjšajo, pomanjkanje vode pa še nikoli ni bilo tako zaskrbljujoče.Pred nekaj leti se je Sonam Wangchuk, inženir in inovator iz Ladakha, domislil izvirne rešitve, ki je prinesla žarek upanja. Leta 2015 je izdelal prototip ledene stupe, umetnega ledenika, ki spominja na tibetanske religiozne stupe in pozimi shranjuje stopljeno vodo, spomladi, ko vodo najbolj potrebujejo, pa jo počasi sprošča.Leta 2015 je na otvoritvi projekta okoli 1000 vaščanov posadilo 5300 mladik vrbe in topola s stopljeno vodo iz ledenih stup. Puščava je postala obdelana zemlja. V letih, ki so sledila, so vsako zimo številne vasi v regiji Ladakh pričele graditi ledene stupe. Pozimi leta 2019 so svoje ledene stupe začele graditi številne doline.Wangchuk, ustanovitelj podjetja Ice Stupa International meni, da na stupe ne moremo gledati kot na rešitev problema. Po njegovem predstavljajo zadnji poskus skupnosti himalajskega gorovja, da se bori proti podnebnim spremembam. Resnična rešitev po njegovem leži v prevzemanju odgovornosti vlade in ljudi, ki živijo v urbanih naseljih, ki morajo vzpostaviti okolju prijazne načine življenja in zmanjšati emisije.Jazbec je Wangchuku in njegovi ekipi sledil skoraj od samega začetka. Kot dokumentarni fotograf je kmalu sprevidel pomembnost vizualne reprezentacije te zgodbe. Med leti 2018 in 2019 je obiskal regijo Ladakh in dokumentiral neverjetno veličino in vpliv gibanja Ledenih stup.


ABOUT THE SERIES

In the last decades the communities in the Himalayan mountains of the Ladakh region in India have started to become climate refugees forced to abandon their valleys due to water issues. The Himalayan glaciers have been receding and water scarcity has never been so dire.A few years ago, the ingenuity of Sonam Wangchuk, a Ladakhi engineer and innovator, brought about a beacon of hope. In 2015, he prototyped ice stupas, artificial glaciers resembling Tibetan religious stupas that store winter meltwater and slowly release it for the growing season in spring, when water is most needed.At the inauguration of the project in 2015, roughly 1,000 villagers planted 5,300 saplings of willow and poplar trees using melted water from the ice stupas. The desert became cultivated land. In the years that followed numerous villages in Ladakhi region started to build ice stupas every winter. In winter in 2019 several valleys built their own ice stupas.In the eyes of the Wangchuk, the founder of the Ice Stupa International, the ice stupas should not be considered as a solution to the challenge. In his view, they stand for a final attempt of the Himalayan mountain communities to fight climate change. The real solution, in his opinion, lies in the responsibility of the nations’ governments and people living in urban areas that should adopt environmentally-friendly lifestyles to reduce emissions.Jazbec has been following Wangchuk and his team’s efforts almost from the start. As a documentary photographer, he soon understood the importance of the visual representation of this story. In 2018 and 2019 he visited the region to document the incredible scale and impact of the Ice Stupa movement.