NEW DELHI: In an open letter, renowned climate activist Sonam Wangchuk urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set up a commission to assess the state of the Himalayas glaciers to save India’s sacred rivers.
Admiring Modi’s major environmental initiative, he urged to declare major glaciers like Gangotri and Yamunotri as national treasures and frame special policies that protect the Himalayas glaciers.
The United Nations has declared 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation. The year will raise awareness about melting glacial and importance of glaciers, snow, and ice to the climate system and water cycle.
It is worth noting that Wangchuk, along with 150 other activists from Ladakh, marched 900 km last September to press the demands of restoring full-fledged democracy and granting Ladakh Sixth Schedule status to protect its unique environment and maintain its cultural identity.
At that time, he criticized Modi’s Ladakh policy; he claimed that the current policy exposed the Ladakh’s Indigenous people in danger of losing their cultural identity, ecology, and ancestral lands.
He writes that the Himalaya acts as the region's water tower and that we need to protect it; otherwise, the next Mahakumbh will be celebrated on the dry sands of Ganga and Yamuna.
“As we all know, the glaciers of the Himalayas are melting very fast, and if this and the accompanying deforestation continue at current rates, then in a few decades, our sacred rivers like Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Indus might become seasonal rivers. This may also mean that the next Mahakumbh might only happen on the sandy remains of the sacred river.”
He demands a time from the PM when the people of Ladakh can present a piece of ice from fast-melting glaciers.
“In this Year of Glaciers, I plan to present a symbolic piece of glacier to all the world leaders. In fact I have been just back from presenting a similar glacier block at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to thank them for declaring 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation,” he writes.