The average humidity in Ladakh is below 40 percent.

A group of green NGOs met here in April to discuss climate change. The report of their deliberations, published by the UN organisation for mountain ecology, ICIMOD, said 35 percent of the glaciers in the region will disappear by another 20 years and temperatures across the Tibetan and trans-Himalayan region will rise by 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The Himalayas have around 45,000 glaciers.

The boom in tourism, the lifeline of this ancient trading post spread across 97,000 square km along the Himalayan and Karakoram Silk Route, is accelerating degradation, local eco-tourist operators said.

According to department of wildlife officials who met the operators for the first time June 30 in Leh to discuss curbs on tourism to save Ladakh's environment, '75,000 tourists visited the district in 2008 and the number would go up by 2009-end'.

Ladakh, said Jigmet Thakpa, chief conservator and wildlife warden of the district, 'boasted of a wide biodiversity with 36 mammals, 309 species of birds, 370 species of butterflies, 11 reptiles and 22 types of fish found in the streams.

'But they have to be protected. We are trying to change to the nature of tourism in the countryside by building 300 homestays in the state with women's self-help groups and have restricted indiscriminate use of water and littering.'

The district has just been brought under the purview of the Non-Biodegradable Material Management Handling and Disposal Act (2007) passed by the Jammu and Kashmir government. The notification was issued May 14.

'Women's groups are monitoring the imposition of the ban on non-biodegradable material across the district. The situation is alarming. All the small glaciers are gone,' said filmmaker Stanzin Dorjai Gya, whose movie on Ladakh, 'Living With Climate Change', has been screened worldwide.

Laments divisional forest officer of Leh B. Balaji: 'The whole world is focussing on islands, while high altitude cold deserts like Ladakh are being ignored. The crops are in peril due to locust attacks from China. It might result in a famine-like situation any time.'

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)