ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by framing Ladakhi case studies within the new terrain of climate change, adaptation, and equity. The first portion of the chapter suggests that design can and should be considered a vehicle for processing change. In the next section, the topic of vernacular solutions and regional awareness is explored. Then, the specific shape and structure of this book is addressed. It presents the chapters as a series of compatible case studies: old and new, formal and informal, across all scales. The themes connecting each case study include food security, water management, energy efficiency, and material scarcity.
Finally, although this work isn’t intended to introduce a series of replicable projects, some of them may be instructive to other parts of the world, and every effort is made to highlight those connections. Instead, this book seeks to reveal the lengths that people are willing to go to, the innovative boot-strapping efforts, and in some cases, the wild ideas that people have developed for adapting to the pressures of climate change. In this sense, the book introduces readers to a varied and diverse series of design approaches, tested by high Himalayan villages, to combat the realities of climate change.
