Climate Resilience Through Community and Place-Based Approaches

Climate change is among the defining crises of our time; one whose consequences extend far beyond physical changes to the earth's system. It is deepening socio-economic inequalities and threatening human well-being across every geography, from mountain headwaters to coastlines, with cascading impacts on food security, health, and access to water. Scientific and technological responses are essential, but they are not sufficient on their own.

Indigenous, community-based, and place-based knowledge systems offer something that conventional science often cannot: deep, generational relationships with land and water that encode centuries of adaptive wisdom. Oral traditions, ecological knowledge, and the practices embedded in community life are not folklore — they are living archives of how people and ecosystems have endured, adapted, and recovered. Integrating this wisdom with modern science has the potential to amplify Global North knowledge systems in ways that are deeply transformative.

WISIR's research around these themes sits at the intersection of social innovation, climate science, and community self-determination. Our approach is multidisciplinary by design, bringing together wisdom-keepers, researchers, scientists, and community practitioners around a foundational question: what becomes possible when Indigenous and community-based knowledge systems are treated as equal contributors to climate adaptation strategy?

Working across multiple geographies and knowledge traditions, this body of work is built on a shared commitment to equitable co-production, where local communities are co-investigators.

The Growing Glaciers Project 

Can centuries-old indigenous practices explain why glaciers in the Karakoram region in northern Pakistan might be growing or sustaining while others around the world are melting? This project seeks to find out.

The Context

Glaciers around the world are melting due to climate change, leading to water shortages, ecosystem disruption and an increased risk of natural hazards. However, the situation in the Karakoram region of northern Pakistan differs from global trends. Glaciers in this region have remained stable or, in some cases, are advancing despite rising global temperatures. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Karakoram Anomaly. However, the data related to climate change and its impacts is patchy, and its quality is also not up to the mark. While recently, endeavours have been undertaken to host and retrieve data by installation of automatic weather stations,  EWS and monitoring through remote sensing. 

Glacial Grafting — A Centuries-Old Tradition

The paradox of Karakoram is its representation as a third pole while its inhabitants are still facing water shortage  due to unfavourable topography and geographical position of cultivable land. Therefore, the natives have been practicing indigenous methods to build artificial glaciers. For generations, communities in the Karakoram Region have practiced glacial grafting. Local experts harvest ice from two different glaciers which are referred to as "male" and "female" and bring them together in a ritual called a glacial marriage. The type of glacier is based on its compactness, cloudy, debris and transparency. The two types are placed  and covered with insulating materials, like wood chaff, and shells of walnut and almond. The activity is usually demonstrated from the last week of October to mid-November in crevices and caves having a minimum altitude of 10,000 feet (3000 metres) from sea level. Current weather conditions are also considered while choosing the site for glacier grafting, like annual average temperature, precipitation, orientation of site.

Community members describe this practice as a way of supporting glacier health and encouraging the formation of new ice over time:

“This helps glaciers stay healthy and grow new ice over time.”
— Community members, Hunza-Nagar region

To date, scientific research has not examined whether this practice is effective, reproducible and has an influence on glacier stability. This project addresses this knowledge gap, alongside exploring other land and nature-based solutions in the region to address the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood and other climate disasters through practices like Avalanche harvesting and the creation of Ice Stupas.

Key Objectives

1. Document indigenous knowledge to combat the challenges of a changing climate.
2. Document glacial grafting practices through ethnographic research and oral histories.
3. Analyze satellite imagery to assess the impact of community-managed glacier stewardship.
4. Design and implement a glacial grafting pilot with local communities and academic partners.
5. Develop a community-based glacier and wider climate monitoring system using low-cost sensors to promote citizens’ science.
6. Conduct water quality and hydrological assessments using isotope analysis.
7. Produce a community co-created documentary and share findings with glaciated communities globally.
8. Train local young people and technicians in climate monitoring and water governance.
9. To prepare a set of guidelines for the integration of modern science and indigenous knowledge that could prevent the looming threat of climate change to communities.
10. To undertake biological assessments including microbiological studies as well as microbiome analysis using DNA sequencing.

Partner Institutions

Host Institution

• Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (Canada)

Collaborating Institutions

• University of Bern (Switzerland)
• Wyss Academy for Nature (Switzerland)
• University of Guelph ( Canada)

Local Partners (Pakistan)

• Karakoram International University
• Social Innovation Lab (SIL)
• Precision Medicine Lab (PMLab)