In the Tian-Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, villagers have made an artificial glacier to provide water for their drought-hit farms.
The glacier currently measures five metres (16 feet) high and about 20 metres long. At the height of winter it was 12 metres tall.
Residents made it over two weeks in autumn by re-directing water from the peaks of Tian-Shan, which tower more than 4,000 metres high in northern Kyrgyzstan.
Kaldanov and others are being forced to adapt since natural glaciers in Central Asia – the main water source for the region – are slowly disappearing due to global heating.
A 2023 study in the journal Science predicted that the acceleration in the melting of the glaciers would peak only between 2035 and 2055.
The lack of snow, also due to higher temperatures, does not allow them to regenerate.
The problem has a knock-on effect on the lowlands of Central Asia, in more arid countries like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Artificial glaciers were first created in the Indian Himalayas in 2014 and have gone global – cropping up in Chile and Switzerland.
In Kyrgyzstan, their introduction was spearheaded by Abdilmalik Egemberdiyev, head of the Kyrgyz association of pasture users.
Egemberdiyev pointed to an additional benefit.
The glaciers allow farmers to keep livestock on spring pastures for longer before sending them to summer pastures, thus slowing soil erosion.
