Jeopardizing the entire industry.
“The famed pashmina shawl that keeps the cold away – in style and at a price – could itself have become the victim of winter,” says this article by Athar Parvaiz. “Thousands of goats whose fine wool is woven into pashmina have perished in extreme cold being associated with climate change.”
Here are excerpts from that article:
Pashmina is drawn from Changra goats found in Ladakh region of Kashmir state and a part of the Tibetan peninsula, more than 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) above sea level.
The Changthang region of the larger Tibetan Peninsula does not normally see heavy snowfall. That may be changing, given the heavy snowfall earlier this year that deprived the Changpas of fodder for their animals.
“In the past five years this is the second time I have seen such heavy snowfall,” Bihkit Angmo, 53, who rears goats, told IPS outside her tent in Kharnak. “This new trend of snowfall several feet high has left us quite worried.”
If things continue this way, said Mohammad Sharief, the district sheep husbandry officer at Leh, Pashmina-goat rearing would come to an end in the next two decades.
That would also mean the end of livelihood for about 300,000 people in the Jammu and Kashmir state of India who depend on pashmina directly or indirectly, according to Shariq Farooqi, director of the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar, the summer capital of the state.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-01-090913.html
Thanks to Ron de Haan for this link