The net zero football club kicking it high in the Himalayas

Ladakh, meaning ​‘land of high passes’ in Tibetan dialect, is a place of extremes. The region’s largest city and joint capital of Leh, inhabited by just over 30,000 people, lies on a plateau 11,500ft (3,500m) above sea level. Winter temperatures regularly drop below ‑10C, but sitting in the Western Himalayas’ rain shadow, Leh receives just 100mm of rain a year and water resources in this arid landscape come mostly from glacier-fed streams.

But here, in the cold desert of India, the beautiful game has still managed to take root. Tsering Angmo founded the Ladakh Football Association (LFA) in 2019, the same year the region became a Union Territory of India. 

“Before becoming a Union Territory, there were no professional football teams or structured competitions in the region, but football talent has always existed in Ladakh,” says Angmo, now LFA general secretary and the first woman to hold such a position in Indian football. ​“India is known for cricket, but in these hilly areas, Ladakhi people have a deep love for football.”

This popularity exists beyond the men’s game; while most clubs in India don’t have women’s teams, the LFA organised the first Ladakh women’s tournament in August and is now planning an U13 girls’ tournament.

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Angmo grew up practicing wushu, a Chinese martial art, but she says it has been her dream since childhood to make an impact in Ladakh through football. Angmo wanted to do this by starting a football academy, but decided to be patient and establish professional foundations through a football association first. ​“As a woman it has been very difficult,” she says, whether that’s the extensive documentation involved with creating a governing body or ensuring Ladakhi clubs abide by rules and regulations. 

1 Ladakh FC, the Union Territory’s first professional club, was established in 2023 with Angmo as co-director. The team is unique among its peers having been founded with the mission to promote environmental awareness and community responsibility to secure Ladakh’s future. Water scarcity for the region’s settlements – small, isolated, and sparsely populated – is increasing as glaciers shrink because of climate change. In the last decade, entire villages like Kulum have been forced to relocate.

Ladakh is renowned for its glaciers and mountains such as Stok Kangri, located 15km (9.3 miles) southwest of Leh and towering 20,187ft (6,150m) at its apex, which Angmo can see from the windows of her home. 

“You will not recognise the mountain because the weather is that hot now,” says Angmo, speaking to me in September. ​“When I was a teenager, snowfall would start in Ladakh in October, but the weather has drastically changed.” 

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Inventive methods to preserve water have been introduced, such as engineer and activist Sonam Wangchuk’s ice stupas that freeze glacial meltwater into cone-shaped structures tens of metres tall. The stupas then gradually thaw during warmer months when farmers cultivate their crops. But in December 2025, the India Meteorological Department recorded no precipitation in almost all of northern India, lowering the viability of such countermeasures. 

Despite these challenges, Angmo and 1 Ladakh FC achieved net zero carbon emissions at the end of 2025, taking the initiative to incorporate eco-friendly practices across the club’s operations. This includes verified carbon offsetting for unavoidable emissions, and banning bottles and single-use plastic in the team’s stadium.

“People in India are so used to plastic,” says Angmo. ​“Recycling is difficult but we have to think about how to maintain the climate and nature at the same time.” Facilities for waste segregation at the stadium have raised environmental awareness among players, match officials and the people of Leh.

In April 2027, 1,000 trees will be planted on the stadium’s grounds, a pledge as part of this year’s Climate Cup. Organised by the LFA, its fourth edition concluding in September, the Climate Cup was created to use football as a way of building shared responsibility between sport, youth and local communities for protecting Ladakh’s Himalayan environment.

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The cup was devised by 1 Ladakh FC co-owner Shamim Meraj, who sold Angmo on his idea to embed football within Ladakh’s unique story and setting. After receiving support from the LFA, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) and the Union Territory of Ladakh’s regional government, the tournament was born in 2023. Although teams from across India have competed in previous editions, eight teams participated this year from Leh and Kargil, Ladakh’s other capital city.

Because it competes in the Ladakh Super League, 1 Ladakh FC did not qualify to compete in this year’s Climate Cup, won by Jammu-based Skalzangling FC, but the team has travelled to play elsewhere in India and share its environmental ethos. In 2025, for example, the club participated in the Durand Cup for the first time, the oldest football tournament in Asia and the fifth oldest in the world, first held in 1888. 

But in 2025, funding collapsed from the LAHDC, the main sponsor of both the club and the LFA, meaning 1 Ladakh FC hasn’t travelled to tournaments outside the Union Territory in 2026. 

Angmo explains that a flight from Delhi to Leh in the summer can exceed 15,000 rupees (over £115) per person, while travelling by road – which 1 Ladakh FC have used electric buses for previously – isn’t an option when there’s flash flooding and landslide risks. During the 2026 monsoon season between July and September, Ladakh recorded 65% more rainfall than normal.

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On top of these threats, football in Ladakh has been disrupted by ongoing protests in the region, with residents demanding statehood and protections for their land, livelihoods and culture since becoming a Union Territory of India. In September 2025, the protests turned violent following a two-week hunger strike by ice stupa inventor Wangchuk, who demanded greater local control over Ladakh’s resources. He was arrested after being accused by the Indian government of inciting the violence and was only released earlier this year after six months in jail.

The Jammu & Kashmir Bank sponsored this year’s Climate Cup through its CSR fund, and it’s through such organisations that Angmo hopes the LFA and 1 Ladakh FC can ​“rebuild momentum” behind their sustainability projects and secure stable funding. 

“Funding is always a major issue,” says Angmo. ​“We always depend on the government to sponsor us.” She explains it has been a difficult, extensive process for the 64 registered clubs in the LFA to take all the necessary steps that would enable the All India Football Federation to provide them with financial support. 

Other routes to revenues have been more rewarding for 1 Ladakh FC. The team’s environmental philosophy has built a strong enough brand to sell thousands of shirts in Europe. This budding popularity was assisted in no small part by the Dalai Lama, who unveiled the team’s first shirt in 2023. Made of recycled materials, its design incorporated features synonymous with Ladakh like winding roads and the black-necked crane on the team’s logo. 

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But Angmo says sponsorship opportunities will always be limited in Ladakh: ​“Most companies will not spend money here because when they sponsor a club they want visibility, but Ladakh does not have much visibility except tourism.”

Authorities closed Stok Kangri to trekking and climbing from 2020 to 2023 due to over-tourism, but Angmo believes this only temporarily suppressed the problem. Citing Bhutan as a model of sustainable tourism to follow, she believes tourism in Ladakh should remain restricted, especially on its glaciers. Instead, new hotels are being built across Ladakh to encourage an influx of visitors that Angmo says the region cannot support. 

“I’m not the government of Ladakh or India, but on the local level, we should be thinking about nature,” she says. Angmo’s strategy to establish this mindset in Ladakh is through its youth, having seen reticence towards the club’s environmental focus from more senior players. On October 2, she realised a long term ambition by opening 1 Ladakh FC Academy on 2 October, with U6, U12 and U18 teams for both boys and girls.

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“We can train these young players out of the old way of thinking so they know about football, climate change and taking care of the environment,” says Angmo. ​“We are not very visible in Indian football because we are a very small club from the Himalayas, but in the future, this generation will be an example to others all over the world.” 

While most of the academy will be on a pay-to-play model, the most talented players whose families cannot afford the academy will join on scholarships. Angmo says the pay-to-play model will generate finances to help 1 Ladakh FC play more matches, both within and outside Ladakh. 

“We face so many challenges with everything from the weather to our facilities,” says Angmo, ​“but people love football here. Whatever position we are in, we always take the initiative to play football matches in Ladakh, and we survive.”

George Timms is a sport and sustainability writer. Follow him on Instagram.

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