Both Pakistan and India need United Nations’ mediation in the face of growing environmental challenges in the highest battlefield of Siachen that have started posing grave threats to people living in this region.

The experts have been continuously making hue and cry and even recently referred to latest reports that showed that hundreds of thousands of people benefiting from the Indus River are expected to face disastrous effects of water pollution as Siachen Glacier that feds this river entirely lacks natural biodegrading agents to decompose a huge amount of metals and plastics regularly thrown away mainly by the Indian military forces serving in the area.

It is pertinent to mention here that a report prepared by Neal A. Kemkar in the past underlined the need to include Siachen Glacier into 200 areas ‘critical’ to global conservation.

“The Siachen area has been continuously experiencing large-scale loss of plant

and animal diversity as a result of the lingering conflict. The constantly eroding glacier line, have led the World Wide

Fund for Nature to designate the entire Tibetan Plateau Steppe, which encompasses the Siachen Glacier, as

one of 200 areas ‘critical’ to global conservation,” the report said.

Dr. Seeme Mallick, a consultant for Climate Change Policy Formulation at One UN Joint Programme on

Environment, told this correspondent that the creation of a transboundary protected area in coordination with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) would serve as a tool for disengagement and the collaborative management of such a protected area might help build confidence in bilateral relations.

Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, a meteorologist and research scientist, told this scribe that now both Pakistan and India can no longer ignore environmental threats to the region due to military presence in the Siachen area.