This month, the persistent monsoon rains and glacier-fed flooding damaged not only infrastructure and killed people, but as usual left an indelible scar on the Gilgit-Baltistan landscape, which will take many lifetimes to heal even if the infrastructure is rehabilitated soon.
These events are screams of a now well-documented risk pattern not only along the Karakoram Highway but throughout the fragile and unique ecosystem of all of GB. The unique geomorphology and steep slopes make landslides and flood damage recurrent and costly – and some damage is no longer reparable.
This recent havoc in GB has taken me back to just after the middle of the last century. ‘Heaven on Earth’ is how Pakistan International Airlines marketed Lower Kachura’s Shangri-La Resorts in the 1970s, written on a poster showing the red-roofed pagodas surrounding a serene lake nestled in tall, gorgeous, scraggy mountains.
I recall my first trip to Sost in the 1980s and later returning to Pakistan in 1991 to try again, only to fail once more as I got waylaid by numerous amazing vistas and ran out of time. I always found GB towering, remote and pristine – and yet underserved and underprivileged. The people of GB, however, were a totally different story; they more than made up for all the absence of services and infrastructure with their civilised, smiling, knowledgeable and age-old hospitality and traditions.
Gilgit-Baltistan is now easily a second home, despite the rigours of my regular journeys, which have since continued – now on a motorcycle, though. Consistently, every visit to this beautiful land of mountain gods and rivers and shadows leaves me with conflicting feelings about development and preservation!
Known as Asia’s ‘Third Pole’, GB nestles in the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya (HKH) and is the largest store of ice outside the polar regions. The region’s ice, snow and permafrost reserves are the essential water tower for Pakistan’s breadbasket, and quoting Immerzeel, W W et al, 2019, “The Upper Indus water tower is the world’s most critical for downstream people and economies – and also among the most vulnerable to climatic and socioeconomic stress dependence”. Rapid warming, glacier and permafrost change.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s (ICIMOD) 2023 assessment concluded that “the region’s glaciers lost mass faster from 2011–2020 than in the previous decade; on current emissions trajectories the region could lose up to 80 percent of glacier volume by 2100. Even if the world holds warming to 1.5–2 C, 30 to 50 percent of HKH glacier volume is projected to vanish – while permafrost thaw boosts landslides and slope failures.” Similar recent studies also show that of the more than 3000 glacial lakes in GB and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, more than 200 are dangerous and many are immediately prone to outburst flooding.
The Shisper glacial outburst in 2022 amply demonstrated the cascading impact of this heat-accelerated melt, underscoring the need for climate-smart engineering and siting of human habitation and mobility. Humans are not threatened alone. Hundreds of rare species, such as the Snow Leopard, Himalayan Lynx, Grey Wolf, Himalayan Ibex, Markhor, Ladakh Urial and Golden Eagle, inhabit Pakistan’s largest protected area, the Central Karakoram National Park and one of the world’s highest named plateaus, Deosai – both in GB.
As a low emitter and one of the top impacted, Pakistan contributes well under a per cent of the annual global carbon dioxide emissions yet suffers disproportionate climate damages, making adaptation investments in GB a national imperative.
Much is being done by the government and by UN entities in GB, but much more must be done. Crucially, without visitor use controls, robust waste back haul and off-grid sanitation, this ‘Heaven on Earth’ brand can quickly turn into degraded trails, polluted streams and human wildlife conflict – with no water for Pakistan’s downstream breadbasket.
The government must forcefully start implementing some measures. All visitors should be managed and tracked, including their solid waste. Introduce go- no-go areas with ‘sustainability-adventure’ licensing. Develop mechanisms to ensure all waste generated by tourism is backhauled, with a key step in banning bottled water sales in PET bottles.
Make all local and foreign investments in infrastructure and housing follow climate-smart siting using hazard maps to ensure setback from glacial and other floods’ flow paths and susceptible geological zones; this should also include rerouting of parts of the Karakoram Highway to China. Scale the last mile early warning systems using communities. These are but a small subset of the required solutions and solutions we must find and implement now.
If we do not, we have little hope for our survival and for the true realisation of the dream of a developed, happy and secure Pakistan. This issue is more critical than most, even in the current debate with India as a lower riparian. Consider this: upstream flows in Occupied Kashmir, AJK and GB represent more than 50 per cent of Pakistan’s total surface water supply, making them strategically crucial as this water is generated by the water tower in our own land behind our borders. Listen to the screams and act now.
The writer is a development professional working on intersectional issues in society, economics and climate. A former World Bank staff member, he is currently running his own social impact advisory, Reenergia.
