Biodiversity corridor to be established in northern areas

Islamabad : The climate change ministry is sorting out modalities to establish a biodiversity corridor that would aim at addressing, minimizing, and mitigating harm to biodiversity in the execution of the CPEC-related projects.

According to the official data, the biodiversity corridor would help reduce biodiversity-related impacts of the development projects and formulate multiple-level solutions to decrease the vulnerability of sensitive regional ecosystems.

This mountainous region has unique biodiversity and is covered with dense forests and glaciers that naturally help in maintaining the country’s climate balance. The region is already experiencing increased temperature, ice melting, flash flooding, and scarce rains due to increasing urbanization and economic activity.

The diverse and unique cultures, geography and biodiversity in the landscape have been instrumental in supporting the livelihoods of indigenous communities in various forms.

It showed that threatened and endangered mammals living in this area includes the Rhesus macaque, the Himalayan brown bear, the Kashmir grey langur, the Indian wolf, the Indian leopard, the Snow leopard, the Markhor, the Kashmir red deer, the white-bellied musk deer, and the Siberian ibex.

Pakistan has already launched different collaborative conservation projects with different donor agencies such as the World Wide Fund for Nature that are mainly aimed at conserving habitats for flora and fauna and introducing developmental skill programmes for the locals of the northern area, it said.

It pointed out that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the climate change ministry have also been working on the declaration of Marine Protected Area to conserve biodiversity and the ecosystem in northern parts of Pakistan.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam has said Pakistan is committed to protecting environmentally and biologically sensitive areas to stem the loss of biodiversity resources, which feed the life in the northern areas.