Mountains Pride Awards on January 27

Islamabad: Seven dedicated professionals serving the mountain communities and putting their best efforts into the conservation and development of mountains’ natural resources will be awarded the 2nd Pakistan Mountains Pride Awards.

A grand ceremony will be organised by the Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) in Islamabad with the support of development partners and organisations serving the land and people of northern highlands.

Devcom-Pakistan launched Pakistan Mountains Pride Awards in 2019 to recognize the services par excellence of the individuals that they rendered over the years to the mountains of Pakistan and its communities.

Devcom-Pakistan Executive Director Munir Ahmed is the founder of Pakistan Mountains Pride Awards (PAMPA) and Pakistan Mountain Festival (PMF), the 10th edition of which was concluded in December 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

Talking about the objective of the PAMPA, he said that we need to recognize the services of individuals and organizations that have played their key role to inspire others. It is essential to attract others to follow the footprints of the living legends and award recipients to contribute their services to the mountains and its communities. Not only conservation and development of mountain resources, we also need to encourage people promoting mountain culture, crafts, agricultural and horticultural products.

The stakeholders downstream shall provide marketing and networking opportunities to the communities and their local organizations to contribute their bit of efforts to uplift the life and livelihood for the locals.

We all need to highlight the importance of the mountains as a hub of natural resources for the people living there and downstream and need to inculcate informed policy-making for the conservation of mountain resources by creating awareness and networking among the key stakeholders.

Ahmed said Pakistan is blessed with 11 ranges of mountains including three of the world’s largest namely Karakoram, Hnidukush, and Himalaya.

All the mountain ranges have their own characteristics and treasures of natural resources. But, most of them remained untapped over the years.

The same is the case of human resources – the mountain communities. They had been deprived of social and infrastructural development for a long. Then, some individuals and organizations started working for the uplift of the communities to support the Pakistan government’s initiatives.

They played their role in discovering the potential of the mountains and their communities through various empowerment and engagement initiatives.

The Pakistan Mountains Pride Awards include Agostino Da Polenza Nature Conservation Award, Nazir Sabir Mountaineering Award, Shoaib Sultan Khan Community Development Award, Ashraf Aman Sustainable Tourism Award, and Ustad Jan Ali Mountain Music Award.

The recipients of the first PAMPA were Ashiq Ahmed Khan, Ev-K2-CNR Senior Scientific Advisor on Mountain Biospheres, Ecosystems and Habitats, Tsuneo Miyamori, the mountaineer who developed mountaineering route maps of Pakistan’s mountains in 1960, Syed Yahya Shah (Skardu) and Jan Alam (Chitral) for community development, Aftab ur Rehman Rana for promoting ecotourism for the last three decades and Abdul Ghafoor Chillasi (Gilgit) and Mansoor Ali Shabab (Chitral) for mountain music.