Mountain miseries

International Mountain Day is celebrated annually on December 11 to create awareness about the importance of mountains to life and to highlight the opportunities and constraints in mountain development. The other objective is to build alliances that will bring a positive change to mountain people and environments around the world.

The UN General Assembly declared 2002 the UN International Year of Mountains, and on this occasion, it designated December 11, from 2003 onwards, as International Mountain Day. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) coordinates the annual celebration of this day to foster greater awareness of mountain issues.

The world has done much focused interventions since the inception of International Mountain Day around mountain conservation, development and mainstreaming of the challenges confronting the mountains and its people. Over exploitation of the resource-rich mountains is a worldwide phenomenon – despite all advocacy efforts, awareness raising and putting mountains on the priority agenda. And more havoc is being played by the ever-increasing impact of climate change due to which the mountains and their people are frontline sufferers. This brunt does not stay there; it trickles down to the people living downstream.

Strangely, the world’s culprit states are least interested in investing in the funds required for adaptation and mitigation measures. They are least interested in supporting vulnerable communities and countries, and generous donor countries are fatigued by paying the bills of the actual perpetrators. The new top polluters, India and China, have successfully knocked down the great success carved in the Paris agreement to make the Glasgow Climate Pact a rather toothless document. In the given circumstances, the coming days are bleaker for mountains and mountain communities.

The FAO Headquarters in Rome (Italy) mobilises funds with the support of the Swiss and Italian governments and by engaging other generous donors for the Mountain Partnership that is doing well in organising governments, civil society organisations and communities around the world. Some ethnic-based organisations are working here. Unfortunately, there is no concept of working together or in partnerships and most such organisations are mainly vying for the same funds.

The Pakistan-Italy Debt Swap Agreement (PIDSA) funded SEED project has been a major intervention in Gilgit-Baltistan. It has played a significant role in developing the Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP). The park has been with the GB government for some years now and is suffering from lack of funds etc. Once there was the multimillion dollar Mountain Area Conservancy Project (MACP), followed by the Programme for Mountain Area Conservancies (PMAC), Combatting Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF)-I, and some others. All these could not stop the deterioration, degradation and destruction of the mountains. A $37 million Green Climate Fund project, Scaling up the GLOF-II, has been struggling for the last four years despite technical and management support from the UNDP. After surviving the inefficient bureaucracy at the Ministry of Climate Change, it has been extended till 2024.

GLOF-II is the same project that is under severe criticism from different quarters for spending funds on the Pakistan delegation to the UK Climate Summit (COP26). However, the question should not be the funding of the five-member delegation from GLOF-II but the under-performance over the years. A vigorous and dynamic leadership for GLOF-II at the Ministry for Climate Change is a must for a rational and objective execution of the annual work plans. If something has to be suggested, it should be a performance audit against the payments for logistics and salaries of the project staff and the supervising director at the ministry.

Another haunting misery of the mountains is that they are far away from the federal capital. We cannot hear their screams and cries for the safety of life and livelihood. Unfortunately, work plans are limited to the files of government departments, implementing agencies, non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations, INGOs, and ethnic groups. Communities should be vigilant enough to know that they will keep on suffering until they come forward to question the authorities.

The writer is a freelance journalist and broadcaster, and director of Devcom-Pakistan. He can be reached at devcom.pakistan@gmail.com and tweets @EmmayeSyed