World Environment Day: Call to protect fragile mountain ecosystem

Environmental walk organised; need to safeguard environment highlighted.

GILGIT:

World Environment Day (WED) was marked in Gilgit on Monday with different stakeholders pledging to conserve the rare wildlife and diminishing forests to keep the environment safe.

Gilgit-Baltistan’s (G-B) Environment Protection Agency (EPA), in collaboration with Mass Awareness for Water Conservation and Development (MAWCD-UNDP), Serena Hotel and District NGOs Network organised an environmental walk in the morning as participants held banners inscribed with slogans encouraging people to adopt pro-conservation practices in their lives.

The rally started from Ghari Bagh and went through Main Market and culminated in the city park. Participants including EPA Director Shehzad Shigri highlighted the importance of the day, urging people to avoid polluting the environment that has already been brought under threat by the developed countries.

Following the large-scale chopping of trees and shrinking of glaciers due to climate change, the day is all the more important in G-B, which was hit by the worst ever floods last year. Environmentalists blamed large-scale deforestation for the floods in G-B, as necessity rather than poverty made the people more dependent on natural resources for sustenance. G-B is a region rich in flora and fauna because of varied climatic conditions and ecosystems. Though management patterns are unscientific, the loss of habitat of the endangered species of mammals and birds like Marco Polo sheep, blue sheep, markhor, black bear, brown bear, chukar and ram chukar is on the rise.

WED is an annual event aimed at bringing about positive changes among the people for positive environmental actions. The theme for WED 2011 was “Forests: Nature at your service”, and the day was also marked in Girls High School Kashrote as participants from six girls’ schools took part in a speech competition. Speakers highlighted the importance of the day while referring to a United Nation’s resolution passed in 1972.

In Hunza, Karakoram Area Development Organization (KADO), a local NGO working in the valley since 1996, organised the event as representatives of the district administration, Police, LG & RD and DHQ hospital, community organisations, schools, colleges and notables of the region participated.

The participants noted with concern that environmental imbalance is the cause of the formation of Attabad Lake which has left many in the region in great distress.





Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2011.