Over the years, December has come to known for the continued passion of development experts for the love of mountain conservation and development. The agenda of resilience and sustainability takes the centre of focus for the highlands and their communities this month. Just a few days back, the conclusion of a four-day conference titled ‘Resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya: Developing Solutions towards a Sustainable Future for Asia’ in Kathmandu (Nepal) reinforced the importance of the mountains as the front-lines to the climate change impact. But how far this conference would contribute to a 12-point output after four days of pseudo inputs by the development experts in the absence of required and desired political participation from the countries of the region is yet to be seen. ICIMOD claims to be Inter-Governmental Organisation (IGO) under some resolution of the UNESCO conference organised several years back. The governments contribute huge funds to the ICIMOD for its interventions to conserve mountain ecosystems and natural resources, and to ensure the sustainability of the mountain communities by strengthening their livelihood options and improvement in the social indicators. Despite huge contribution by all the member states of the region, only three countries, Nepal, India and China, dominate the structure and programme of the ICIMOD leading to unfair allocation and distribution of resources across the region. The same was the case with conference participation. The delegates and panellists from India, Nepal and China overshadowed the meagre participation from other countries as delegates and their presence in the panel discussions. Ironically, Pakistan government, development experts and community practitioners were totally missed out with a little exception. The thin invitation to Pakistani development experts and missing out the community leadership and political participation is being termed extremely unexpected. Despite huge annual government funding for years and free office space at National Agricultural Research Centre, no political participation from Pakistan at a very important ICIMOD regional conference vividly reflects apathy of the affairs back home. Apparently, there is a sharp discriminatory behaviour and prejudices at the ICIMOD for the Pakistan’s political and community participation. The regional Inter-Governmental Organisation (IGO) is expected to ensure a fairly equitable representation of state members at the regional forums, more fair distribution of resources generated for the conservation of nature and natural resources, adequate participation of communities for whom all the resources are collected from the large donors — the hard earned money of the tax payers. These resources are not meant for huge salaries and bonuses for the administration and management, and for the blue-eyed ones, or for a few groups of experts. The ICIMOD management needs to understand the most desired political will could not be culminated without the political participation in the process of deliberations at the regional interactions. The two-member ICIMOD Pakistan office reflects a clear divide and discriminatory approaches towards mountain development agenda in Pakistan. Despite huge contribution by all the member states of the region, only three countries, Nepal, India and China, dominate the structure and programme of the ICIMOD leading to unfair allocation and distribution of resources across the region The 12 overarching ‘Action Points for a resilient HKH’ were released in thinly attended press conference after the conference was concluded. And they include strengthening the regional and global voice of the HKH region and it’s mountain people, including youth; HKH Calling — a regional awareness to action campaign; encouraging mass promotion of resilience-building technologies and solutions that are proven to be simple, affordable, and replicable; promoting and strengthening cooperation at all levels across the HKH region through the co-creation of knowledge for resilience-building and sustainable mountain development. It also includes strengthening and building capacity at all scales of governance and inter-linkages to facilitate resilience building; allocating significantly greater resources to resilience building including incentives for conservation of benefits from mountain ecosystems and to establish and mobilise ICIMOD as a regional forum for knowledge generation, repository and dissemination among other things. Due to the absence of the decision-making political participation from the region, the conference could only come up with the aforementioned ‘action points’. No firm commitment from the eight governments could emerge as a strategic, shared and affirmative output from enormously significant investment from the European Union. Not even a symbolic Kathmandu declaration could surface to show merely a collective verbal commitment to aggressively work for the marginalised communities of mountains, and to allocate fairly equitable resources for the conservation and development of mountain’s nature, natural habitats and ecosystems, glaciers and so on. Fairly equitable approaches can pave the way for an unbiased shared vision for a collective common development agenda. Despite all unfair and pinching realities, the hope shall shine for the future expectations and equitable development and conservation efforts for the collective commons. Meanwhile, the global meeting of the Mountain Partnership at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy commenced on Monday with an ambitious agenda of collating the efforts for the conservation of mountain resources, ecosystems and communities. The global culmination of political participation, practitioners and inclusion of community voices is the hallmark of the Mountain Partnership’s annual global meeting. The writer is an Islamabad-based policy advocacy, strategic communication and outreach expert. He can be reached at devcom.pakistan@gmail.com. He tweets @EmmayeSyed Published in Daily Times, December 12th 2017.