Daily Times

Mountain ecosystems, such as those along Hindu Kush Himalayan region, are particularly fragile, threatened by climate change, habitat fragmentation, loss of biodiversity, eroding indigenous cultures and ineffectual trans-boundary cooperation.

Experts, who are directly and indirectly working on mountain ecosystems, emphasised this in a two-day event held at a local hotel by the WWF-Pakistan, in collaboration with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Ministry of National Food Security and Research titled “Integrated Landscape Management along the Silk Road: Managing the Health of Mountain ecosystems”.

Considering the workshop, a great platform to share problems and perspectives, the speakers emphasised on the importance of the ecosystem services and said that the workshop was aimed at providing a common forum at the landscape level to discuss science and practices in particular and sharing trends and potential use of common tools for ecosystem assessment and valuation as well as tools for planning and monitoring of protected areas and promoting ecotourism and organic products: Promoting and strategising regarding the Hindu Kush Karakoram Pamir Landscape (HKPL)’s potential for ecotourism and organic farming and trade.

ICIMOD Programme Coordinator Ghulam Ali introduced HKPL as a strategic cooperation area and urged participants to use the platform to increase awareness and use landscape approach for ecosystem service management. Melad Karim of Aga Khan Foundation, Afghanistan described the landscape as a fragile ecosystem and elaborated on similarities and differences between the countries within the landscapes and also emphasised that identifying and solving critical issues are important

ICIMOD Programme Coordinator Ghulam Ali introduced HKPL as a strategic cooperation area and urged participants to use the platform to increase awareness and use landscape approach for ecosystem service management. Melad Karim of Aga Khan Foundation, Afghanistan described the landscape as a fragile ecosystem and elaborated on similarities and differences between the countries within the landscapes and also emphasised that identifying and solving critical issues are important. Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) Parks & Wildlife Conservator Mehmood Ghaznavi said that GB’s government is determined to conserve ecosystem in the region as they have set a goal to increase the area under protected areas from 48 percent to 60 percent by 2030. “Forests should not be considered only for timber but all the regulatory services that it provides to the environment”, he added. Likewise, AnuKumari discussed cultural tourism at length and Srijana Joshi presented key findings of rangeland resources assessment in HKPL.

Professor, Heman Das Lohano of the Institute of Business Administration and Muhammad Ismail of ICIMOD gave an overview of the ecosystem service valuation and discussed methods of tools for valuating ecosystems and ICIMOD’s framework and tools on ecosystem services assessments respectively.

Participants came up with key findings which will be presented in the policy conference on regional cooperation to be held in Islamabad. They said that with the support of the concerned governments, ICIMOD is committed to landscape management and protection of ecosystems by enhancing regional learning, exchanges and networking across HKH.

The writer can be reached at naveedhussain89@gmail.com