Daily Times

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 positive change to mountain peoples 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 Organisation of the UN (FAO) coordinates the annual celebration of the Day to foster greater awareness of mountain issues.

The world has done many focused interventions since the inception of the Day around mountain conservation, development, and mainstreaming of the challenges confronting the mountains and their people. Overexploitation of the resource-rich mountains is worldwide despite all advocacy efforts, awareness-raising, and putting mountains on the priority agenda. A second havoc is being played by the ever-increasing impact of climate change where the mountains and their people are frontline sufferers. Brunt does not stay there, it trickles down to the people living downstream.

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

FAO Headquarter in Rome (Italy) mobilises funds with the support of Swiss and Italian governments and by engaging other generous donors for the Mountain Partnership that is doing well is organising governments, civil society organisations, and communities around the world. Katmandu-based ICIMOD is a regional intergovernmental organisation in South Asia, mostly engaged in Nepal. It has very little engagement in Pakistan. Even that is not visible. Some ethnic-based organisations are also working there. They include Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), Hashoo Foundation, Rupani Foundation, Karakoram Area Development Organisation, and some local community organisations struggling in small clusters on a self-help basis. The divide is evident among them for their vested interests. Unfortunately, no concept of working together or partnerships. Even they have rivalry to attain funds, which are mostly used in salaries and infrastructures.

The new top polluters have successfully knocked down the great success carved in the Paris agreement to make the Glasgow Climate Pact a toothless document.

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 a lack of funds, vigour, vision, and leadership. Once, there was the multimillion-dollar Mountain Area Conservancy Project (MACP), followed by Programme for Mountain Area Conservancies (PMAC), Combatting Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF)-I, and some others. They all could not stop the deterioration, degradation, and destruction of the mountain. A $37 million Green Climate Fund project, Scaling up the GLOG-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 is 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). A PTI parliamentarian Riaz Fatyana, who according to Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam, fueled up the baseless controversy after not getting a delegate’s privileges at the Pakistan pavilion at the climate summit. Fatyna is a rolling stone from Punjab politics who has nothing special on his credit and is known for typical lota politics. He failed to make the Parliamentary Committee on Sustainable Development Goals a success that he has headed for more than three years now.

The UNDP has clarified that “only five persons were supported logistically under its Glacial Lake Outburst Flood-II (GLOF) project with the prior approval by the Prime Minister Imran Khan to represent Pakistan at the global climate conference held early last month in Glasgow UK.” The UNDP Country Representative in Pakistan Knut Ostby said, “Funds for the participants were covered from the Annual Work Plan 2021 of the GLOF-II project where the activity has dedicated budget lines for the purpose.”

The Fatyana lobby, a bunch of losers, is creating a mess and mounting pressure on the SAPM Malik Amin Aslam and his team for nothing. The Prime Minister has already appreciated his team’s efforts at the climate summit. GLOF-II is for mountains and their communities facing directly the brunt of climate change. The GLOF phenomenon is one of the climate impacts. The funds were not spent on the personal bills of the five. They were there for Pakistan, and they had a long list of success stories from the UK Climate Summit.

The question shall not be the funding of the 5-member delegation from GLOF-II but under-performance over the years. A vigorous and dynamic leadership for the GLOF-II at the Climate Change Ministry is a must for the rational and objective execution of the annual work plans. If something has to be suggested, it should be the 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 livelihoods. Unfortunately, we cannot find the havoc being played or had done with the funds meant for the conservation of resources around them and for the development of infrastructure for their safety and protection, and management of the climate impact by empowering them. The work plans are limited to the files of government departments, implementing agencies, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, INGOs, and ethnic groups. We cannot assess the value of money spent over the mountains and in the communities. They avoid bringing the communities downstream even on the International Mountain Day for market bridging and interaction with the professionals downstream.

Communities should be vigilant enough to know what is being spent. They should have the courage and unity to ask questions about the value of the money being spent around them. Mountain miseries are more than the resources they have. Mafias are stronger than the community leaders they have. The connivance of mafias with the vested interest groups in the subnational and local governments, and bureaucracy is stronger than the unity and selflessness of the communities. So, they are being deprived of their resources and opportunities. Mountain communities need to know that they will keep on suffering until they unitedly come forward to question the authorities. God bless mountains and their people.

The writer is an Islamabad-based policy advocacy, strategic communication and outreach expert. He can be reached atdevcom.pakistan@gmail.com. He tweets @EmmayeSyed