After the last tourist season in Hunza, some businessmen in Karimabad complained that domestic tourists, especially those arriving from Punjab, litter the picturesque valley with reckless abandon.

But then a small island of rubbish has emerged on Attabad Lake in 2011, too, at a time when there were nearly zero domestic tourists in Hunza.

If you were to head down to the other side of the river bank in Nagar, at the 4,700-metre high Rush Lake, you will see hundreds of rusty cans left behind by trekking groups and which no local guide or porter had carried down either.

Take it from the Germans: don’t wait for your government to wake up, start cleaning the environment yourself!

No doubt, Hunza-Nagar-Gojal are much cleaner than many other such places, but they too are far from being pristine perfect.

People often tell me that we Germans are perfect in all things related to rubbish collecting and creating a clean environment. Then they praise our chancellor: “This great Ms Angie Merkel ...” After a short laughter, I usually reply: “Mrs Angela Merkel is the chairwoman of a conservative party, and in the entire history of political parties I don’t know of any one of them who undertook educating their citizenry about a clean environment.”

This is a misplaced belief among many foreigners, that Ms Merkel is some kind of an environmental activist (be sure she isn’t).

Rest assured, environmental change in Germany came through pressure from the streets. This transformation wasn’t led by the majority of our population either, but by people who led by example, in words and in deeds. The others became aware as a result of their activism; today, nearly every German is an environment activist, at least in speech (Ms Merkel, too!)

I still remember when it all started in Germany.

Some years ago, our rivers, lakes and air were not as clean as they are now. I was a seven-year-old boy back then. Recycling was a new concept in our neighbourhoods; there were separate containers to place used glass bottles but nobody ever used them.

One day, after I returned from school I declared to my father:

“Father, from today, we will separate glass bottles and bring them to the special container. My teacher said it will make our environment clean.”

This was the first hint for me: if I wanted to save the world, I had to do more than just talk.

My father thought about it for a minute or so, and answered: “Okay, my son. I will separate the glass bottles but you will bring them to the container.”

This was the first hint for me: if I wanted to save the world, I had to do more than just talk. The nearest container for disposal of glass bottles was 500 metres away from our house, but I made the hike nonetheless.

Rush Lake — without rubbish it’s a wonderful place

Luckily, there were already some people in Germany at the time who were bringing about incremental changes to how the environment was viewed and understood. Most of them were peace activists, social activists and environmental activists; together they established the Green Party, which would have far-reaching impacts on German society.

Although they bagged only five per cent of the votes polled in 1983, the Green Party changed Germany like no other political party. It didn’t matter if one liked them or not; everyone agreed that they were genuine in their intentions. They practiced what they preached. Their parliamentarians knitted their own wool pullovers, they breastfed their babies openly in parliament and some of them lived in cramped houses with low environmental footprints.

But not everyone accepted them or their ideas as futuristic and progressive.

German conservative magazines and newspapers first used to make jokes at their expense. They later tried to instil fear of the Greens by terming them lunatics who would drag the Germans back to the Stone Age if they came to power. Big businesses painted them as the nemesis of our economy; they too said we would soon live like cavemen.

Today, there is a culture of thinking about the environment in Germany and giving the environment its due share in policy discussions.

But today, there is a culture of thinking about the environment in Germany and giving the environment its due share in policy discussions. Our rivers are now clean. Even our toilet water is cleaner than potable water in many other countries. Many young Germans believe that our car industry is successful because they have been so predictive and built cars which need less petrol.

Nowadays, the Greens and other Left parties also try to make people aware about other things: most of our cloth, for example, is produced in Pakistan or Bangladesh, and under circumstances which are catastrophic for the environment as well as inhumane for workers in these countries. They try to make people aware that Germans tend to stop mentioning human rights when it’s about oil and business. They try and impress upon people that Germany is the fourth biggest weapon seller on the planet.

Many of these efforts are ultimately in vain in the immediate. But as with the environment, German people will not wait for every change to be triggered by the government. Start yourself and be an example for others. If we adopt this spirit in Pakistan, then perhaps the lives of people from Hunza-Nagar-Gojal, which are in many ways already an example for betterment, can improve even more.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 10th, 2015

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