The government is going all out to promote tourism in northern Pakistan, positing it as the proverbial golden egg for impoverished communities. But as the events of Murree last month show, uncontrolled tourist traffic combined with bad management and unpreparedness can lead to avoidable tragedies. Add the crisis of climate change to the mix, however, and we may soon have a bigger disaster on our hands…

The horrific scenes from January 10 are still etched in our collective memory. Thousands stranded on their way to a getaway in Murree. Hundreds of cars buried in snow. At least 23 people, including 10 children, dead in their cars either because of the freezing cold or from carbon monoxide poisoning, with the police and military conducting operations the next day to rescue survivors.

Much has been said about the avoidable tragedy and the mismanagement that led to it. The snowfall was not a surprise. In fact, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) had predicted heavy snowfall in Murree and the Galiyat from January 5 to 10. And yet, thousands of tourists made their way to the resort town.

Reportedly, over 155,000 vehicles entered Murree in that week, out of which 135,000 returned safely while the rest got trapped on January 9. Despite reports of the district administration sending back around 50,000 vehicles from Murree’s entry points that day, many made it through. Hill stations such as Murree have a limited capacity for hosting guests and Murree can only accommodate 4,000 cars at a time.

Promoting regional tourism has been one of the top priorities of the government. In an effort to help develop more remote areas and provide income generating opportunities for locals who may not otherwise have other means of sustenance, a lot of resources have been designated towards promoting tourism. But promoting tourism also requires strengthening management systems, and understanding and respecting the dynamics of different regions.

What happens when unregulated tourism meets climate-induced disasters? Emergency services that would have found it challenging already to rescue locals are overwhelmed, and a bad situation is made worse — possibly even deadly.

Mountainous areas such as Swat, Kalam, Naran, the Galiyat, Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan have seen a rapid development of hotels and restaurants to accommodate the scores of tourists that descend upon them every year. “There isn’t parking space here, which often results in traffic jams,” says Muhammad Ashraf Khan, a local who works at the decades-old hospitality establishment Red Onion in Murree.

“There is an increasing number of trees being cut to make way for newer buildings and to increase the capacity for tourism, but there’s no parking plaza to go with it. It’s adding to an environmental problem as well as the issue of limited space.”

There is little effort from the government to control the number of people heading to these areas. In July last year, hundreds of vehicles were left stranded on the Karakoram Highway when landslides and heavy rainfall brought all of the movement on the all-important road to a halt.

Landslides in the mountainous regions are not unusual and clean-up operations are conducted within hours. But whereas landslides previously largely only affected locals, truckers carrying needful items and a few vehicles carrying tourists, the number of those affected has now increased dramatically.

What happens when unregulated tourism meets climate-induced disasters? Emergency services that would have found it challenging already to rescue locals are overwhelmed, and a bad situation is made worse — possibly even deadly.

DISASTERS FORETOLD

Murree wasn’t the only instance where uncontrolled tourism came face to face with bad weather. In September 2020, hundreds of tourists were left stranded when flash floods following heavy rainfall killed five people, destroyed multiple houses, and severely damaged fields and connecting bridges in the Swat Valley.

Popular cities in the valley, such as Madian, Bahrain and Kalam were also cut off from the rest of the province, when over 12 bridges connecting them collapsed.

Aisha Khan, the executive director for the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change and the CEO of Mountain and Glacier Organisation (MGPO), believes that a lack of awareness about environmental issues as well as bad management on behalf of the government are to blame.

Murree wasn’t the only instance where uncontrolled tourism came face to face with bad weather. In September 2020, hundreds of tourists were left stranded when flash floods following heavy rainfall killed five people, destroyed multiple houses, and severely damaged fields and connecting bridges in the Swat Valley.

“[This is] what happens when you don’t have an understanding of climate change,” she says. She adds that, while the media is quick to promote tourist sites and show pictures of people having a wonderful time, people also need to be made aware of how to travel responsibly.

“We generally don’t sensitise people about respecting the environment,” she says. “We just make [rules and regulations] so they look good on paper,” she adds. “The same is true for all other policies on tourism as well. Nobody’s there to monitor, to get people to pay fines, penalties.”

Disasters that result from an intersection of bad management and a lack of preparedness, coupled with an extreme weather event — of which there are increasing numbers around the world — and a large number of tourists, affect locals dearly in the aftermath as well.

“I’ve been working in Murree since the early 1990s and only in the past five to seven years has tourism in Murree been operational almost year-round,” says Ashraf. “A major reason for that was the development of the Murree Expressway, which made it easier for people to come here.”

The early coronavirus days were difficult enough for individuals such as Ashraf, who rely on tourism. Things were only starting to go back to normal, he says, but then the calamity happened. “And since then, tourists have stopped coming to Murree again,” he says.

As conversation around the Murree disaster continued, many painted locals as villains who raised room prices and closed the doors. “There was a social media campaign [#boycottmurree] that affected us badly,” says Ashraf. “It was in response to news reports of several guest houses raising their rates dramatically on the night when people were stranded. That may be true, but there were also many others who opened the doors of their establishment and provided shelter. But all of us are now collectively having to pay the price for the actions of a few.”

Instead of placing blame on the locals or the individuals who ended up in Murree, the focus should be on better management, understanding weather patterns and taking steps to respond to them.

CHANGING WITH THE CLIMATE

Add climate change to the mix of bad management and you get a recipe for further disasters.

Celebrated mountaineer Sirbaz Khan, who is the first and only Pakistani to have done over nine 8,000m mountain summits, has observed significant change in the climate of the Karakoram and Himalayas. Sirbaz says that snow has started melting early in Hunza, and this would result in greater melt in the summer.

He explains that the snow that would accumulate on the mountains in the winter would normally melt in the summer and replenish the streams and rivers, providing drinking water. “But the snow and ice has been melting faster than before in the winter, which is unprecedented,” he says.

“This will most likely create a major water issue in the summer,” says Samya Mirza, an adventure sportswoman based in Hunza and who, along with her husband, accomplished Pakistani mountaineer Mirza Baig, are setting up their own guest house in the area called Karakoram Heights. “We may not have enough drinking water.”

This is a concern shared by several locals. They are very worried about what this means for the availability of drinking water for them, let alone the thousands who visit every year.

“One of the biggest signs of climate change for us is that summers have become very hot,” says Mirza. Hailing from the incredibly remote Shimshal Valley in Gilgit-Baltistan, home to some of Pakistan’s finest high-altitude mountaineers and high-altitude porters, adapting to the elements is something Mirza and the residents of Shimshal have done for generations. That’s how they’ve managed to survive in the valley.

“The flooding that took place in the summer was beyond our imagination,” says Mirza, referring to a landslide, GLOF and flash floods caused by continuous rainfall in Gilgit-Baltistan in July 2021. “It was quite dangerous. It’s been raining more than usual in the summer and, because of that, the roads get blocked and become inaccessible.”

Accessible only by a single-track road — that took over 10 years to make due to the extremely difficult mountainous terrain, and which is constantly at risk of being shut down due to landslides — the Shimshal Valley has been at risk due to climate change for decades, particularly from melting glaciers.

The vista is breathtakingly beautiful. You’re surrounded by snow-capped peaks, even in the summer, and can see the icy beauty of the four glaciers that threaten the valley. Of these, the Khurdopin Glacier is the most sought-after as a climbing destination. The glacier has a history of forming glacial lakes. In 1905 and 1964, a glacial lake that had formed due to the melting of the glacier burst through the glacial dam and caused considerable damage to infrastructure downstream in the Hunza District, beyond the city of Gilgit.

As of October 2016, the glacier has been advancing rapidly and a large lake pooled up by December 2017 poses a real and omnipresent threat. The glacier has progressed abnormally and has blocked the Shimshal River. Every year, officials visit the site to note the progress. They are paying attention because a ‘Glacial Lake Outburst Flood’ (GLOF) would devastate the village and the larger district overall, affecting the lives of thousands of locals and those of stranded tourists alike.

“GLOF are sudden events, which can release millions of cubic metres of water and debris, leading to the loss of lives, property and livelihoods,” notes the UNDP. It points out that it assesses that 33 out of over 3,000 glacial lakes in Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are prone to a hazardous GLOF event.

A cursory look at the causes of the formation of glacial lakes point overwhelmingly to rising temperatures. While decades earlier, they could also be attributed to rainfall, for the past several years, climate change has been the driving force.

Sirbaz has been observing the Shisper Glacier from the time he was barely 13. He was also a member of the United Nations GLOF team, dispatched to observe and monitor the movement and the surge of the glacier. “The Shisper Glacier has moved more than any other glacier in the Karakoram,” he says. “In one year or so, it moved over 1.5 to two kilometres.”

It’s a development that shook Sirbaz. “It’s only when you see something like that with your own eyes that the reality of climate change really sinks in,” he says. “Not just Pakistan, the whole world is affected by it.”

Sirbaz gives the example of his former climbing partner and mentor Ali Bhai, or Ali Sadpara as the world knows him. The accomplished and celebrated Pakistani mountaineer died while on his second attempt to summit K2 in the winter. “The turn of the weather on top was completely unexpected,” Sirbaz says. “It was a very hard lesson for us.”

But Aisha believes that planning can ensure we are prepared in the event of a disaster. “All you can do is make sure that there are early warning systems and an evacuation plan, and train the local community to know how to behave,” she adds. “You do community-based disaster management activities to build their capacity to respond with more responsibility.”

Mirza points out that while there hasn’t yet been a major GLOF event, glacier surges are more common, where glaciers move faster and can result in an overflow of water, causing damage to property and infrastructure — but on a smaller scale.

The most recent case of a glacier surge that affected the lives of both residents and tourists was at the Shisper Glacier. It has been surging since 2018 and blocked the river of the Muchuhar Glacier to form an ice-dammed lake. In 2020, it surged and breached again, causing damage to some property.

At the time, the Hunza meteorological station recorded a noteworthy rise in temperature, which caused a significant part of the glacier to melt and engorge the lake. While water continues to seep out of the lake, thanks to the dam being reinforced with debris, the risk of it bursting has been mitigated… for now.

But it’s not just the rising heat that is a cause for concern. Unpredictable rainfall has also affected the infrastructure of an otherwise precarious topography.

The formation of the Attabad Lake — which submerged many villages and cut off the Karakoram Highway between Attabad and Gulmit in 2010 — was caused by sudden rainfall that triggered a massive landslide.

“The flooding that took place in the summer was beyond our imagination,” says Mirza, referring to a landslide, GLOF and flash floods caused by continuous rainfall in Gilgit-Baltistan in July 2021. “It was quite dangerous. It’s been raining more than usual in the summer and, because of that, the roads get blocked and become inaccessible.”

As such climate incidents become all the more prevalent, there is a need for more efforts such as the United Nations’ efforts for GLOF-risk reduction in northern Pakistan.

THE UNPREDICTABLE MOUNTAINS

Like many mountain men in the tourism and hospitality industry, Mirza is also a mountaineer and knows more than a thing or two about the mountains and mountaineering. But climate change has impacted mountaineering greatly, Mirza says. “The summers have become way hotter than before…The temperature is now more severe and the melting of snow and ice in the mountains is taking place at a faster rate.”

It’s made planning expeditions harder and more expensive. “When there is less snow, there is less chance of an avalanche, unless it’s a serac fall that causes an avalanche,” Mirza says. “[However] if there is less snow there is more rockfall. If there hasn’t been much snowfall in the winters, that means there are more exposed rocks. [When the water from the] melting ice and snow water goes into the cracks of unstable rocks, it causes a rockfall. But, due to climate change, you never know what the weather pattern will be.”

Unpredictable weather patterns at high altitude are proving to be a problem in both the Himalayan and the Karakoram ranges. “We used to plan everything one week in advance using the weather forecast available to us,” says Sirbaz about mountaineering expeditions. “But now, in spite of the planning, within a couple of days, the weather will change. It’s become very unpredictable. Yes, it makes this [mountaineering] more dangerous.”

Sirbaz gives the example of his former climbing partner and mentor Ali Bhai, or Ali Sadpara as the world knows him. The accomplished and celebrated Pakistani mountaineer died while on his second attempt to summit K2 in the winter. “The turn of the weather on top was completely unexpected,” Sirbaz says. “It was a very hard lesson for us.”

The increasing melt in the mountains have affected Mirza's expeditions and put his sister’s life at risk as well. “If there is snow in the mountains, if there is abnormal snowfall, it’s harder to secure the ropes in deep snow,” he explains. “Fresh snow is wet snow in the summers and it’s very dangerous, it can cause avalanches. If you come under it you can die immediately.

“The impact of climate change is the increase in exposed rocks and rockfall,” he adds. “On K2, from Camp One to the Black Pyramid, the area is prone to heavy rockfall.”

Last year, his sister, celebrated mountaineer and the first Pakistani woman to climb Everest, Samina Baig, was attempting to summit K2, when a close brush with death due to a heavy, rocky, dangerous avalanche led her and her team to abandon their quest.

“Samina and her group barely escaped with their lives and [Samina’s expedition-mate] Arshad’s helmet broke from the impact,” says Mirza. Last year, a mixed avalanche in K2 also claimed the life of Scottish climber Rick Allen, who was a very good friend of the Mirzas.

Climate change is making mountaineering, an already high-risk sport, even more dangerous. This is an issue faced across the world, from the Karakoram to the Alps — increasing avalanches, falling boulders and unstable ground have made it hard to climb. And it’s only going to get worse.

It should give some pause to Pakistan’s planners who have often used mountaineering expeditions as centrepieces of their showcasing of northern Pakistan as a global tourism destination.

MINDFUL DEVELOPMENT

As a passionate environmentalist who’s been visiting the north on and off for the past 20 years, Aisha can see a once-thriving ecosystem become a victim of both natural and man-made changes — none for the better.

“In the mountain areas you notice the change,” she says. “Areas that were heavily glaciated are now less glaciated. Areas where there were no water or lake formations, now have them,” she says.

Every year when Aisha returns, she and her fellow trekkers have to change routes because the landscape keeps changing. “Now, I think that’s going to get further accelerated because we’ve built a road up to almost the mouth of the Baltoro Glacier,” she says.

This kind of infrastructure development, making it easier for a large number of people to access previously remote areas, is contributing to environmental degradation in an already fragile ecosystem.

“Earlier you had to walk for four days before you reached there. Now it’s jeep-able,” she says. The same is true for Fairy Meadows, she points out. Earlier there was no built environment, now they’ve built a complete hotel industry over there.

The more you allow emissions and black carbon, the more the melting of snow and caps will be exacerbated, she points out. “Unpredictable weather patterns can lead to emergencies,” she warns.

“We desperately need to regulate the number of tourists visiting these areas,” says Sirbaz. “The development that takes place due to tourism, such as the cutting off of trees to build hotels, directly impacts the environment. There should be a policy of replanting those trees or creating a newer, greener space to overcome the impact of that concrete development,” he says.

The development needs to keep in mind not only the needs of the tourists, but it must cater, first and foremost, to the locals.

ON THE LOCALS’ MINDS

The added stress of climate change is, in fact, causing a mental health crisis in the region, as explored in The Sky is Far, The Earth is Tough, a heartbreaking film directed by Haya Fatima Iqbal. In the film, Javed Iqbal, who has been working in an NGO for over a decade on maternal and mental health in Ghizer District, says that locals, especially those in high-risk areas, were prone to anxiety and depression.

“Imagine living with the impending fear that you can be marooned without healthcare, food and electricity,” he says.

The film documents the mental health crisis among the survivors of GLOF disasters in the area.

One of the worst GLOF events to hit the region was the one that took place in Badswat in the Ghizer District of Gilgit-Baltistan in July 2018. When the icy dam of the glacier broke, the water gushing out inundated the entire village within minutes.

“I couldn’t even salvage a spoon from my home,” says a survivor, Shahbano, in the film. She is a school-teacher based in Badswat. “For a year after the flood, I couldn’t sleep. When I would try, every sound would wake me up and I would get up screaming, thinking there is a flood and what would happen to me and my kids.”

She’s not the only one. Many individuals affected, whether they are adults or children, are suffering from anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and are finding it very difficult to rebuild their lives from scratch. This is a part of Gilgit-Baltistan tourists never get to see.

During the film we also meet Nusrat, a first-aid worker and resident of Ghizer. “The common perception about Gilgit-Baltistan is that it’s a beautiful place,” she says. “But sometimes it feels like people cannot see anything beyond its beauty. Those who come here, leave after having a picnic. Very few people know about the problems here.”

‘CONTROLLED’ TOURISM

“If tourism is developed properly in Pakistan, we can surely have hundreds of thousands of tourists at these sites every year,” says Sirbaz. “But we aren’t prepared for it at all — infrastructurally, or even when it comes to properly training locals as guides, in hotel management, rescue and disaster management etc. Before we get tourists in, we need to be prepared first.”

The future of the tourism industry is inextricably linked to the climate crisis. Climate change threatens the very places people want to travel to in order to take a break from their regular, cluttered, lives. Ironically, increasing tourism significantly contributes to the climate crisis.

According to Carbon Brief, a website specialising in the science and policy of climate change, around eight percent of the global carbon emissions are attributed to tourists. This makes the tourism sector a bigger polluter than the construction industry.

The initial Covid-19 lockdowns devastated tourism-dependent economies but it also gave the environment a much-needed break. Carbon emissions plummeted and wildlife returned to its natural habitat.

However, the economic benefits of tourism are also immense, especially for local communities that may not have many other means of sustenance. And, if done right, there’s an undeniable positive side to tourism — it increases awareness of environmental problems and can provide funding for conservation efforts.

“We, as a country, need to be very careful that, under the scenario of climate change, we need to strike a balance between preserving our ecology and opening up fragile areas for tourism,” says Aisha. “If we’re promoting tourism at the expense of the environment and the ecology, it might benefit people in the short term, but the long-term cost will be very heavy for us. Because climate change is going to degrade this environment further. How will these communities thrive if you take away what makes them special?”

Aisha shares that, 20 years ago, Lake Saiful Mulook in Kaghan didn’t have a double road leading up to it. “Earlier people had to walk, so fewer people accessed the area,” she says. The increased traffic to the lake resulted in well-publicised increase of eyesore trash in the area and pollution of the lake. The area is also technically a national park. There should be a regulatory mechanism in place that limits the number of vehicles that can visit at a time, Aisha adds.

There have also been serious concerns expressed, including on these very pages, about unmonitored and illegal hotel constructions right on the banks of rivers, making them vulnerable to flash floods in extreme weather events.

“Every land has a certain bearing capacity. If you exceed that bearing capacity, you are compromising the ecological integrity of that area. Climate change will just exacerbate that,” she says.

A climate emergency is here and tourism industries around the world are taking note and making changes. If Pakistan does not do the same it is, unfortunately, only a matter of time before another dream vacation turns into a national tragedy.

The writer is a member of the staff. She tweets @madeehasyed

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 6th, 2022