The recent surge in tourism — often referred to as “hyper-tourism” — has cast a shadow over Skardu once-idyllic haven. The influx of vehicles has overwhelmed the city’s already fragile ecology and poor infrastructure, creating significant challenges for the local population.To ensure that tourism remains a blessing rather than a problem in the region, a multi-layered approach is needed to ameliorate the situation.
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Gilgit-Baltistan government’s recent decision to lease out 37 properties, including motels, guesthouses, and nurseries, along with lands owned collectively by local communities, to a newly established ‘green tourism company,’ has sparked significant controversy and debate both in the public sphere and on social media platforms. By prioritising community involvement in decision-making processes and honouring their rights, the GB government can pave the way for responsible tourism
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The wider Himalayan Arc, consisting of mountain ranges that incorporate major mountain systems such as the Tien Shan, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Himalaya, and Kun Lun Shan Mountains, is ecologically a very diverse mountainous region with peaks and plateaux. Steep mountain slopes and deeply incised valleys, glaciated areas above the snow lines, deserts and steppes, forests, rangelands, and wetlands compose a region that offers limited space for mountain communities to settle in compact oases and vast areas for extensive forms of pastoral practices herding predominantly for 16 million yaks, and much higher numbers of sheep and goats. About 60% of the Hindukush-Himalayan surface is composed of rangelands and pastures.
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Climate change, neoliberal development, resource capture by the elite and the powerful as well as unbridled mass tourism have posed potential threats to the inhabitants, their society, culture, health, and the fragile ecology of Gilgit-Baltistan.
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Corporate giants use clever tactics to quickly make massive profits, but they don’t realize the climate crisis is caused by their rapacious exploitation of land use, water use, and fossil fuel, and their endless quest for profiteering is seizing our ability to breathe clean air.
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promoting real estate business in mountain regions should be discouraged as it may result in disfiguring mountain landscape, create ecological and civic problems, as well as mass scale displacement and migration of people
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Sports Tourism plays a key role in enhancing economic growth and social development in many destinations. It creates jobs and supports businesses in cities and rural communities alike.
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HAH Special Correspondent Islamabad: A book on studies of three major mountain regions of Pakistan has been published. The book,
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by Rozina Ahmed Debate over women’s right to property and inheritance in Pakistan, in general, and in Gilgit-Baltistan, in particular,
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After record temperatures and drought, swaths of Pakistan lie submerged, symptoms of a climate crisis its people play little part in.
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The scale, scope and spread of the 2022 floods have surpassed the super floods of 2010. The monsoon rains have created unprecedented havoc in all regions of the country stretching from Gilgit-Baltistan and KP to Sindh, southern Punjab and Balochistan.
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By Gul Hameed Farooqui A beautiful view of Oveer Lasht Valley in Upper Chitral now facing climate-change-induced danger. Photo by
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Akbar Ahmad and Noam Chomsky examine examine issues of race in America which engender different forms of violence and terrorism. While race is on the surface of society, understanding how it related to society’s deeper structures can help make sense of it. It is the failure to tackle race issues that is partly responsible for the turbulence in contemporary American society.
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There is a need to assess these risks and challenges, and their impacts on biodiversity, ecology and human wellbeing of Hindu Kush-Himalaya regions
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by Ali Rehmat Shimshali Have you ever imagined progress of a society, or a nation without women? To answer this
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