Runyu Liang This Photo Friday highlights Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield, located on the India and Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir. Soldiers there are facing harsh conditions to ensure stableness of the line between the countries. On 25 December, the Indian Army announced the recovery of an army helicopter stuck at 18,000 feet. This ALH Dhruv chopper had …
Rina Saeed Khan LAHORE At his house on busy Mall Road in Lahore, environmental lawyer Rafay Alam runs three air purifiers around the clock, keeps his windows shut and stuffs towels into the gaps under his doors. Some winter days, when the city’s smog is particularly bad, “I don’t send my daughter to school,” he admits. “I am not going …
Mattias Borg Rasmussen and Jens Friis Lund How are we to inhabit a world ravaged by the Modern? To Bruno Latour, the triple crises of climate change, migration, and rampant social inequality share a common root: the increasing concentration of value in fewer hands. He describes the global elite’s realization since the 1990s that the fruits of modernity cannot extend …
By Catriona Luke Once again the Diamer-Bhasha dam, 40 kilometers downstream of Chilas, is on the agenda for development. It would be a catastrophe for the region, which could include the loss of 30,000 historic petroglyphs on 5,000 stones and 22 villages in the area. More than 170 kilometers from Islamabad as the crow flies, over some of the most …
Janita Gurung & Pradyumna J.B. Rana Twenty-five years after the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we have seen many successes in conserving biodiversity in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya regions. Given new challenges, concerted conservation efforts must remain a priority. This year marks 25 years of the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – an agreement among 196 …
HAH Correspondent GILGIT: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has filed separate references against the officials of Gilgit-Baltistan Forest Department for violating the timber policy and inflicting Rs156 million losses to the national kitty. The bureau’s spokesperson stated that NAB Rawalpindi’s sub-office in Gilgit has filed the references in the accountability court of the GB against the former Gilgit conservator Muhammad Ismail Zafar, …
Special Correspondent HUNZA, April 11: Hopes fading for the survival of three young tourists who were buried under the debris of snow and mudslide after an avalanche hit their hut at a tourist point in Hunza District on Monday. According to local people, the rescue operation launched on Monday evening by the personnel of army and district police, members of …
HAH Report The notion of water security in Central Asia has evolved throughout the years in an attempt to control an extensive transboundary river network which divides the region between upstream (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and downstream (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan) countries, writes Stefanos Xenarios, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Central Asia’s Mountain Societies Research Institute in his paper , “Current …
News Desk The snow leopard is no longer an endangered species, but its population in the wild is still at risk because of poaching and habitat loss, writes the New York Times quoting conservationists. The International Union for Conservation of Nature said on Sept 14, 2017 that new data taken through 2016 prompted the reclassification of the snow leopard from the …
PARIS: Asia’s mountain glaciers will lose at least a third of their mass through global warming by century’s end, with dire consequences for millions of people who rely on them for fresh water, researchers said Wednesday. This is a best-case scenario, based on the assumption that the world manages to limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees …
