Gilgit Baltistan, a region famous for its breathtaking natural landscape and rich cultural heritage, is now vulnerable to climate change impacts. Nestled between the three mighty mountain ranges – Himalayan, Karakoram and Hindukush – the region is experiencing significant environmental changes. Already plunged into a relentless battle for constitutional rights, the people have face this existential challenge too.

Gilgit Baltistan’s indigenous knowledge is crucial for climate resilience.

Unprecedented flash floods, landslides, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF), and unusually intensive rainfall have disrupted the region’s agricultural activities and other livelihood options, thus threatening food security. Hosting more than 7000 glaciers and home to clean spring water, the region (Skardu) faced extreme water shortages in 2023 due to decreased water supply in Sadpara Dam.

More than 7.1 million people living in Gilgit Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are at a high risk of the adverse effects of climate change, according to a UNDP report. The recent Burge Nullah flash flood in Skardu has damaged over two dozen homes, and hundreds of kanals of land, crops, and trees.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has already issued GLOF alerts for the mountainous regions. According to the National Emergencies Operation Center (NEOC), a combined glacier melting and intense rainfall could raise water level in local rivers and streams, increasing the risk of landslides and flash floods.

The region faces rising threats from climate change, including flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods.

Traveling on Juglot Skardu Road (JSR) is highly risky as most of the casualties are caused by landslides.  It’s crucial to take collective action to combat the adverse effects of climate change before it’s too late. The indigenous people have lived for centuries in mountain communities and maintained harmonious relations with their environment. Due to the harsher lifestyle in mountainous areas compared to plains, the local population have developed traditional techniques and indigenous knowledge for survival.

These traditional practices are called Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) or local wisdom. The Indigenous Knowledge System are prolonged observations, experiences, and practices of local communities. They consist of traditional practices, folklores, oral traditions, beliefs, and activities that have been passed down through generations. A wide range of IKSs include traditional weather forecasting and traditional disaster risk management systems, as well as traditional land use practices and vice versa.

Indigenous people make predictions of weather, heavy rainfall, floods, and earthquakes by cloud formations, wind patterns, unusual movements of cattle, and the behavior of insects like when the ring-shaped worms that lie beneath the soil come out it’s a sign of flood threat or heavy rainfall. During summers, the cattle become uncomfortable and try to escape the sheds when there are dense rainy clouds.

Traditional disaster management techniques, such as artificial glacier grafting, offer vital solutions.

Other than summers, when the cattle get terrified, the natives foresee the prospect of earthquake. Javed Ali in his MPhil dissertation titled ‘Local Wisdom for Natural Disaster Risk Management: Ethnography of the district Upper Chitral, KPK Pakistan, quoted a statement of a local man during his fieldwork which clearly artifacts the credibility of indigenous knowledge on prediction natural disasters.

“Before the severe flash floods occurred in 2010, I was surprised to see plenty of scorpions and rodents fled away, the sheds resonated with moos and bleats of cattle. My father had forecasted a danger at that instant. He was right, the flood was upon us, it came and obliterated the natural habitats, and these insects and cattle had already fled away as if it was known to them.”

Moreover, the local people practice traditional techniques of disaster risk management during the summer season. The shepherds – called Norzee in Balti language – in these valleys take their cattle to high pasture lands and they are the first observers of flash floods and landslides. These shepherds are also called the kings of the early warning systems, who used to make fires and create sounds to convey the people living in the down villages in case of calamities. To resist the flow of water and sandy lands toward the fields, these people have made ‘Zgaq’ – protection walls – beside the rivers made of stones and shrubs.

Engaging local communities is essential for effective climate adaptation.

During landslides and floods, traditional water storage techniques are small check dams (Rzing) to store water for irrigation and small pounds beneath the trees for household use. Seasonal migration is another technique to prevent calamities and extreme cold weather. During summer the water flows in the local rivers increase, so they move to the highlands, when the winter starts, they come down to plain areas to prevent cold weather.  Traditional land use methods like terrace farming to prevent soil erosion and khuls and channels that divers glaciers and rivers water to agricultural fields are still practiced in the mountain communities.

Antonio Guterres, the UN’s General Secretary, said, “This is the era of global boiling, not global warming, which truly reflects the issue of climate change”.

Melting glaciers is one of the major concerns in mountain communities, which not only create GLOF events, but will also cause lower water levels in reservoirs in the future. ‘Gand Khswa’ (Balti word) and Ice Stupa are the traditional techniques of artificial glacier grafting, practiced in Gilgit Baltistan to mitigate water scarcity.

Ignoring Indigenous and local customary laws, climate change adaptation strategies cannot be effective in the region. The Government of Gilgit Baltistan is working with the collaboration UNDP on projects like GLOF I, and II to help vulnerable communities without any engagement of local people. Therefore, integrating Indigenous knowledge and local wisdom with modern climate change adaptation strategies is essential for developing resilient solutions. The government should take certain effective immediate steps such as:

Modern climate strategies must integrate indigenous practices to build sustainable solutions.

• The new generations in the region do not have adequate knowledge of traditional techniques. These techniques should be documented by researching elderly people as their population is dwindling steadily.
• The local communities should be engaged in decision making and climate-based projects to enhance adaptation and mitigation efforts.
• In addition to deploying modern early warning systems in the region, local shepherds who mostly live in high pasture lands should also be recruited by assisting high sound creation devices.
• There should be adequate funding for creating conventional glacier grafting and these techniques should be transferred to the new generations through proper assistance. International experts and researchers like Sonam Wangchuk and others should be invited to train the local people who know artificial glacial grafting.
• Finally, the new generations should be educated through awareness sessions in schools and other institutions on sustainable and eco-friendly practices.

The people living in mountain communities contribute very little to carbon emissions and global warming, they suffer the most just because of their proximity to the glaciers. Therefore, they have the right to climate financing and assistance to survive and preserve their unique way of life in the face of climate change.