IN the early 1990s, women in Pakistan’s northern mountain valleys began noticing something that officials in distant offices often discussed only in reports.
The forests around their villages were disappearing. Hillsides were thinning, grazing land was degrading and fuelwood was becoming harder to find. Under the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, local women’s organizations in Gilgit, Baltistan and Chitral started planting nurseries, restoring slopes and managing community grazing systems through locally rooted practices that often proved more durable than state-led interventions. A 1995 NORAGRIC review by K. Hameed Ullah emphasized community involvement in forestry.
To those women, the forest was never just timber or economic value. It was tied to memory, survival and a shared responsibility toward the land. That understanding still receives little space in Pakistan’s climate debate. Yet the larger lesson reaches beyond forestry. Communities often protect the environment more effectively when cultural values remain connected to it. Modern climate discussions focus heavily on finance, diplomacy and emissions targets, but policy alone rarely lasts unless it is rooted in the everyday beliefs and practices of the people expected to sustain it.
Consider the Kalash Valleys, where the Kalash community has lived for centuries in one of the most environmentally fragile parts of the Hindu Kush. Historically, their farming systems relied on crop diversity, seed preservation and low-input agricultural practices that researchers increasingly recognize as ecologically resilient. Water distribution from glacial streams has long depended on community rules passed through generations rather than written manuals. Their seasonal festivals, including Joshi and Uchal, are not only cultural celebrations but reminders of reciprocity with the land and livestock that sustain valley life. Very little of this appears in official climate planning.
Or take the example of the Bishnoi community. In 1730, in the village of Khejarli, more than 360 Bishnoi men and women were killed while trying to stop royal forces from cutting trees for construction fuel. It remains one of the earliest recorded acts of environmental civil resistance in South Asian history. Their sacrifice was not driven by scientific modelling or environmental legislation. It emerged from a moral and spiritual belief that protecting living trees was a sacred duty. Centuries later, modern environmental policy often circles back to ideas these communities already understood. Pakistan has quietly inherited a wealth of ecological knowledge and rarely treats it as national capital. In Baltistan, traditional kul irrigation channels still carry glacier water across difficult mountain terrain, where some modern systems have deteriorated within years.
Then there is Sharada Peeth, the ancient temple and learning centre overlooking the Neelum River. Between roughly the 6th and 12th centuries, it was regarded as an important centre of scholarship in the wider Himalayan region and across parts of the subcontinent. Today the ruins remain surrounded by forested mountains, suspended between history, neglect and geopolitics. There is an idea here worth considering seriously. If Pakistan restored Sharada Peeth not only as a heritage site but also as a centre for environmental and climate learning, it could reconnect education with the landscape itself. Earlier civilizations often placed learning close to rivers, forests and mountains rather than separating knowledge from nature entirely. Perhaps they understood something modern development gradually forgot.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in its 2022 assessment that indigenous and local knowledge systems are essential for effective climate adaptation. At the same time, many communities carrying this knowledge face displacement, economic pressure and the erosion of traditional practices. Pakistan’s climate crisis is no longer abstract. The 2022 floods displaced millions and caused losses approaching $30 billion. Heatwaves continue to intensify. Water stress is worsening while forests shrink and cities expand without planning. The country does not lack environmental expertise. What it often lacks is the political imagination to govern land and ecosystems in ways communities themselves can sustain.
The women in the northern valleys planted trees because protecting the land was woven into everyday life. The Kalash organized seasonal rhythms around ecological balance. The Bishnoi were willing to die rather than allow trees to be destroyed. Sharada Peeth was built beside a river and beneath forested mountains because knowledge was once seen as connected to the natural world, not isolated from it. These are not decorative stories for cultural festivals or tourism brochures. They are evidence that some of the most durable climate solutions may already exist inside traditions we have spent decades overlooking. The crisis is real. So is the knowledge needed to face it. The question now is whether we are willing to recognize its value before more of it disappears.
—The writer is a young activist who comes from Islamabad and now lives in Dubai.
