The Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP), located in a spectacular region of Gilgit-Baltistan and covering 11,000 sq km is Pakistan’s largest national park. Home to the most extensive glacial systems outside the polar region; within its boundaries is located the country’s highest mountain — K2.

Internationally renowned for its world-class mountaineering and trekking opportunities, the park includes 60 peaks over 7,000m, including Gasherbrum, Broad Peak and Masherbrum. This cluster of peaks attracts 60 to 70 international mountaineering expeditions each year and hundreds of trekkers visit the park during the summer months. Although the park was established in 1993, it remained largely a park on paper with the military controlling the management until the 50th celebration of the first ascent of K2 in 2004. That is when the Italians came in and offered funding to implement the management plan of the CKNP, given that it was two — Italians Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli — who completed the first ascent of K2 in 1954.

With the support of Italian research in the last five years, the official management plan for the CKNP has now become active. Unfortunately, there are several complaints about this new management. Visitors say the information maps given out by the CKNP are all wrong and the entry fee (a steep $100 for each foreign trekker), that is claimed to be “utilised by the park authorities for key services and waste management in the park” according to the Park Directorate of the CKNP, is not being used for proper management.

Discarded climbing gear and human waste threatens the sanctity of the Karakoram

According to the German trekker, Michel Bleek, who has been organising groups of trekkers from Germany to visit this area every summer since 1985, “We don’t mind paying the entry fee as long as we know they are using it to improve the park. But this year, for example, we paid $900 as entry fee for our group of nine at Askole (the village that marks one of the entry points to the CKNP) and were given maps, which turned out to be a joke as they were all wrong. Our group was trekking to Hisper glacier and the designated camp areas we visited had garbage like used tinned cans and discarded packets lying around, plus there were no proper facilities there”. Under the new management plan, three registration centres have been set up in Askole, Hushey and Hisper villages in order to give information, receive visitors, collect visitors’ information and entry fees. At these registration centres, before entering the CKNP, every visitor has to complete the visitor registration form and pay the entrance fee. In Bleek’s opinion, “they should first improve the camps and then charge us for the camp sites, as is done in countries abroad.”

Last year he took a group of German trekkers for the world famous trek to Concordia and says, “Earlier they had installed a good system in all the three different camps on the trek — there were clean toilet facilities and even a solar lighting system. But then in September 2013, I discovered that the first camp was ruined; the washing area/toilets were destroyed and someone had stolen the solar system. There was rubbish strewn around; so clearly there is no caretaker looking after these camps. The second camp was a bit better but again the solar system had been stolen.” At base camp K2 (where the army helicopters often land) he noted dozens of empty petrol containers lying around and says that the army checkpoint was also full of garbage. “When Europeans and other visitors come here for trekking they are looking for a pollution free environment. It is the park authorities’ responsibility to ensure a clean environment for visitors.”

The Italians on the other hand, claim that “Over the years several tons of garbage was burned by the incinerator in Askole, toilets were installed at different Baltoro campsites with relative disposal of human waste that was removed and transported to a suitable place for decomposition. Dozens of rescue operations were carried out …” This is from a note sent by the President of EvK2CNR, Agostino Da Polenza, who recently visited the K2 base camp. EvK2CNR is the Italian scientific organisation that supports the CKNP. He explains that the “EvK2CNR, for a few years, has spent some money on a Pakistani and Italian project devoted to the creation of Central Karakoram National Park, for technical training of a group of rescuers who stay in Concordia from May to the end of August. Of course, while they are there they clean and collect the rubbish that the less ‘honourable’ climbers, the self-assured but also negligent agencies and the bearers — the least guilty of these three — leave around. The tour operators are supposed to transport and dispose of all the garbage discarded by their tour groups. “It is in fact the responsibility of the trekkers and climbers not to leave behind any rubbish; which is the established norm/code of conduct for all mountaineers and trekkers all over the world,” explains Aftab Rana, president of the Sustainable Tourism Foundation, an NGO that has been working in the Gilgit-Baltistan region for almost a decade now. But since it is tedious to carry and expensive to hire extra porters to bring back all the rubbish, a lot of it is left behind. “To keep their costs down tour operators often toss it into the glaciers or just leave it at the camps. The solution is not to just take money from trekkers/mountaineers but to devise a proper mechanism with the local communities trained to be custodians of the area. They already serve as porters/cooks/guides and can be trained to keep the area clean as well,” he says. “If you want to make the system work, then give the local community the main role. If you keep charging foreign trekkers, the few that come here will stop coming as well unless their money is used for a good purpose.”

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 10th, 2014