The Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) is an awe inspiring part of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region. Covering 11,000 square kilometres it is Pakistan’s largest national park, home to the most extensive glacial systems outside the polar region. Around 38pc of the total area of the CKNP consists of glaciers. Within its boundaries is located the country’s highest mountain — K2. The CKNP lies mostly in Skardu district. 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 K-2.

The first successful ascent of K2, which at 8,611 metres is the world’s second highest mountain, was achieved by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli (both from Italy) on July 31, 1954. They were members of an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio. The 50th anniversary of this historic ascent was celebrated in August 2004 when thousands of mountaineers, trekkers and tourists gathered in Skardu to mark the occasion. That is when the Italians came in and offered funding to implement the management plan of the CKNP.

This management of the CKNP includes the participation of the Government of Pakistan, WWF-Pakistan, IUCN-Pakistan, Ev-K2-CNR (a non-profit Italian scientific research association) and other Italian research agencies. In spite of the impressive size and grandeur of this park, the ecosystem is fragile and threatened by environmental changes. In 2009 the Ev-K2-CNR introduced a comprehensive research programme called the Socio Economic Environmental Development (SEED) project for the CKNP.

Last week SEED organised an event in Islamabad to formally launch their policy brief for water management in the CKNP. “We have to find ways to better preserve and use water”, explained the project director, Raffaele Del Cima. “We are working in a tough and challenging environment but have actively engaged local institutions and organisations”. The SEED project is going to work on a hazard map for landslides and will also make an inventory of all the glaciers in the area. Selected glaciers will also be field-surveyed to evaluate glacier mass balance and glacier length changes. “We would like to create synergies with other stakeholders while building the resilience of the communities to climate change”.

SEED has hired scientific experts like Daniela Giardina who spoke about the adverse impacts of climate change like floods (caused by excessive rainfall) and Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (caused by melting glaciers). “Higher temperatures in the region are also affecting the availability of water resources. What is needed is adaptation to climate change, which includes better water management. This area has the largest glacier deposit after the polar region — we must find ways to protect the water”.

However, due to the lack of reliable data, the SEED project had to call in experts from Italy to do the scientific research. The glaciologists are making an inventory of how much water is available in the glaciers while hydrologists are studying how much water is available to villages in the area. A water quality team is finding out if the water is safe to drink for the villagers. They have already started this work by collecting water samples from 20 locations and sending it to a laboratory in Italy for testing. They discovered that the water was indeed contaminated with different bacteria in places like Karimabad. “The contaminants were found mostly in the villages where there was a close presence of domestic animals and not in the high areas. There is also the problem of a lack of waste water disposal” explained Giardina.

A water-testing laboratory has now been established at the Karakoram International University (KIU) with help from the project. The students of KIU are now helping to carry out research in the CKNP. “They are studying the birds of the park, they are learning wood carving techniques, they are monitoring — on the weekends they are all out in the field collecting data and carrying out research” explained the Vice Chancellor of KIU, Dr Najma Najam.

Amongst the main policy recommendations of the project are to publicise the findings of the scientific community so that policy makers can learn from them and to increase awareness of the local communities on water protection and hygienic behaviour. For example, the communities should not allow their animals near their water sources and they need to boil the water before drinking it in the villages at least. In the end, everyone living in the high mountains needs to be sensitised about water quality, supply and protection.