ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: As many as 50 paintings by students highlighting environmental and climate change issues were displayed at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) during the opening of the second Pakistan Mountain Festival here Monday.

The three-day festival has been organised by a non-governmental organisation, Devcom-Pakistan, in collaboration with the EvK2-CNR and the Seed project funded by the Italian government.

The paintings were divided into two categories: postgraduate and undergraduate.

The first three prizes in the postgraduate category were won by the students of Government Postgraduate College for Women, Satellite Town, Rawalpindi. The students were Zainab Munir, Sania Imtiaz and Sundas Azhar.

In the undergraduate category, Shumaila and Samia Noor from the Islamabad Model College for Girls, F-7/4, bagged the first and second prizes, while Nayab Farooq of Islamabad College for Girls won the third prize.

Speaking on the occasion, Mir Shahjahan Khetran, the managing director of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, said the international mountain day was an opportunity to create awareness about the importance of mountains.

“Mountains are crucial to life. Whether we live at sea level or the highest altitudes, we are connected to mountains and affected by them in more ways than we can imagine. Mountains provide most of the world’s freshwater, harbour a rich variety of plants and animals and are home to one in 10 people,” he added.

County operation manager EvK2-CNR Raffeale Del Cima said: “The fast changing climate is putting the food security at risk. If the climate change phenomenon is not studied properly it would risk the lives of millions of people.”

PNCA chief Tauqir Nasir said our mountain culture is very rich and it needs to be protected accordingly.

mountaineer Nazir Sabir called for appropriate measures to promote tourism and mountaineering in Pakistan.

He added: “We have the highest peaks but there is no proper marketing of adventure tourism and sport.”