It won’t be false to assume that the lives of many Hindu Kush are predominately governed by the seasons and like the grizzly bears we somehow emerge from our hibernation with fresh memory slats each year—completely unaware of hazards which might affect our lives as a community. We (Chitrari) forget things quickly and each year we find ourselves dealing with the same problems which we thought we tackled last year, but in reality, our reactive nature always gets the better of us and rationality is lost somewhere along the path—until someone or something reminds us of our own incompetency.
Incident at Reshun is the epitome of how ruthless nature can get if we try to use the same strategy against it. To our learning, this was not the first incident of road being washed off due to erosion caused by charging summer river and ironically the same location was hit in the past and lands of poor people disappeared in front of their own eyes. The first thought which might come to the minds of the masses, is why despite knowing the consequences we didn’t bother to do anything about it. Perhaps it was something which can’t be foreseen, one must argue.
In regions like Chitral and GB, the predictability of nature disasters is not very difficult as if correct measurements, like early warning systems, are deployed at first place disasters like these can be reduced significantly with timely interventions. But alas, we are better at reacting rather than proactively eradicating issues at first place. Scientists have already predicted that by 2100 Hindukush could lose two third of its glaciers. Subsequently, millions of people would be affected by glacier meltdown. Unfortunately, nature is not even slightly reluctant to teach us lessons again and again if we don’t learn from these incidents.
While the world is building resilience against water stress related disasters unfortunately, we as a nation haven’t bothered yet to take this issue seriously. Our billion trees campaign may sound music to ears, but in reality, building capacity and resilient infrastructure that can withstand nature hazards should be our primary concern. Sufficient funding and large-scale coordination are also need of the hour. A detailed assessments to gather data and information against these natural hazards can serve as a starting point.
Zahid Nawaz
Islamabad.
