:::::::::::::::::::::::::: [ABOUT US] 

:: Home

:: Shimshal

:: History

:: Organization

Rational for the "SHIMSHAL NATURE TRUST"                        

Until recently we have not felt the necessity for a formalized nature stewardship programme. Four hundred years of sustainable interaction with our landscape offered ample proof of the sustainability of community members' environmental practices. In the past decade, however, progressively greater access to, and interaction with, the outside world has threatened to both alter our community's traditional relationship with nature, and to remove control of that relationship from the community. Every year more of our villagers work or study outside the community, changing the balance of labor in the village, and upon their return importing down country values, agricultural practices, and expectations that alter (both positively and negatively) the way nature is perceived and used in the community. As foreign trekkers and researchers visit us in greater numbers, they too influence local practices, and may place stress on limited resources (e.g., firewood). We realize that all of these impacts are likely to multiply when the road is completed, and feel the time is ripe for a formal enumeration and evaluation of indigenous environmental practices.

        Far from a process of retrenchment, we sense in recent changes an opportunity for improved nature stewardship. Employment outside the community, for example, provides funds to undertake initiatives such as forestation; the introduction of seasonal electricity diminishes the demand for firewood; the completion of the road will allow scarce materials to be imported rather than harvested locally; and the formal training of Shimshalis in environmental education ensures the influx of new ideas and energy in to our traditional stewardship regime. All of this means that it is now reasonable to regulate certain activities, and initiate certain others, that would have been impractical a few years ago.

        The effort to develop a Shimshal Nature Trust is also a response to our experience with Khunjerab National Park (KNP). The park was created in 1975 after a brief field survey in 1974 by field zoologist George Schaller. The park's primary purpose at the time it was created was to protect the habitats of rare species of Asian mountain wildlife, especially the endangered Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii). In keeping with this purpose it was designated an International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Category II park, defined as including "one or several ecosystems not materially altered by human use" which visitors may be allowed to enter "under special conditions for inspirational, educative, cultural and recreative uses". The park's 2300 square kilometer area has been interpreted by administrators to include most of Shimshal's pastoral territory, as well as the communal pastures of eight other villages. However, as the rigid standards of a Category II Park have not yet been enforced we continue to graze our pastures as always. In the late 1980s Pakistan's National Council for Conservation of Nature (NCCN) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) began preparing a new plan for park management, which promised to halt villagers' "illegal" grazing within park boundaries. Other affected communities have been willing to accept (but have not yet received) compensation for their loss of access to traditional pastures. We alone are unwilling to relinquish access to our pastures under any circumstances, a position we justify by (a) emphasizing the great size of the territory under threat of appropriation, our exceptional economic reliance on herding, and a corresponding lack of access to the economic opportunities provided to other communities by their proximity to the Karakoram Highway; and by (b) outlining our community's historical and current symbolic attachment to parts of the territory under threat. We were not consulted in the delineation of the park boundaries, in the definition of park regulations and land-use restrictions, or in the details of park management. Although we have succeeded so far in resisting park management of our main pastures, we greatly resent the continued threat of external control of our environment, and fear that such external control would jeopardize both our cherished culture and the very nature the park was meant to protect. Recent evidence that endangered wildlife is more plentiful in Shimshal territory than in areas currently under park management validates our fears, and legitimizes our community's ambivalence towards the park.

        The Pakistani government, in cooperation with IUCN, is presently developing a management plan for The Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP), the proposed extent of which also includes much of Shimshal territory. Although all indications are that the parties involved have learned from the problems of KNP, and have decided to adopt a community-based planning and management procedure, we nevertheless feel that our culture and natural surroundings will be best served by a proactive nature stewardship programme that emerges from Shimshal's specific context, and which is designed entirely by us. While we appreciate recent efforts by external agencies to develop community-based nature conservation projects, our evaluations of such projects as the Bar Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, and Khaiber's Village Organization-Based Conservation Management Programme, suggest that it is not enough that external initiatives be managed locally; rather, a culturally and contextually-sensitive nature stewardship programme should be developed and initiated, as well as managed, from within the community.

        In keeping with this emphasis on local context, we have decided to build our Shimshal Nature Trust around a broad definition of environment, which includes socio-cultural and ecological components in relationship with each other. The trust, accordingly, has five main programmes, outlined briefly in Part 3. One of these, the Nature Stewardship Programme, is discussed in some detail.

2.2  Principles of the Trust

• To engage in tasks related to community economic, social, cultural, educational, and environmental development.
• To work as a link between internal (village) and external organizations.
• To supervise all development activities.
• To cooperate with all religious, governmental, and non-governmental organizations working for the welfare of the local people.
• To organize and strengthen common causes and efforts of village-level organizations.
• To avoid involvement in political, religious or personal issues that have no direct bearing on the management of the Shimshal Nature Trust.

2.3  Objectives of the Trust

• To struggle for the creation of a legal framework for the protection of the rights of the people of Shimshal to the lands within their territory (cultivable land, alpine pasture meadows, etc), which they have occupied and used for several centuries.
• To ensure the protection, preservation and proliferation of wildlife within Shimshal's territory.
• To preserve and promote those elements of the cultural landscape, and those cultural practices, which are declining due to external cultural influences.
• To frame policies and programmes for the sustainable socio-economic development of the community, as an eventual substitute for existing grazing practices.
• To frame policies and programmes for the development of tourism based on mutual understanding, respect for local culture, and a recognition of the rights of both tourists and the local population.
• To explore avenues for the development of waste land, and for the safe proliferation of wildlife.
• To bridge the gap between the community and the government which arose from the establishment of the controversial Khunjerab National Park
• To use environmental education as a way to promote, among Shimshalis, an awareness and understanding of the necessity to conserve the natural and cultural environment
• To organize debates on management and policy issues relating to the community's development and nature stewardship.
• To identify hazardous areas that are most vulnerable to erosion, flooding, landslides and snow avalanches, and develop remedial measures for their protection.
• To develop and present a replicable management model, based on traditional experiences, for the preservation and management of nature and natural resources.
• To generate income through the sustainable use renewable resources.
• To develop policy and programmes for the sustainable development of the community's women.