Relief to Recovery: Building Resilience in Gilgit-Baltistan
By Salmanuddin Shah
Parts of Gilgit-Baltistan are grappling with recurring climate-induced disasters, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and disruption. The recent flash floods in Tali Das, located in the Gupis Valley of Ghizer District, were particularly alarming. These floods swept away a significant portion of the village, temporarily blocked the Ghizer River, and caused severe inundation in its lower areas. Over 130 houses were damaged, displacing numerous households who are now seeking temporary shelter as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Fortunately, no lives were lost. This is the third major disaster to hit Ghizer in recent weeks. Earlier, a flash flood in Khalti tragically claimed the lives of an entire family of five, with only a two-year-old surviving. Additional destructive events occurred in Dian village in the Ishkoman Valley and in Yasin. According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), approximately 800 people have lost their lives due to various disaster events across Pakistan since July 2025, including 45 fatalities in Gilgit-Baltistan alone. The situation remains fluid, and losses are expected to escalate as climate-related hazards persist. One critical lesson from these recurring disasters is that community-led responses often prove most effective. In Tali Das, timely early warnings from local shepherds enabled residents to evacuate safely. Similarly, the swift action of Karimullah Baig in Gulmit saved more than 60 volunteers who were working to restore a water channel damaged by an earlier flash flood. In Hunza’s Hassanabad, ongoing community efforts to manage a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) demonstrate the resilience of local populations in saving lives. However, the rehabilitation of affected households remains beyond the capacity of the Hassanabad community. Immediate action from government and humanitarian organizations is urgently needed to support rehabilitation and recovery in the area.
Relief agencies, local authorities, NGOs, and international organizations have initiated emergency operations, providing food, non-food items, and other essentials. While these efforts are crucial for immediate relief, transitioning from short-term response to long-term resilience is essential. A systematic and integrated approach is needed to help communities recover and prepare for future hazards. The immediate steps should include:
- Immediate Relief and Coordination: Life-saving interventions must remain the top priority, including search and rescue operations, medical care, temporary shelters, food distribution, clean water, sanitation, and psychosocial support. These interventions should be coordinated through local emergency operation centers and incident command systems involving the affected communities to avoid duplication and ensure maximum efficiency.
- Joint Needs Assessments: After stabilizing immediate needs, comprehensive assessments must evaluate losses across housing, infrastructure, health facilities, water systems, livelihoods, and environmental and risk reduction measures. These assessments are critical to guide evidence-based recovery planning and inform long-term risk reduction strategies.
- Comprehensive Recovery Framework: Based on the assessment findings, a coordinated response plan should be developed with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, timelines, and budgets. Such planning is vital to ensure sustainable recovery, particularly before the onset of harsh winter conditions.
However, these interventions are largely focused on communities affected by the recent disasters. The question arises: is this the first time disasters have gripped Pakistan or Gilgit-Baltistan? The answer is no. Mountainous areas, especially Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral, experience disasters on a near-daily basis, ranging from low-impact to high-impact events.
The future climate outlook, as per the IPCC 2023 report, indicates that Pakistan will continue to face significant climate-related challenges due to its geographical location and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Heatwaves, heavy rainfall, and accelerated glacial melt will exacerbate the risks of flooding, drought, and water scarcity. In such a scenario, mountain regions, particularly Gilgit-Baltistan, remain extremely fragile and require urgent adaptation strategies to minimize the impact on both people and natural landscapes.
Following are some of the policy and structural measures for long-term resilience and climate change adaptation:
- Environmental and Risk Assessments: Many development projects in Gilgit-Baltistan currently proceed without comprehensive environmental and risk assessments, increasing vulnerability and causing unintended ecological consequences. It is therefore crucial to conduct detailed evaluations of all ongoing and future projects by expert teams from government agencies and NGOs. These evaluations should include binding corrective action plans to ensure environmental safeguarding and risk reduction. EIA reports of strategic projects could also help guide the review of other ongoing projects and future localized climate scenarios in Gilgit-Baltistan.
- Hazard Mapping and Safer Habitat Planning: Many settlements have expanded into high-risk zones due to a lack of updated hazard maps and the absence of land-use regulations. Several settlements urgently require hazard and risk mapping exercises. It is essential to develop community-level risk maps, enforce zoning laws, and introduce relocation incentives for households residing in hazardous areas. Agencies such as the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat can provide technical expertise for hazard modeling and safer habitat planning. Localized habitat planning at the settlement level should integrate climate-resilient development, including community response mechanisms, early warning systems, safety signage, designated safe havens, housing guidelines, community infrastructure, and the introduction of risk insurance in collaboration with available insurance services.
- Green Building Policies: The absence of climate-sensitive building regulations has contributed to unsustainable construction practices, including high-rise buildings in fragile mountain ecosystems. It is therefore critical to implement green building standards and require independent design reviews for all major construction projects. Retrofitting existing structures to reduce environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions should also be promoted. Relevant government agencies, in collaboration with expert organizations, should work on the extension of Pakistan green building guidelines and the Pakistan Green Building Code 2023 to Gilgit-Baltistan.
- Protection of Natural Flood and Hazard Courses: Encroachments on natural flood channels amplify flood risks, while relocation policies remain weak and poorly incentivized. Strict enforcement of no-encroachment policies, coupled with adequate compensation and resettlement support, is necessary to encourage relocation from hazard-prone areas.
- Review of Sectoral Policies: Considering the ongoing impacts of climate change and future projections for Pakistan, all sectoral policies—particularly in agriculture, water, tourism, disaster risk management, natural resources, and overall development planning—need to be re-evaluated through the lens of climate change. Sectoral plans should integrate climate adaptation measures and disaster risk reduction (DRR) financing, in collaboration with the National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF).
The bottom line is that building a resilient Gilgit-Baltistan requires coordinated action from the government, civil society, and international partners, especially the agencies of the Aga Khan Development Network. With climate risks accelerating, investing in risk reduction, infrastructure resilience, and community capacity is no longer optional—it is essential. By taking decisive steps today, we can safeguard lives, protect livelihoods, and preserve the ecological and hydrological integrity of this vital region for generations to come
