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World Soil Day 2025: A Call to Reimagine Housing, Soil Stewardship, and Climate Resilience in Gilgit-Baltistan

By  Syed Shamsuddin World Soil Day 2025: A Call to Protect the Land That Sustains Gilgit-Baltistan As the world marks World Soil Day on December 5, 2025 , its message echoes with exceptional urgency across Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) —a region perched on the frontline of climate change. Here, the fragile mountain soils, limited in extent and vital for both life and livelihood, are degrading rapidly. Accelerated glacier melt, erratic weather patterns, frequent landslides, and unsustainable land-use practices are all eroding the very foundation upon which the region’s survival depends. In G-B, only a sliver of land is arable. Soil is not merely earth—it is food security, cultural continuity, and the basis of settlement stability. Once damaged, it cannot be easily restored. This World Soil Day reminds us that protecting the soil is essential for protecting the people. Yet this year’s observance coincides with a timely development in Pakista...
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Gilgit’s Worsening Air Quality: Why Immediate Government Action on Clean Energy Is Now a National Necessity

By  Syed Shamsuddin THE Ibex Media report of 4 December 2025  laid bare a truth residents of Gilgit have felt for years: the city is sinking each winter into a suffocating blanket of fog and smoke, while most of Gilgit-Baltistan fares no better. As temperatures fall sharply in the mountain valleys, the atmosphere becomes a stagnant chamber in which every particle of smoke, plastic, or dust accumulates — turning ordinary winter fog into a toxic haze. This is not merely a seasonal inconvenience. It is a public-health crisis , a development crisis , and ultimately a national water-security crisis . And at the heart of this problem lies one simple reality: People burn whatever they can find to survive the cold — because clean energy is unaffordable or unavailable. Until this changes, no amount of awareness campaigns, bans or policing will deliver clean air. The solution demands direct, immediate intervention from the state. Why...
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Gilgit-Baltistan’s Federal Job Quota: Why Its Enhancement Is Now Imperative

By  Syed Shamsuddin Gilgit-Baltistan’s Exclusion from Federal Job Advertisements: A Persistent, Systemic, and Unaddressed Injustice The Gilgit-Baltistan Career Forum’s Facebook post of 27 November 2025 has once again brought into sharp focus a long-standing, deeply entrenched, and profoundly unsettling reality: the continuous omission of Gilgit-Baltistan’s (GB) quota from federal job advertisements issued by ministries, divisions, autonomous bodies, and state-owned organizations. Despite the constitutional spirit, administrative obligations, and moral imperative that mandate equitable—and now urgently enhanced—representation of GB in federal employment, the region remains persistently sidelined in national recruitment processes. This recurring exclusion represents not merely an administrative oversight but a structural and systemic injustice. It erodes foundational principles of equal opportunity, deepens institutional mistrust, and we...
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Woodlands at Risk: The Urgent Need for Energy Alternatives in Gilgit-Baltistan

By  Syed Shamsuddin Saving Woodlands, Groves, and Forests of Gilgit-Baltistan—The First and Most Crucial Step in Climate Resilience Climate change is no longer a distant or abstract threat for Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). As Rosham Din Diamiri rightly points out, global warming may be a worldwide crisis, but its effects are disproportionately severe for high-mountain regions like GB—home to fragile ecosystems, dense glacier systems, climate-sensitive valleys, and a population deeply dependent on natural resources for survival. Yet one core problem repeatedly undermines all climate adaptation efforts: the rapid depletion of the region’s woodlands, groves, and forests —a crisis driven primarily by the lack of accessible and affordable alternate energy resources. If this foundational issue is not addressed first, all other climate strategies will remain incomplete, and even ineffective. Why Gilgit-Baltistan Stands at the Frontline of Climat...
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How the New Digital Policy Benefits Petitioners and Their Lawyers: A Major Step Toward Timely Justice

By  Syed Shamsuddin THE LAUNCH OF the new, upgraded website of the Gilgit-Baltistan Service Tribunal marks a transformative step in addressing one of the most persistent concerns of litigants and their lawyers— the problem of prolonged, and often inordinate, delays in the adjudication of service matters. For years, many petitioners have faced uncertainty, repeated visits to offices, and lack of access to reliable information regarding the status of their appeals. The frustration has been especially acute in cases that have remained unresolved for a decade or more. Among the longstanding matters are the appeals filed by teachers from the Education Departments of Skardu, Gilgit, and other districts. These petitioners maintain that they met all requisite professional qualifications, yet were subsequently removed from service on the basis of alleged irregularities in the recruitment criteria. Their appeals have remained unresolved for m...
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Climate-Smart Greening of Gilgit-Baltistan: A Scientific Perspective

By  Syed Shamsuddin Harnessing Botanical Expertise for a Resilient Future: How Scholars like Professor Dr. Sher Wali Khan Can Guide Gilgit-Baltistan Toward Drought-Resistant Landscapes Gilgit-Baltistan—an awe-inspiring land of towering peaks, glaciers, wind-swept plateaus, and deep valleys—is also a region marked by harsh climatic realities. With arid conditions, erratic precipitation, fragile soils, and rising temperatures driven by climate change, its vast stretches of barren and undulating land remain vulnerable to erosion, degradation, and ecological decline. The urgent need to rehabilitate these landscapes through drought-resistant and ecologically suitable plant species has never been more pronounced. In this context, erudite scholars like Professor Dr. Sher Wali Khan , Chairman of the Department of Plant Sciences at Karakoram International University (KIU), emerge as invaluable assets. His recent international recognition...
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Clean Energy for Gilgit-Baltistan: A National Imperative, Not a Regional Luxury

By  Syed Shamsuddin Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) stands at the climatic frontline of Pakistan. Often described as the country’s environmental barometer or North Pole , this mountainous region hosts the world’s largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar zones. These glaciers feed the Indus River system that sustains Pakistan’s agriculture, hydropower, and drinking-water needs. Simply put, the survival of Pakistan’s water economy hinges on the ecological stability of Gilgit-Baltistan . Yet, year after year, GB faces an energy crisis of such magnitude that its people have little choice but to cut down trees to survive harsh winters. Firewood remains the default fuel not because people prefer it, but because clean energy is either unavailable or unaffordable . This has pushed GB’s already fragile forests to the brink of survival. Deforestation here is not a local problem—it is a national emergency. And that is where Islamabad must st...
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