Chitral, Pakistan - June 5 2009

CAMAT [Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism] celebrated Worldwide Day for Responsible Tourism, June 2nd, 2009, in Mountain Inn, Chitral town with a goal to create awareness about “Tourism and Water Resources: Impacts, Responsibilities and Solutions with a Future”. Scholars, religious leadership, NGO representatives, members of Kalash and Khow communities presented papers on the following themes:

• The impacts of tourism development on water resources
• Without water no tourism is possible
• How to preserve and enhance water resources e.g. lake, ocean, river, waterfalls etc. by responsible tourism development?
• Can responsible tourism development help improving accessibility for people with drinking water?
• Tourism in the light of Islamic teachings

Problems of water pollution were highlighted and concerns about receding glaciers in the Hindukush region were recorded. It was stressed that lakes, springs, streams, rivers and glaciers must be protected in order to showcase northern Pakistan as an attractive tourist destination in the future. If water resources are degraded, then the very basis of tourism will be undermined and serious healthcare issues involving jaundice, typhoid and diarrhea etc will surface in the host communities. Thus major responsibilities, as the forum pointed out, lie with tourism institutions, hotel owners, transporters, guides and other primary tourism stakeholders, who must fall in love with nature and work with a clear goal to protect it.

The host communities in the Hindukush region—in keeping with the pre-Islamic tradition—have to revisit the concept of ‘purity’ associated with high altitude and make it an integral part of the present-day ecotourism ethics. This traditional practice still exists amongst the indigenous Kalash communities. It is based on the fact that water flows to low land from high altitude and hence ‘upland’ is ‘pure’ not to be desecrated by ‘impure’ practices of material and non-material ‘pollution’.

Eco-hoteling is an essential component of tourism industry and construction of big structures on the river banks have to be discouraged or else workable measures should be introduced to check the flow of untreated sewerage water into the Chitral River and its tributaries upland. Hoteliers, tour guides, drivers and the diverse array of tourism stakeholders have to be trained in water protection courses and the wider communities have to be mobilized for the purpose. The message that there is an inseparable link between sustainable tourism and clean water resources has to be shared with the public through educational institutions, mosques/Jamat Khanas and other social infrastructures.

>>For more details contact Mr Shams Uddin - camatchitral [at] yahoo [dot] com
Related: http://www.chitralnews.com/LN149.htm