The K-2-Siachen Peace Park

     Introduction

   Didima Declaration

   Sept. 2005 Update

    A Gathering of Forces

    Overcoming Challenges

    The Next Step

    Video

    Team

    Resources

    Email Updates

Moving from Concept to Reality

“Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears,

there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself.”

Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain, 1947.

Prologue

            It is a historical coincidence that Aldo Leopold, the first conservation advisor to the United Nations, assembled his environmental essays in 1947, the year in which India and Pakistan gained independence. When he died in 1948, those countries were locked in their first territorial war. By 1984 that conflict spread to the remote region of the Karakoram Mountains and it has persisted there ever since.  Hence, Leopold's aphorism, quoted above, still resonates with a clarity and vision that few could realize in his lifetime.  Indeed, indigenous traditions in Asia among various religious and cultural institutions have venerated mountains in a similar vein.[1] Mountains and the conservation of their environments strike common chords even among adversaries.  Whether such conservation is a cause or a consequence of peace, efforts to galvanize support must continue.

                Crises shape our perception of conflicts and provide opportunities for changing course. Such is the situation today –  throughout the world, there is a crescendo of pugnacious rhetoric on the one hand and striving for peace on the other. Such opposing trends reflect the desperation and ambivalence of our times and make the need for reconnecting with our common natural heritage all the more urgent. For the past several years, various constituencies in South Asia and beyond have been trying to follow this vision of environmental cooperation to establish a jointly managed conservation area or “peace park” in the Karakoram mountains. They have had limited success so far, but they persevere. Rather, they have regrouped and reconfigured their efforts to achieve maximum traction. This document suggests these efforts from diverse sources hope to proceed to make a Karakoram peace park a reality. It is a call for support based on both science and symbolism.