Pakistan has experienced a significant surge in tourism over the last decade and a half, largely due to regional security stabilization, rising average incomes, and an improved road infrastructure, bolstered by strengthened ties with China. Leading travel guide publishers, such as ‘Lonely Planet’, have ranked Pakistan as the 9th best country to visit in 2024. Additionally, Pakistan achieved one of the most robust recoveries in post-pandemic travel during the first half of 2023, with a remarkable 115 percent growth compared to 2019, according to World Bank data.
While tourism can boost a country’s economy significantly, the absence of sustainable practices can lead to severe environmental degradation and long-term socio-economic harm. Tourist areas also frequently undergo destruction of local habitat due to infrastructure development. This highlights Pakistan’s need for sustainable tourism practices. While many stakeholders have emphasised the necessity for a more sustainable approach in place of mass tourism, serious caveats threaten not only the future of Pakistan as a travel destination, but also the host communities in areas that receive a significant influx of both local and international tourists during peak travel season.
This article focuses on the Hunza district in Gilgit-Baltistan, the northernmost province of Pakistan, which attracts the majority of tourist activity. It is a remote, mountainous region known for its stunningly pristine glaciers and mountainscapes, adventurous trekking and mountaineering opportunities, and agro-pastoral communities admired for their unique culture, organic lifestyle, and warm hospitality. This region has, for the better part of the last century, mostly been disconnected from the rest of the world, up until the Karakoram Highway was opened in the 1980s to connect China and Pakistan and which now serves as the main artery that connects this region to the rest of the world.
While the government has made close to no investments in the area, and infrastructural progress has been slow, the communities that inhabit this region, especially where the Ismaili Muslim sect is dominant, are known for their self-sufficiency, comparatively high literacy rates, and seemingly low gender disparity. Despite this, these communities remain marginalised and socio-economically vulnerable due to remoteness and lack of economic opportunities, as well as being under threat due to a concentrated demand from the tourism industry.
Array of exploitative and concerning trends combined with a lack of education about responsible tourism, are collectively endangering the health of this region along social, economic, and environmental dimensions.
While tourism can boost a country’s economy significantly, the absence of sustainable practices can lead to severe environmental degradation and long-term socio-economic harm.
A growing demand for hotel stays in the last decade has seen multiple construction projects start in Central Hunza. Short-term economic greed has seemingly rendered owners blind. Mega hotels and resorts modelled around modern tastes have been erected to accommodate the scores of domestic tourists who visit the mountains every summer. However, due to poor infrastructure and lack of forethought, these hotel chains have nothing to gain during the off-season when extremely low temperatures temporarily force even the locals to migrate to warmer southern climes. Small local business owners and homestays in the town of Karimabad have complained that such projects take away business from them as they are not equipped with the same amenities that can compete with bigger hotel chains. Additionally, these massive buildings have blocked the expansive views in certain areas, effectively ruining the aesthetic value of such spaces for the public at large.
It is also essential to highlight that, most often, such hotels are owned not by locals but by wealthy investors hailing from more affluent parts of Pakistan. The upper management is brought in from down south, and lower-level staff is usually local and often paid low wages due to their lack of experience working with bigger chains. This exploitative dynamic has caused issues between foreign investors and locals who maintain they deserve a higher stake in businesses that cash in on the beauty and culture of their region. Such circumstances have fostered resentment among locals against foreign investors and eroded the goodwill of the local communities and trust in outsiders in the long term.
Attabad Lake, located in Upper Hunza, which formed due to a massive landslide that blocked the Hunza River’s flow and has now been transformed into one of the most popular tourist spots in the region, is also not without its issues. With multitudes of diesel-powered speed boats and jet skis operating on the turquoise-blue lake and potentially polluting it, the shore of the lake itself is punctuated by massive resort hotels hastily constructed without proper risk assessment for possible landslides in the future. In the absence of adequate waste management, these hotels are silently dumping sewage into the lake, a water body that, according to experts, is expected to disappear in another decade owing to erosion of its spillway.
Lack of destination management has also meant overcrowding, directly translating into increased resource consumption and growing waste production. There have been reports of trash being found in places as remote as Deosai Plains and as far away as the K2 base camp. Mountaineers, who bring tonnes of gear and packaged goods, leave behind trash ranging from plastic packaging to metal equipment to synthetic clothing. Locals are left to deal with this garbage, with many places in urban towns now being turned into dumping sites that are later set alight as a garbage disposal mechanism that poses environmental risks.
It is important to note that when sustainability is discussed, it needs to be considered a two-way street. Host communities, hotel chains and tour operators can only do so much when it is the clients who drive demand and consumption patterns and need to understand what it means to travel responsibly. Every summer season, multiple inflammatory video clips go viral of domestic tourists disrespecting local customs by either killing local wildlife or stealing fruit from orchards, wall chalking, and even catcalling local women. There have been complaints made by locals in remote valleys where groups of students visiting from premier educational institutes have brought massive music speakers and thrown loud raves, contributing to noise pollution in the area and effectively disrespecting local customs that do not allow for such disruptive activities.
Mega hotels and resorts modelled around modern tastes have been erected to accommodate the scores of domestic tourists who visit the mountains every summer, compromising host communities’ wellbeing and economic prospects.
All of these instances raise ethical questions for tourists who travel with the expectation that their comfort zones be recreated in remote places. In many cases, these tourists use scant resources that the locals sometimes have difficulty claiming themselves due to poor economic conditions and remoteness. Locals in Hunza have access to limited economic opportunities, tourism being one of them, and catering to extremely high expectations forces them to engage in environmentally damaging practices that threaten their livelihood in the long term.
Talking about solutions, there are plenty of sustainable models of tourism implemented in other countries. Local authorities in Pakistan need to take a long, hard look at the current state and trajectory of tourism in Hunza and seriously consider the impact and consequences of staying on this path without introducing sustainable measures to curtail damaging practices. On the other hand, tourists need to adopt a more local-oriented approach to their travels, supporting local homestays and small businesses instead of falling prey to the comforts of their cushioned lifestyles.