A spotlight on the roof of the world

The Hindu Kush Karakoram Pamir Landscape (HKPL) represents the “Bam-e-Dunya” (“roof of the world” in Persian), home to diverse and fragile ecosystems, various ethnic groups, and rich cultural traditions. Today, it faces unique threats to its environment, biodiversity, livelihoods, and way of life. We facilitated formation of the Bam-e-Dunya Network in 2018 as a forum to foster partnerships, exchange and learning across this landscape.

In 2020, since a number of face-to-face meetings and regional events could not be held, we launched a webinar series “Bam-e-Dunya: Unleashing the potential of transboundary cooperation for a healthy and resilient roof of the world” to sustain the momentum of the network, foster exchange of information, and explore new partnerships.

The first webinar – “Resilient Bam-e-Dunya: Untold stories, challenges, and opportunities” – focused on the rapid changes and broader change narrative in the landscape, post COVID-19 scenarios and implications, transformative stories from the region, and resilience building, with active engagement of participants from 24 countries.

The second episode – “Achieving food and nutrition security in HKPL” – was organized in collaboration with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF). It focused on the challenge of malnutrition in high-mountain areas, the opportunities for improving nutrition security, and the water–food–energy nexus for achieving food and nutrition security. This episode strengthened our partnership with AKF on issues such as food and nutrition security, ecosystem services, and climate change research and opened up the potential for collaboration with AKF country chapters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.