Crossing the Internal Frontiers - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 182

the dusty scrubland, it was good for only goats and the collection of scraps
of firewood. The soils were sandy and barely capable of sustaining grasses
and shrubs, let alone crops. Today, there are fruit trees on the field
boundaries, and fields full of swaying finger millet or creeping groundnut.
All of this comes about through collective action, led, in this case, by the
local women's group, who had, in turn, been helped by an active and
enlightened local group. Put the farmers on the land, and it becomes
productive again.
People in the Mountain Desert
North of these drylands lies an even more challenging environment, the
mountain deserts of what is now northern Pakistan. The Karakorams,
Pamirs and Hindu Kush, at the western end of the Himalayan range,
contain two of the highest mountains of the world - the prosaically
named K2 and spectacular Rakaposhi. It is too far inland to catch the
monsoons that yearly sweep up the Indian Ocean. But here people have
carved out fields from rocky fans, channelled water from distant glaciers,
and turned barren and hostile mountainsides green over the centuries.
High above, alpine pastures support endangered ibex and snow leopards.
The feats of imagination, combined with locally adapted engineering, are
extraordinary. Without these people of the Hunza Valley, of Baltistan and
Chitral, there would only be desert.
The appealing idea of wilderness, where you can stroll with backpack
and remain in touch through satellite communications, is almost under-
mined by these harsh environments. In winter, temperatures plummet tens
of degrees below zero, and people may not venture outside for a couple
of months. The growing season is short and sharp, and in high summer
it can reach 40 degrees Centigrade or more. The infrastructure is poor,
and for centuries people have lived at subsistence level. There was poverty,
hardship and inequity. Over the past 20 years, though, the physical and
natural environment of these communities has been gradually transformed,
mainly due to the work of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme.
Members of the programme realized that huge potential rested in these
communities, if only village organizations and, in many cases, women's
organizations could be formed to address collective problems and opport-
unities. They have helped to form 1800 village organizations with 75,000
members, and another 770 women's organizations with 26,000 members.
These organizations have built new link roads, reclaimed lands for
farming, constructed irrigation channels from glacial melts, and intro-
duced new farm and post-harvest technologies. The World Bank says: