Environmental Health Risks and Gender in the Karakoram‐Himalaya, Northern Pakistan

Abstract

Many mountain peoples face water and environmental health problems. At particular risk is the health of women and of children who live in remote and marginalized mountain areas. Environmental health concerns are often associated with the waterborne parasitic and endemic diseases responsible for much child morbidity and mortality in the Karakoram-Himalaya of northern Pakistan. Poor environmental health and water-quality conditions affect child survival, and challenges to viable local interventions are severe. Transformations in women's productive and reproductive work have health consequences for children, and gender and household dynamics shape and mediate women's responses to environmental health risks. Significantly, these findings draw attention to the need for improved water and health policy, especially policy that recognizes different gender and child-care roles in mountainous regions of the developing world. Keywork: environmental health risk, Karakorarn-Himalaya, mountain development, Pakistw women.T h e critical role of women as managers of water and environmental health, especially in the Karakoram-Himalaya, has been largely overlooked in the academic literature. Studies of water resources, where available, focus on the functioning of irrigation systems in relation to securing and maintaining mountain "oasis" landscapes and agricultural systems (Whiteman

Systematic Review of Multi-Dimensional Vulnerabilities in the Himalayas

“…The sampled papers included in the systematic review were published between 1994 and December 2021. This study observes an increasing trend in the number and frequency of papers on vulnerability in the Himalayan region because only seven (7) papers were published during the first period (from 1994 to 2011), while fifty-two (52) of them were published in the last nine years (2012-2021) (Figure 4). Furthermore, a word cloud was created based on the keywords of the sampled papers included in this review.…”

“…The Himalayan mountain region is the source of Asia's 10 largest rivers and supports the livelihood of around 1800 million people downstream through water provision [4]. In the Himalayan mountain region, unprecedented climate change [5,6], socio-economic change [7][8][9], high population density, poverty [10], and environmental degradation [11,12] severely threaten the lives and livelihoods of Himalayan communities. Various methods and frameworks have been used to describe and assess the vulnerability of socio-ecological systems across the Himalayas to illustrate and quantify increasing vulnerability.…”

Understanding and Tackling Poverty and Vulnerability in Mountain Livelihoods in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

“…While men are absent, women and children take on household responsibilities, including both the productive and domestic roles in tending to livestock and agriculture fields, in addition to taking on work outside the home as labourers (Synnott 2012). The general increase in the workloads of women (resulting from migration and other factors) impinges upon their caregiving roles (Gioli et al 2014a), exposing women and children to greater threat from water-borne disease (Halvorson 2002). In recounting gendered experiences of change in Baltistan, Azhar-Hewitt (2011) similarly observes the transformation of women's workloads, noting that access to resources and liberties afforded to women in traditional societies are sometimes being denied based upon notions of religiosity and appropriate gender roles, imported in the course of labour migration (see Chap.…”

Glaciers, gender, and science

“…Despite their perceived remoteness, glaciers are central sites -often contested and multifaceted -experiencing the effects of global change, where science, policy, knowledge, and society interact in dynamic social-ecological systems. Today, there is a need for a much more profound analysis of societies living in and engaging with mountains and cold regions (Halvorson, 2002;Byers and Sainju, 1994;Bloom et al, 2008), including the social, economic, political, cultural, epistemological, and religious aspects of glaciers (see e.g. Allison, 2015;Gagné et al, 2014).…”