Languages are vanishing as climate change displaces Pakistan’s mountain communities

The 2010 floods in northern Pakistan are still a fresh and painful memory for Inam Torwali, a Torwali-Kohistani lexicographer. One of the worst humanitarian disasters in Pakistan’s history, the floods led to large-scale migration from the northern mountainous regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Torwali was among those who lost their home. His fields were flooded, forcing him and his family to migrate to the Pashtun-dominated Mingora city, 59 kilometres from his hometown in the Swat district.

The after effects of the disaster still linger. One of the most obvious is the threat to his spoken language – Torwali. “Youth who migrated to cities… are now speaking either a different Torwali dialect with many borrowed words from the dominant languages – Punjabi, Pashto, and Urdu – or cannot speak it at all,” he told Dialogue Earth. His nephews now speak Pashto, the lingua franca of the province.

“Climate change has caught mountainous communities unaware with no education to assess the enormity of the crisis and no strategy on how to cope with it,” Torwali said. This is exacerbated by the fact that the climate strategy of Gilgit-Baltistan portrays migration, and remittances from those that have migrated, as a positive adaptation strategy.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s climate strategy acknowledges climate-induced migration, but limits its adaptation strategy to things like better urban planning to deal with incoming migrants. Neither acknowledges how climate-induced migration might affect the cultures and languages of northern Pakistan.

Small populations vulnerable

Over 30 “endangered” languages are spoken in Pakistan mountainous northern regions. The terrain means that many of these languages are only spoken by very small populations, often in the low thousands. The terrain also makes these communities vulnerable to a number of climate-induced disasters.

Chitral district, which hosts over 500 glaciers, “experienced more than 13 glacial outburst floods [in the 17 years leading to 2021] displacing several households and forcing them to live in temporary shelters for years”. Gilgit Baltistan recorded 15 GLOF events from 1999 to 2017, in addition to the 2010 flood.

The knock-on effect of these disasters on the languages spoken by small populations is immense. For example, when a GLOF hit Badswat village in the Ghizer district of Gilgit-Baltistan in 2018, it forced the relocation of its Wakhi-speaking families to Gilgit city. Wakhi is spoken by only about 40,000 people and it is not the lingua franca of Gilgit city, where the new migrants had to learn to converse mainly in Shina or Pakistan’s official language, Urdu.

But Shina itself is also under threat due to similar factors. Muhammad Wazir Baig, a Gilgit-based researcher on languages, stated that many of his relatives who lost their homes in the floods of 1978 and 2010 have relocated to Karachi. “When I visited them last October, I found them all speaking Urdu instead of Shina,” he said.

Displacement of people, culture

Mass displacement forces mountain populations to learn new languages, and it also distances them from the geography that shaped these languages, said Fakhruddin Akhunzada, director of the Islamabad-based Forum for Language Initiative, which is dedicated to preserving endangered languages in Chitral.

“These languages evolved in specific environments rich with livestock, farming, rivers, snow, and forested high mountains – all of which are now at risk due to climate change,” Akhunzada said. These languages lose their value to the people displaced to other regions, he explained, and the displaced populations no longer observe cultural festivals, tell traditional stories, or communicate in their mother tongue. This leads to a gradual loss of proficiency in their native languages.

Samiullah Arman, who teaches at Edward College, Peshawar explains this as a fall in the “market value” of the language, in that it does not help people navigate their surroundings. “The higher the market value of a language, the more people will speak it, and it will thrive,” said Arman, who also heads the Language, Literature and Culture Department at Mafkoora, a research and development organisation working for the preservation of local languages.

Agreeing with Arman, Amjid Saleem, head of the English and Applied Linguistics Department at the University of Peshawar, told Dialogue Earth that displacement due to natural disasters is not just the displacement of individuals but rather of cultures. “When these distressed families relocate… they are compelled to speak the dominant language as their native tongue is rarely spoken… in schools and marketplaces… They quickly try to learn the dominant language to overcome their sense of alienation, and this way a language erodes slowly and gradually,” he said.

Spoken at home

Dr Rubina Sethi, a retired teacher at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar, emphasised that women play a crucial role in preserving a language, but the influence of this preservation depends on what children encounter outside their homes. “While the language may be cherished and close to their hearts inside their houses, its lack of utility outside compels them to adopt the dominant language” of the region to which they have been displaced, she explained.

Confirming this, Asmatullah Dameli, a researcher who compiled the alphabet of the Dameli language in 2000, told Dialogue Earth, “We prefer to speak our mother tongue [only] inside our homes… [it] is undeniable that a time will come that coming generations will not be able to speak it.” The Dameli language is spoken only by about 5,000 people, and – according to the Damel Welfare Society in Chitral district that works for the preservation of the language – around 40% of that population migrated to different cities in the aftermath of the 2010 floods.

Data limitations

Migration is driven by multiple factors, and it is difficult to establish a linear and causative relationship between climate change and forced migration.

Nonetheless, Dr Owais Ahmad, a professor of Environmental Sociology at the Sociology Department at the University of Peshawar, said climate change is the primary driver of migration from the northern regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, particularly after 2010. “People would do everything to survive another major disaster [and] feed their families, so they come downhill alone or along with their families,” he said.

Inam Torwali, in his research study titled, Future of Torwali Migrants in Urban Cities, states that 90% of migrant families have not returned to their home towns due to financial constraints. Muhammad Wali, a researcher dedicated to preserving the Yidgha language, an ancient Iranian language spoken by only 6,000 people, added, “Climate change has exacerbated the already dire poverty [in mountainous regions] and accelerated migration. Those with the means to migrate have already done so, leaving behind only those lacking the necessary resources.”

Just as the state needs to study climate change and migration, Arman said it should integrate the issue of language loss into climate change policies as part of a strategy to prevent further erosion of cultures. Saleem concurred, adding, “It is the state’s responsibility to take steps to include all languages in the curriculum and ensure they are taught to children of migrating families if it aims to preserve smaller languages.”

Fawad Ali is a freelance journalist and reports on a range of issues including education, with a special focus on the environment and climate change. He has worked for Express Tribune and Samaa Digital as a reporter and The Statesman as a sub-editor. His X handle is @fawadalishah84.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.