In a picturesque village in the Hunza valley, close above the gushing turquoise waters of river Hunza, and with a view of the 8,000 metre mountain Rakaposhi, in the Karakoram Range, women once had to walk for miles to collect firewood each day.
For the last eight years, however, hydropower has supplied the village’s energy needs, and life has gotten much easier, said village resident Mehreen, who has an electric stove, oven and lights, fitted with energy-saving bulbs.
“With the availability of electricity we have been relieved of such burdensome work,” she told Reuters. “The initiative holds great meaning in our lives.” The village’s community-run micro hydropower station — built in 2008 by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) with backing from the United States Department of Agriculture and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) — produces about 190 kilowatts of electricity an hour.
That’s enough to supply power to 144 homes in Ahmedabad and nearly 110 in the nearby villages of Sultanabad and Faizabad.
Such small-scale hydropower plants are proving a key way to provide power in remote, off-grid areas, while at the same time helping protect the environment.
Besides making life easier for people in the villages in Gilgit-Baltistan, hydropower has slowed deforestation — rampant in many mountain areas — and cut landslide risks as more trees are left standing to hold the soil, local people say.
“Now no one chops down trees to harvest fuel-wood,” said Ghulam Raza, an environmentalist who works in the area with a range of non-governmental organisations. As a result, natural forests in the mountains nearby “are coming back to life,” he said.
Social development activist Ghulam Sarwar, who works for the AKRSP, said hydropower had changed Ahmedabad from a village that “lived in darkness” to one where children could now study by electric light at night, and no longer miss school to help their families collect firewood.
“Now our children don’t skip school. They find enough time at home to study and finish their schoolwork even after sunset,” said Ali Gohar, a member of the community committee that maintains the hydropower plant.
Community leaders say if they can find the funding, they intend to expand the project and provide electricity to an additional 1,400 households in nearby Karimabad and Altit villages.
Shahana Khan, a development projects manager for the AKRSP, said small-scale hydropower was a natural for mountain villages with access to rivers, and a good way of ensuring access to clean energy.
A key, she said, was that such facilities “are owned, run and maintained by the communities”
The country could generate around 100,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity, through both large and small projects, according to a 2006 report by the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB).
Sixty per cent of that could come at spots identified in the river-rich, mountainous in the northwest, it said.
Jamiluddin, who manages development projects in Gilgit-Baltistan for the AKRSP, said his organisation, in collaboration with the AEDB and the PPAF, plans to install more than 100 small hydropower plants in Chitral district and Gilgit-Baltistan in the next few years.
Much of the funding, from international and national NGOs, is already in place, he said.
Jamiluddin said the plants would cut deforestation, reduce the carbon footprint and provide off-grid mountain communities with affordable, clean and reliable electricity.
Ahmedabad’s women, including Nasreen Gul, a 27-year-old vegetable farmer, say the benefits are clear.
“When we burned wood for fuel, the smoke from the stove would spread throughout our home and we would cough and feel pain in our eyes,” she said.
“Now cooking food and other chores in the kitchen have become considerably easier and stress-free. We use an electric stove as electricity is much cheaper and readily available,” said Gul who now has an electric iron and a washing machine as well.
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