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On December 11, 2023, a pivotal event in Dushanbe convened scholars, policymakers, and environmental advocates, reflecting a global surge in efforts to highlight the sustainability and preservation of mountainous regions. Organized by the Geographical Society of Tajikistan, this International Mountain Day initiative gathered national experts to evaluate the status of Tajikistan’s crucial mountain ecosystems…
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On a late-autumn morning in the Yaghnob Valley, where the path threads past stone ruins and sloping goat pens, there are no signs for school—but the direction is clear. A group of children, notebooks clutched like talismans, walk through frost-bitten light toward a building that may or may not still be standing. In these…
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In the Yaghnob Valley, the sound of splitting wood signals more than preparation for winter—it signals a dwindling resource, a daily negotiation between survival and scarcity. Where trees are few and winters long, fire is not a comfort—it is a calculation. For returnee communities living in a fragile alpine ecosystem, fuelwood is both lifeline…
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In the high ridgelines of the Yaghnob Valley, where snowmelt once defined the rhythm of life and stone trails held steady for generations, the mountains are no longer still. Across this fragile and culturally rich landscape, a new form of instability is emerging—frequent landslides, sudden rockfalls, and creeping ground collapse. Climate change has shifted…
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In the Yaghnob Valley, plastic packaging and synthetic debris are piling up in a landscape once defined by closed ecological cycles and natural biodegradability. For a community rebuilding after decades of forced displacement, the arrival of modern materials has outpaced the development of infrastructure to manage them. This is not simply a sanitation issue—it…
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In recent decades, a number of Yaghnob’s perennial springs and small streams have run dry, a phenomenon driven by accelerating climate shifts, soil erosion, and degraded land management systems. Where names remain on villagers’ tongues, water no longer flows. In Yaghnob, the disappearance of a spring is not just a hydrological loss—it is a…
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In a highland valley shaped by exile, return, and environmental fragility, livestock is more than livelihood—it is legacy. The flocks that graze Yaghnob’s slopes sustain households, link generations, and symbolize resilience in a landscape where survival is never taken for granted. Yet today, the very animals that once represented self-reliance are placing unprecedented strain…
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High in the mountains of northern Tajikistan, the Yaghnob Valley unfurls like a hidden mosaic—meadows laced with thyme, cliffs that shelter wild goats, and streams that pulse with snowmelt and memory. Life here is not abundant in volume, but in detail: each species, each ecological rhythm, refined by altitude, isolation, and time. This fragile…
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In the high-altitude pastures of northern Tajikistan, summer arrives not by calendar, but by movement. For generations, Yaghnobi herders have followed the rhythm of the mountains—ascending to alpine meadows in early June, guiding their flocks across familiar routes, and returning only as the cold creeps back in. These seasonal migrations, or yallaq, have formed…
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In global conversations about sustainable development, the spotlight often turns to innovation: green infrastructure, carbon offsets, policy frameworks. But in the remote Yaghnob Valley of northern Tajikistan, sustainability has long been practiced without labels—rooted not in theory, but in necessity and deep ecological knowledge. For generations, the Yaghnobi people have lived in this high-altitude…