Pakistan recently started building a new dam, the Diamer Basha Dam on the river Indus, about 180 km from the town of Gilgit. The dam is one of several dams that Pakistan wants to build to provide electricity for the industry and water for agriculture.

Apart from the need to relocate nearly 30.000 people, the project has also an effect on cultural heritage. The site houses about more than 30.000 rock carvings and inscriptions that will be submerged when the dam is completed. The Ministry of Culture asks a special budget for technological equipment to save as much carvings as possible and also other means to photograph, scan and record all the remaining threatened ones, before they disappear under the water by 2016. More than 50.000 rock carvings have already been recorded along the Karakoram highway in the Northern Area of Pakistan. These carvings contain 39 different inscriptions and languages.

This is a good example of the difficulty to match human and cultural interests in some cases. Although a lot of work has been done in documenting the carvings, loosing them to the water would be a serious setback for cultural heritage.

However, as demands for energy, water and other resources continue to grow every year, cultural heritage may become more and more threatened in its survival. Climate change can only add to this situation.

In times of prosperity it is much easier to save cultural heritage, but when survival dictates the day, cultural heritage will probably have to receed for primary needs. Or as the Romans said "primum vivere, deinde philosophari" (survival first, philosophy afterwards).