of Dushanbe near the border with Uzbekistan, generates large amounts of toxic waste gases that have been blamed for a sharp increase in the number of birth defects among people who live within range of its emissions. In 1992 the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan established a Ministry of Environmental Protection. However, the enforcement activity of the ministry was limited severely by the political upheavals that plagued Tajikistan in its first years of independence. The only registered private environmental group in Tajikistan in the early 1990s was a chapter of the Social-Ecological Alliance, the largest informal environmental association in the former Soviet Union. The Tajik branch's main functions have been to conduct environmental research and to organize protests against the Roghun Hydroelectric Plant project. Natural hazards: Earthquakes are of varying degrees and are frequent. Flooding and landslides sometimes occur during the annual Spring thaw. Environment - current issues: inadequate sanitation facilities; increasing levels of soil salinity; industrial pollution; excessive pesticides; part of the basin of the shrinking Aral Sea suffers from severe overutilization of available water for irrigation and associated pollution. Environment - international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Environmental Modification, Ozone Layer Protection Pamir Mountains Tajikistan is home to some of the highest mountains in the world, including the Pamir and Alay ranges. 93% of Tajikistan is mountainous with altitudes ranging from to almost , and nearly 50% of Tajikistan's territory is above . The massive mountain ranges are cut by hundreds of canyons and gorges at the bottom of which run streams that flow into larger river valleys where the majority of the country's population lives and works. The Pamirs in particular are heavily glaciated, and Tajikistan is home to the largest non-polar glacier in the world, the Fedchenko Glacier. The Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan lie in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province (GBAO) in the east half of the country. The northern border is formed by the Trans-Alay Range (Independence Peak , Kyzylart Pass ). The highest peak is Ismoil Somoni Peak () (formerly known as Stalin Peak and Communism Peak), on the north-western edge of GBAO. It lies between Ibn Sina Peak () (also known as Lenin Peak) on the border with Kyrgyzstan to the north and Peak Korzhenevskaya () in Academy of Sciences Range () further south. The southern border is formed by the northernmost ridges of the Karakoram Range, with Mayakovskiy Peak (), Karl Marx Peak