By Karim Khan Saka
The Mountain Areas Conservation Fund (MACF) was created with a clear purpose: to provide long-term financial support for conservation in areas where local communities had taken responsibility for protecting their natural resources. Nearly two decades after the Mountain Areas Conservancy Project (MACP) ended, however, the Fund has become the subject of a dispute over who should control it and, more importantly, who it was actually created to serve.
The story goes back to the late 1990s, when the Government of Pakistan, UNDP, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), IUCN Pakistan, WWF Pakistan and other development partners came together to launch the MACP. The seven-year project, which ran from 1999 to 2006, had a budget of approximately US$10.35 million. It aimed to establish four large community-based conservancies covering more than 16,000 square kilometres, around 50 valleys and approximately 500 villages.
The areas included Tirichmir and Qashqar in the former North-West Frontier Province and Gojal and Nanga Parbat in the Northern Areas. The idea was different from the traditional model of conservation, where government departments controlled protected areas. Instead, local communities were expected to play a central role in managing natural resources, protecting wildlife and improving their livelihoods, with government institutions providing support.
That principle was at the heart of the project. Conservation, the MACP recognized, could not succeed without the involvement and ownership of the people who actually lived in these landscapes.
An independent evaluation of the project identified three key elements: strong local institutions capable of managing conservation, sustainable livelihoods and development for local communities, and supportive government institutions that could provide an enabling environment for co-management. In other words, government was expected to be a partner and facilitator, not the sole owner of the conservation initiative.
The Mountain Areas Conservation Fund was created as part of this model.
The Fund received approximately US$1.606 million from GEF, US$750,000 from UNDP and another US$750,000 from the Government of Pakistan. It represented a major investment in ensuring that conservation activities could continue after the donor-funded project ended.
The purpose was straightforward. The MACP would eventually close, but the conservation institutions it helped establish would remain. The Fund was therefore intended to provide those institutions with a sustainable source of financing.
By that point, communities had already invested years of work. Village and Valley Conservation Committees had been formed, conservation plans prepared and local institutions established. Communities were expected to protect wildlife and habitats, promote sustainable use of forests and rangelands and continue conservation work after the project ended.
The MACF was supposed to help make that possible.
The MACP’s Mid-Term Evaluation also emphasized that the project itself was a facilitator. Its role was to help local communities and governments establish and manage the conservancies rather than take ownership of them. That principle matters today because the current dispute is not simply about where the Fund is held. It is about whether the Fund is still being used for the purpose for which it was created.
According to concerns raised by the conservation communities, that purpose has been lost.
The MACF was placed under a Board based in Islamabad and supervised by the federal ministry responsible for environment and climate affairs. The communities contend that the Fund remained largely dormant in a bank account instead of becoming an active financing mechanism for conservation on the ground. They further claim that the principal and accumulated profits have grown to more than one crore Pakistani rupees.
The obvious question is: where has that money gone, and who has benefited from it?
The conservation communities say the Fund has not been meaningfully disbursed to the areas for which it was established. At the same time, they allege that office-bearers and institutional structures associated with the Fund have continued to receive payments despite limited conservation and development activity on the ground.
These allegations deserve to be examined carefully and independently. But even without prejudging the outcome, there is a larger issue that cannot be ignored.
Communities were asked to participate in conservation. They established local institutions, contributed their time and knowledge, and accepted responsibility for protecting wildlife and natural resources. Yet the financial mechanism intended to sustain that work has remained largely outside their practical control.
That raises a fundamental question about the meaning of community-based conservation.
The situation has become more complicated following a recent directive from the MACF Secretary, reportedly issued during a Board meeting, calling for the Fund to be transferred to the four conservation-area communities. Rather than ending the dispute, the decision appears to have opened another contest among government departments over who should control the Fund.
This would be an unfortunate outcome.
Government departments have an important role in wildlife protection, environmental regulation and technical support. But moving the Fund from one government institution to another would not address the central question. The MACF was created to support the conservancies and the communities behind them. It should not become a resource fought over by departments.
The four community conservation areas have now approached the Supreme Court, seeking recognition of their claim that the MACF should be released and used for the purposes for which it was established.
Their claim deserves serious consideration—not simply from the Government of Pakistan, but also from the original partners involved in the MACP, including UNDP, GEF, IUCN, WWF and AKRSP.
What is needed now is transparency.
There should be an independent review of the MACF’s history, legal status, governance arrangements and current financial position. The original project documents and financing agreements should be examined. The Fund’s principal and accumulated profits should be properly accounted for, and the communities for whom the Fund was created should have a meaningful role in deciding how it is used.
For the conservation areas of Gilgit-Baltistan, one possible solution would be an independent, community-led board or organization with strong representation from the concerned communities. Such a body could operate under professional financial management, regular audits and clear rules governing expenditure.
The Fund could then be used for the purposes that originally justified its creation: wildlife and biodiversity conservation, protection of forests and rangelands, strengthening local conservation institutions, sustainable livelihoods, environmental education, conservation monitoring and other community priorities directly connected to sustainable natural-resource management.
Government departments would still have an important role. They could serve as regulators, technical partners and members of an accountable co-management system. But the Fund should not become the exclusive financial resource of any single department.
The MACF was created because conservation cannot be sustained through short-term projects alone. The communities were expected to provide the long-term commitment, and they did.
Now the institutions created to support that commitment must also live up to their part of the bargain.
The question is ultimately a simple one: if the MACF was established to sustain community-based conservation, why should the communities that carry that responsibility have so little say over the resources meant to support it?
The original promise of the MACP was that people living in these mountain landscapes would become partners in protecting them, not simply recipients of decisions made elsewhere.
That promise is worth restoring.
The MACF should not remain a dormant bank deposit or become another source of competition between government departments. It should be brought back to life and used for what it was created to do: support the communities protecting some of Pakistan’s most important mountain ecosystems.
