1. The Challenge
Local people are right at the heart of an ambitious planning process to create national park in one of the most famous mountain ranges in the world. Plans are also afoot to nominate part of the area as a World Heritage Site. If accepted, it will be the first time one of Pakistan’s wilderness areas had been recognized in this way (Fuller 1994, High Hopes in the Karakurum).

The local people living around the high mountains of central Karakurum are as much a part of the ecosystem as the mountains themselves. Affiliation of these local people with mountains is simply linked with the survival, wellbeing and power. To ignore communities in any kind of resource management is by no means possible, as it would end up with opposition and conflict rather than to be part of environment. On the other hand, meeting the needs of local people with inadequate resources is the most crucial challenge for park authorities and the planners. Further, understanding the livelihood needs and rights of local communities, integration of communities as equal and legitimate partners in protected area governance is although an established phenomenon but legislation does not recognize the rights of communities living around Protected Areas1 (IUCN Pakistan 2004). In fact, current natural resource management laws are mostly outdated and elements of collaborative management were designed to promote resource exploitation benefiting government institutions rather than conservation to benefit civil society (ibid).

A number of important lessons have emerged which are critical to the process of implementing good governance in Protected Areas management, including:
• the need for real incentives for communities to adopt conservation or sustainable use practices that would otherwise see a reduction in their income or change in livelihoods;
• the critical importance of understanding and adapting to the local social context, and working with local institutions and processes;
• the value of shifting management responsibility to the institutions closest to the resources; and
• the need for involvement of international NGOs as facilitators, but with the intention of raising local capacity in the long term.

Understanding the challenges identified and building on the lessons learned, HKKH Partnership Project2 has developed a shared understanding that,if a new Protected Areas (PA) is to be established across the vast Central Karakurum, different types of governance and different categories of PA may be necessary. At the same time there are many factors at play influencing the social context and people’s needs and objectives. It is clear that struggles for survival and well-being, identity and power are dominating conflicts and concerns over natural resource management. There are indeed challenges for implementing Central Karakurum National Park3 (CKNP) or any form of natural resource management here, but there are also great strengths amongst communities that could be harnessed. The critical issue was to understand ‘how’ and how long will it take and how to implement good governance in this context. It is positive step forward that planning and dialogue over management of the Central Karakurum landscape has re-started, backed with diverse technical expertise of reputed organizations and taking into account the regional experiences of implementing a range of PA categories.