Pakistan

Background

The Pakistan Wetlands Project (PWP) aims to promote the sustainable conservation of freshwater and marine wetlands and their associated globally important biodiversity in Pakistan. The Programme strategy is based on two sub-sets of objectives. The first will provide the required policy, institutional, technical and financial framework and generate positive public support essential for the mainstreaming of wetlands conservation. The second involves the design and implementation of progressive, participatory management plans for four independent Demonstration Complexes, each chosen to be representative of a broad eco-region in Pakistan. The project includes specific mechanisms to secure financial sustainability and enhanced replication and proliferation of viable wetlands management interventions in a nation-wide, on-going wetlands conservation initiative.

Objectives

To promote the sustainable conservation of freshwater and marine wetlands and their associated globally important biodiversity in Pakistan.

Key Achievements 

Implementation on the recommendations of the previous Mid-Term Review underway. 

Draft Exit Strategy for Pakistan Wetlands Program prepared. 

Institutional setup established under the program with management of Pakistan’s wetlands after completion of the project in 2012. 

Field assessments completed and GIS models at the federal and provincial levels operational. GIS database being used as a decision making tool for the management of selected wetlands in four sites. 

Overall information of 225 wetlands of Pakistan available in GIS database. 

National Wetlands Policy approved. 

Planned trainings completed. 3000 participants from communities, Govt. institutions and academia benefited from these trainings. The project and government personnel have benefited from study abroad component of this programme.

A number of customized materials such as a brochure on Uchhali Complex, awareness raising posters in Urdu and English for World Wetlands Day; tree plantation and hunting ethics flyers and promos; documentaries on Water Fowl In Pakistan; Broghil and on Balochistan Coast were produced and disseminated nation-wide. This has led to recognition of three additional wetlands sites under the Global Convention on Wetlands. 

The implementation of conservation plans at the four wetlands sites in process in collaboration with local village communities.