Conservation governance challenges in the Karakoram: Analyzing the institutional transitions of Central Karakoram National Park, Pakistan

Global commitments to conserve 30% of land by 2030 place renewed emphasis on protected areas (PAs), yet governance shortcomings and distributional conflicts often undermine both conservation and socio-economic development outcomes. This paper examines PA governance in Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP), Pakistan’s largest national park in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), a region marked by constitutional ambiguity, contested land tenure, and infrastructure-driven market integration. Using a historical institutionalist lens, we examine CKNP’s historical trajectories and critical junctures, institutional continuity and change, input and output legitimacy, and implications for co-management. We combine archival and institutional analysis of legislation and management plans with field observations, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions involving state agencies, park authorities, NGOs, and local communities in seven buffer-zone valleys. We find that administrative reforms and departmental restructuring shifted conservation authority to GB, while participatory, zoning, sustainable-use, and benefit-sharing provisions were layered onto a centralized, exclusionary 1975 legal framework. Input legitimacy remains constrained by uneven consultation, limited decision-making influence, and inadequate information for meaningful participation, whereas output legitimacy is weakened by limited implementation capacity associated with chronic understaffing, project dependence, and limited public financing. Dispersed implementation responsibilities and unresolved property and access rights concerns undermine both decision-making processes and governance performance, leaving co-management largely consultative and uneven. We conclude that co-management could be advanced through valley-level forums with clear decision-making mandates and representation, strengthened and trusted field staffing, sustained public resourcing, and transparent and equitable benefit-sharing. The study highlights how frontier conditions, historical institutional legacies, and valley-specific dynamics shape PA governance.