By 2003, the national and site level investment in wetlands was generally inadequate to meet the challenge of conserving globally important biodiversity. At the national level, the key significant drawback was the absence of an effective enabling environment that could encourage and sustain initiatives for biodiversity conservation. Key barriers to creating an enabling environment remained:
-the lack of effective and integrated policies;
-the absence of decision-making tools and reliable information to support effective wetlands conservation planning; -technical deficiencies related to skills and equipment; and
-the lack of general public awareness or political pressure that would favour wetlands conservation.
Few comprehensive decision support systems or management tools were available for regional resource planning. The scope of the GIS facilities in the PFI and Forest Management Centre in Peshawar, was limited to forestry only and not organised to accept data on other forms of biodiversity or socio-economic conditions in wetlands and their buffer zones. Technical capacity in almost every aspect of wetlands management tended to be inadequate due to the lack of resources for scientific and specialised wetlands management training, appropriate equipment and exposure to international approaches to wetlands management. While Pakistan had produced a Wetlands Action Plan in 2000, the lack of a comprehensive Wetlands Management Strategy hindered policy formation, coordination and management of wetlands at a national scale. Additionally, options for financial sustainability had not been fully explored to enable the proliferation of long-term initiatives in biodiversity conservation. As a result, such initiatives tended to be donor-driven and short-lived.
At the site level, several of the above-mentioned inadequacies were also evident. Although all four of the designated Demonstration Complexes fell within the jurisdiction of the provincial forestry and wildlife management agencies, actual activity was limited to partial enforcement of resource use regulations. Some community-based biodiversity management initiatives had been supported elsewhere by the appropriate agencies in NWFP and Sindh. These approaches had, however, not been applied in the four selected wetland sites. Biodiversity monitoring in these sites had also been inconsistent although the ZSD and WWF-P had undertaken some initiatives, particularly during the PDF (B) phase of the Project. Some short-term conservation initiatives had been implemented in recent years in Makran Coastal Wetlands Complex (MCWC), Central Indus Wetlands Complex (CIWC), and Salt Range Wetlands Complex (SRWC) with the active involvement of WWF-P. Significant activities comprised of a programme for the rescue of lndus Dolphins (Platanista minor) stranded in irrigation canals during the dry season in CIWC and support for eco-tourism initiatives on the Indus River. In MCWC, initiatives had included the conservation of endangered Olive Ridley Turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) and Green Turtles (Chelonfa mydas) and the rehabilitation of mangroves near Jiwani. Monitoring of waterfowl, Punjab Urial (Ovis vignei punjabiensis) and Chinkara or Indian Gazelle (Gazella bennettii) had been the key focus of conservation activities in SRWC, although some limited community-based ventures, mainly related to environmental awareness, had also been implemented.