To Survive the Lethal Cold, Pakistani Families Face A Burning Conundrum

“Either we freeze, or we burn the trees,” says Mahboob Khan, pointing to the ancient junipers that have warmed his family of 14 for decades. The forests lie about 16 kilometres (10 miles) from his home in Qawas Gharbi village in Ziarat.  

In Ziarat, a district in Balochistan, winter is unforgiving. Temperatures can drop as low as −12 C (10 F), with snow covering the mountains for weeks, and the cold stretching from October to March, sometimes lingering into early April. The lower the temperatures fall, the thinner these juniper forests become.

Blanketed with trees belonging to the genus Juniperus that thrive in dry, cold, and mountainous regions, these forests are considered among the oldest living ones in the world. 

With no gas supply to keep warm, Mahboob Khan’s family spends 240,000 Pakistani rupees ($860) every winter on firewood cut from the juniper forests.

“If gas were available, why would we cut down these precious forests?” asks Khan, a farmer.

Mahboob Khan (right), a resident of Qawas, details the hardships faced in the bitter cold. (Matiullah Mati for The Xylom)

Pakistan is a forest-deprived country, with forests covering only about 5% of its land area — far below the global average of around 31%. Ziarat’s juniper forests, spread across roughly 110,000 hectares, are considered the second-largest of their kind in the world. UNESCO declared the area a biosphere reserve in 2013, recognising it as a globally significant ecosystem with a core, buffer, and transition zone structure designed to balance conservation and sustainable use.

Yet each winter, families burn through forests that have stood for millennia.

Khan recalls a brief period of relief. When gas reached them from a natural gas facility in Balochistan in 2006, his family stopped burning wood entirely. The trees began to recover. But by 2016, supply had dwindled in many remote areas, including Ziarat, due to increased demand and limited natural gas production in Pakistan.

“LPG is expensive, and it fails to keep our large rooms warm,” he says. “It costs 300 rupees per kilogram ($2.24 per gallon) and doesn’t last half a day.” He adds that he has never faced legal action for cutting wood, even though he knows it is illegal. 

With no other heating options, Mahboob Khan's family home has a wood-burning stove (Bukhari) in their living room to protect themselves from the cold. (Matiullah Mati for The Xylom)

Under the historic Shart Wajib-ul-Arz arrangement, local communities retain traditional usage rights, but only to collect dead or wind-fallen wood for personal domestic use. Commercial or live-tree cutting remains illegal under The Balochistan Forest Act 2022, which carries penalties including up to two years’ imprisonment, a 50,000-rupee fine, and confiscation of tools.

Muhammad Imran, 34, a farmer and resident of Killi Kawas Margha in the submontane region of Ziarat, shares a similar story. His six-room house requires approximately 120,000 rupees ($426) worth of firewood for each room each winter. He, too, remembers the decade of recovery between 2006 and 2016, when wood from gardens replaced the old-growth trees. 

“We are aware of the importance of the forests,” Imran says. “But poverty and extreme cold leave us with no choice.” 

According to a report released by the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Department in December 2024, the poverty rate in the Ziarat district is 65%. Even though a few households in the market area have access to natural gas, it is difficult to operate heaters as power supply is often limited to just three hours a day. The alternatives — LPG and coal are expensive. 

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Imran, whose home is 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) away from the market area, has no piped gas connection. “Thousands of people have cut their gas connections because there is simply no supply,” he says.

Poverty and the Power Crunch

For Mahmoud Tareen, an environmental activist who has spent years running awareness campaigns in rural areas and organising tree-planting programmes across Ziarat and Quetta, the cause and the ramifications are clear.

“When gas was available, cutting stopped for a decade and a half, and the forest increased,” he says. “It proves that the problem isn’t the people, it is the lack of alternatives.”

Pakistan’s 2024-25 federal budget allocated 1.36 trillion rupees ($4.88 billion) in power-sector subsidies — a substantial sum of 500 million ($1.79 million) is directed towards agriculture. Policy experts say these subsidies primarily benefit farm tube wells, not household electrification. With 64% of Balochistan’s population lacking reliable electricity for heating and cooking, they argue the province needs dedicated investment in decentralized solar and micro-grid solutions instead.

An old tube well surrounded by bare poplar and trees in a dry orchard with mountains in the background. When the groundwater level was high, people used to pump water from this traditional tube well (by digging a large hole) using a water pump. (Matiullah Mati for The Xylom)

Tareen warns that the consequences of continued deforestation extend beyond the forest itself. “This forest is not only significant for the environment but also for water reservoirs. After snowfall, these mountains provide water to nearby districts. If unchecked cutting continues, underground water levels will fall further, agriculture will be affected, and people will migrate.”

Farmers such as Imran are already feeling the impact. As groundwater levels fell, he was forced to abandon his 135-foot tube well and drill a new one nearly 1,000 feet deep to reach water.

A 2021 study based on satellite data found that Ziarat’s juniper forests declined by approximately 20,694 hectares (51,135 acres), nearly 29% of its total area, between 1988 and 2018. It is a figure far greater than the two hectares (4.94 acres) of tree cover loss recorded over the same broad period in the Global Forest Watch dataset, a discrepancy that researchers attribute to the limitations of satellite-derived data in detecting degradation in dry, sparse woodland.

An old juniper tree with twisted branches in the dry hills of Ziaratz. (Matiullah Mati for The Xylom)

Energy poverty driving deforestation is not unique to Pakistan. Of the one-third of the world’s forest cover lost in the past 10,000 years, agricultural expansion and fuelwood consumption are the two primary drivers. 

Today, wood remains a major energy source for poor households lacking alternatives. As documented in Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Nepal, and during the European energy crisis of 2022, extreme cold pushes vulnerable communities to burn whatever is available, from plastic and tires to park trees, when cleaner energy becomes unaffordable. 

Old-growth trees face mounting threats. Scientists have found that human-induced warming made the fire weather conditions behind Chile and Argentina’s January 2026 blazes up to three times more likely, with the fires threatening ancient Alerce trees in Patagonia’s UNESCO-listed Los Alerces National Park.

Exploring Solutions

Balochistan’s forest and wildlife department is working to conserve the juniper forests, but in the absence of coordinated, multi-departmental efforts, success on the ground remains distant.

Niaz Muhammad Khan Kakar, conservator of forests with the Balochistan government, confirms the scale of the problem. Ziarat’s juniper forests, he says, remain “a resilient ecosystem” and “a critical green lung for the province,” with conservation efforts currently focused on stabilising core zones and promoting natural regeneration.

The department uses Geographic Information Systems data and satellite imagery to identify areas under climatic and human pressure, treating this data as a diagnostic tool to guide targeted restoration. It has maintained what Kakar describes as “strict vigilance against unauthorised cutting,” while acknowledging the pressure created by the region’s harsh winters.

A village of Ziarat district, with snow-capped mountains in the distance. (Matiullah Mati for The Xylom)

The department is also pursuing long-term solutions. “We are actively coordinating with the Sui Southern Gas Company and the provincial government to expedite the expansion of natural gas supply to these areas by June,” Kakar says, adding that they are moving towards a co-management model where communities receive direct incentives for protecting the forest. 

Can renewable energy act as a solution? “On the local level, subsidised fuel points should be established during snowfall. If the government and global institutions provide alternative energy sources, particularly solar, people will plant trees themselves and preserve them,” environmental activist Tareen says. 

The government is also exploring subsidy models for solar heating geysers and energy-efficient stoves for the local populace. “The aim is to reduce the demand for wood fuel, which will automatically lower the pressure on the forest. The department is actively pushing these proposals in the Annual Development Program (ADP) to secure the necessary funding,” Kakar explains. 

Ziarat’s juniper forests sit at elevations ranging from 1,181 to 3,488 metres, at the intersection of five vegetation zones: Western Irano-Turanian Sub-region, Eastern Irano-Turanian Sub-region, Sino-Japanese Region, Indian Region, and Saharo Sindian Region, making it a unique biodiversity archetype. They are home to the oldest living trees in the region, locally called “living fossils” and considered important for the study of climate change and historical weather patterns. 

Each winter, the ancient juniper forests are burned to keep homes warm. But it does not have to be this way. “If the government subsidises solar energy, people will stop cutting trees,” Imran says.

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This story was published in collaboration with Egab.