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Conservation, Land and Nomadic Pastoralism: Seeking Solutions in the Wadi #Araba of Jordan

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Conservation, Land and Nomadic Pastoralism: Seeking Solutions in the Wadi #Araba of Jordan seeking solutions in the wadi #araba of jordan 759 CONSERVATION, LAND AND NOMADIC PASTORALISM: SEEKING SOLUTIONS IN THE WADI #ARABA OF JORDAN Alan Rowe The challenge of engaging the active support and participation of communities in Protected Areas for the purpose of biodiversity conservation is one which has met with varying degrees of success worldwide, despite the substantive progress made through recent collaborative management approaches. The indigenous peoples of the world have been particularly vulnerable to the impositions of conservationists, due to political marginalization and their traditional dependence upon natural resources (McNeely 2002). Where such communities are mobile in their resource use, an extra dimension of complexity is added to the relationship between community needs and conservation objectives. Conservation through the establishment of protected areas in the Middle East and North Africa has had a very mixed record of success (Chatty 2002). The countries of this region protect signifi- cantly less than the area recommended by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for protection, and it has been estimated that only about a third of these Protected Areas are effectively managed to any degree (Ayyad 1996). The effectiveness of conservation measures in the region has hitherto been limited by a number of factors. Among these are the lack of political plurality in the region (which hinders and undermines the introduction of collaborative approaches to conservation), the marginalized status of many of the social groups which traditionally inhabit wilderness areas, poor public awareness and understanding of environmental issues, problems of economic development and insufficient resourc- ing and capacity building for regional conservation agencies. To add to these problems, a clearly successful model has not yet emerged for the application of participatory conservation principles in the Middle East. Pastoral nomads (who traditionally used large expanses of the Middle Eastern desert rangelands) constitute a major stakeholder in any modifications to the way in which land resources are managed. chatty_HO1-81_2a.indd 759 11/17/2005 4:50:26 PM 760 alan rowe However, nomadic pastoralism presents special problems for conser- vationists; pastoral livelihoods and welfare depend upon unrestricted access to large areas of land and opportunistic mobility throughout these areas (Pratt et al. 1997). Furthermore, with its apparent emphasis upon the accumulation of ‘irrationally’ large herds, nomadic pastoral- ism was for most of the twentieth century viewed as unsustainable and inevitably leading to overgrazing and environmental degradation (Chatty 2003). Only recently has this view begun to be challenged by researchers who instead characterize nomadic pastoralists as having special knowledge and understanding of land resources and their sustainable use. As scientific understanding of rangeland processes has moved from rigid state-and-change models to less formulaic dis- equilibrium models, the rationality for (and sustainability of) pastoral systems has become more apparent. However, this new paradigm has not yet been reflected in conservation praxis, particularly in the Middle East, where suspicion of nomadic populations may also be politically motivated. I am drawing together here many of these issues through consid- eration of a pertinent case study; that of the lower Dana Reserve within the Wadi #Araba of Jordan. Over a period of three years, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) in Jordan (the institution charged with the management of this reserve), supported by a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/World Bank Global Environment Facility (GEF) project, made major efforts to engage with the reserve’s pastoral population and develop a mutually beneficial relationship with respect to management of the reserve’s resources. Over this period, the institution adopted the progressive approach of working to support pastoralists on their core livestock- production interests, a step at that time unprecedented for protected areas in the Middle East. While the conservation agency ultimately decided to suspend the approach due to perceived problems, the experiment highlights a number of important lessons about the strengths and capacities of both pastoral and outside institutions to mutually engage in the conservation process. Furthermore with the benefit of hindsight it is possible to clearly identify weakness and inflexibility on the part of both groups, and fundamental flaws in the conservation approach being applied at that time in the reserve. It therefore constitutes an excellent case to illustrate the problems of engaging pastoral nomads in conservation in the Middle East. This account describes the process, on-ground collaboration and chatty_HO1-81_2a.indd 760 11/17/2005 4:50:26 PM.
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