BRP/UNDP: Restoration of sustainable livelihoods creation and natural resource management in Badia Communities Project

The Gulf Crisis of 1990-1991 caused severe environmental damage in many countries of the including Jordan. In the Jordan Badia, the damage to the terrestrial ecosystems resulted from the influx of refugees with their livestock (estimated at 1.8 million heads of sheep, goats and camels). The degradation of the ecosystems affected the productivity of the Badia Rangeland, which is one of the principal grazing resources for Jordan livestock. The Government of Jordan claimed to the United Nations Compensations Commission (UNCC) for the remediation and restoration of terrestrial resources. Accordingly, UNCC awarded Jordan US$160,582,073 in 2005 for the rehabilitation and restoration of the Badia terrestrial ecosystems. 

In 2008, the Government of Jordan established the Badia Restoration Programme (BRP) with two main objectives:

1. To reverse or mitigate damage inflicted on the Badia terrestrial ecosystem with the full cooperation and participation of the concerned Badia communities; and
2. To restore biodiversity and normal productivity of the ecosystems in the Badia rangeland, with a view to optimizing grazing resources.

The BRP prepared the Community Action Plan (CAP) aims at conducting most suitable restoration approaches, including biophysical interventions and socio-economic arrangements, to fulfill the principal objective of the BRP in restoring the damaged ecosystems in the Jordan Badia. The 2011-2019 CAP forms the key guidance for outsourcing projects and actions on the ground level, and it includes two major components:

1. Integrated Watershed Management;
2. Integrated Livestock and Socio-Economic Component.

The BRP, in collaboration with the Jordan Cooperative Corporation (JCC), had established and endorsed in total 32 Rangeland cooperatives organizing livestock herders to facilitate conveying support to local communities and to enhance the sustainability of the rangeland management.

In 2016, the BRP approached UNDP in Jordan to commence and implement two-year project that aims at enhancing livelihoods of livestock herders in the three Badia regions through value chain development on dairy products.

The project is expected to produce the following outputs:

Output 1: Capacity development plans for cooperatives developed for optimized support.

Output 2: Capacity of the proposed dairy cooperatives enhanced to produce and market high-quality dairy products.

In 2017, the BRP- UNDP project designed and implemented a capacity needs assessment, targeting 22 local cooperatives to define the constraints hindering their dairy production enterprises. As per the capacity needs assessment, Rangelands local Cooperatives (RLCs) distributed over the three Badia regions have demonstrated readiness and willingness to upgrade their existing dairy production businesses and enterprises. Accordingly, the project prioritized the Elephant targeted RLCs as the main beneficiaries of the project’s technical and financial intervention.