Get reliable science

IUCN has recently engaged in a worldwide dryland management strategy and has started in 2010 the implementation of a “Securing Rights and Restoring Drylands for Improved Livelihoods Programme”. The programme notably focuses on the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of restoration and sustainable management of ecosystems and their services, as the basis for improved livelihoods, in four diverse dryland areas (in Botswana, Jordan, Mali and Sudan), to be achieved through more secure rights, better management, and enhanced income generation opportunities.
The majority of the land in Jordan is characterized as arid or semiarid land. Rainfall in these areas is below 200 mm/year (see Figure 1) and because of this, land is only marginally suitable even for dryland agriculture. Most of this land is used for range management with small pockets of dryland agriculture (mainly wheat and barley) and of irrigated agriculture. The problems of water and land degradation are increasingly becoming a serious threat to livelihoods of a large segment of households particularity poor households who rely more greatly and directly on available natural resources for their livelihoods than other socio-economic groups due to lack of alternative livelihood options accessible to them (Al-Serhan, 2010).