Hima Rangeland Restoration — Zarqa River Basin (Jordan)

Since 2010, Jordan's Ministry of Agriculture has partnered with IUCN, the Arab Women's Organization and EU funding to revive Hima, a centuries-old Bedouin system of communal rangeland protection, piloting it at four sites in the Zarqa River Basin's eastern desert, including Bani Hashem. At Bani Hashem, 100 hectares of public rangeland were placed under community-managed rotational grazing, with grazing excluded from three enclosures for the pilot's first two years. This is a communal land-management revival in which communities self-regulate grazing, rather than a direct cash-payment scheme to individual landowners.

The pilot aimed to test whether reviving the traditional Hima communal grazing system could restore degraded rangeland vegetation at a small scale and generate credible evidence to inform Jordan's national rangeland policy.

Community-managed rotational grazing was introduced on the 100-hectare Bani Hashem site, with all grazing excluded from three enclosures for the pilot's first two years to let vegetation recover. The model relies on communities self-regulating grazing rather than receiving per-hectare payments, and was implemented jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture, IUCN and the Arab Women's Organization with EU funding.

The two-year grazing exclusion nearly tripled dry forage biomass, from 40 kg/ha to 113 kg/ha, and restored the quality, quantity and diversity of native forage and floral species at the site. A 2015 IUCN economic assessment projected the value of scaled-up sustainable rangeland management at roughly US$10 million over 25 years for the four Zarqa Basin communities, though this is a modelled projection rather than money already disbursed. The pilot's credibility helped drive the 2015 Amman Declaration on Innovating Hima, endorsed at Prime Ministerial level, and informed Jordan's updated national Rangeland Strategy.

The Bani Hashem pilot itself covers just 100 hectares against Jordan's roughly 8 million hectares of rangeland, so nationwide replication remains limited to date. Independent commentary on the programme cautions that Al Hima is not a panacea, even as its results have helped shape national-level policy.