A joint UK-Jordanian research programme to provide decision makers, in both national government and local households, with the information they require for sustainable management of Jordan’s Badia region.

Organised by the Higher Council for Science and Technology, Jordan in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) with the Centre for Overseas Research and Development, Durham University acting on behalf of the RGS.  The Royal Geographical Society with the IBG finished its involvement in the collaboration in 2000 and the programme continues to be a join venture between HCST and the University of Durham, CORD.

The arid lands, or Badia, of north-east Jordan have been the subject of many forces of change throughout the course of the twentieth century, particularly since the end of the First World War. National boundaries drawn in the 1920s seprated Jordan’s Badia from similar areas in Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This meant that people living within these new boundaries became Jordanian and had to develop a set of relationships with the new Jordanian government in Amman which now provides basic services to the population including education, health care, electricity and water. Then in the 1930s the Iraq Petroleum Company built a pipeline through northern Jordan, creating the pumping station settlements of Ruwayshid and Safawi. Today, although some Badia pastoralists retain their traditional lifestyle of full mobility with their sheep and goats, most are only partially mobile for parts of the year or have adapted a fully settled way of life in a cluster of new villages. Vehicles have replaced camels for most forms of transport except desert police patrols, but a growing number of sheep and goats overgraze the natural vegetation and are dependent on imported grain-based concentrates for survival during much of the year. Irrigated farming has been introduced and a network of paved roads has been built.

These many changes to the population, the resource base and the management of the Badia’s natural resources are the subject of the Jordan Badia Research and Development Programme. Based at the excellent field centre at Safawi, 150kms east of Amman, in buildings at the old oil-pumping station known as H5, fieldwork began in 1992.

The Badia Programme study area comprises some 11,210 km² of the western half of the Jordan panhandle that extends north-east towards the boundary with Iraq, and is equal to around 14 per cent of the total land mass of Jordan.
The first requirement was to learn about the people and the physical environment of the study area. Thus a multiplicity of studies since 1992 has focused on all aspects of the traditional and changing pastoral livestock systems at a time when the pastoral economy is under great strain because of changing external circumstances. Researchers have also made excellent progress with understanding the biodiversity and natural environment of the area, particularly its plants, mammals and birds. A series of studies of climate and of groundwater recharge, movement, chemistry and usage has very valuably added to national-scale studies by the government to reveal a picture of growing groundwater deficit. Parallel studies of geomorphological processes have begun to reveal the effects of wind, rainfall, surface water and agricultural activities on erosion of the basalt rocks and on soil structure. At the same time wider-scale studies of the area as a whole are being made possible by the acquisition of satellite imagery and digitised topographic and geological maps. Agricultural studies concern the sheep industry and there are social studies of domestic life, health and education. Demographically, the project has now shown that the population is likely to rise rapidly from 16,000 to 23,000 by the year 2013 posing complex questions for planners of education, health, services, the environment and the economy. A monograph, published by Kegan Paul International in March 1998, Arid Land Resources and their Management: Jordan’s Desert Margin, edited by Dr Roderic Dutton, Professor John Clarke and Professor Anwar Battikhi contains 22 papers on research completed to date.

Much of the above work has been undertaken by established Jordanian and UK researchers, but the Programme has created the opportunity for active participation in the research by ten Jordanian and UK PhD students and the same number of Jordanians undertaking Masters by Research at different UK universities. This is doing more than anything else to strengthen the capacity of the Safawi Centre for its long-term research and development role.

The research is continuing and is now shaped by the new Scientific Action Plan for the Badia Programme prepared by the Higher Council for Science and Technology in Amman, in which are identified a series of research projects in the fields of population, water resources, livestock, land resources, energy and geology, environment, and the application of remote sensing and GIS technologies to a range of scientific questions.

In addition to the research there is now a stronger emphasis on development based on applied research. The Programme is providing its research data to Jordanian governmental and non-governmental organisations to incorporate into their planning and implementation work, and the Programme is becoming more actively engaged in pilot development schemes, testing ideas in partnership with the people. Thus, for example the Programme has embarked on a second phase of the livestock work aimed more overtly at integrating new with traditional approaches to livestock husbandry in order to increase productivity and income for the livestock owners. Planning meetings are being held between the Programme and Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), and the authorities in the Badia together with the livestock owners, in order to reach agreement between all parties about a good and acceptable system for grazing sheep which will also improve both rangeland productivity and biodiversity. New work will consider the Badia’s special requirements for health and education - shaped to fit the specific requirements of these remote and scattered communities.

Thus the Badia Programme has been able to combine modern approaches to information gathering with the traditional knowledge of the Bedouin as twin cornerstones to achieving an understanding of the geography of this important and characteristic region of the Middle East. We are learning that fragile as desert systems may be, they remain robust in terms of their ability to respond to change. Beneficial change, based on excellent research information, is needed to retain their vitality and viability.

In March 1998 the Badia Programme was given a significantly higher status in Jordan establishing the Badia Programme as a National Centre. It therefore has much greater permanence and also much wider responsibility for all the arid Badia lands in Jordan (80% of the country’s surface area), and much greater local financial support. This will enable long-term research and development activities there to be undertaken with greater confidence.

Project Patrons: HRH Crown Prince El Hassan and HRH the Duke of Kent

Programme Directors: Mohammed Shahbaz of Higher Council of Science & Technology, Jordan Dr Roderic Dutton, Centre for Overseas Research and Development (CORD), University of Durham.

Major sponsors to date include:
Royal Jordanian, Land Rover, Smiths Industries, and Mr Gernot Langes-Swarovski, British Council, British Embassy, Amman, UK Department of Environment Darwin Initiative UK Department for International Development (formerly the UK Overseas Development Administration), Centre for Overseas Research and Development, University of Durham.

Anyone interested in participating in the The Badia Research Programme should contact:
Dr Roderic W Dutton Centre for Overseas Research and Development (CORD) University of Durham, Science Site, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, Telephone 0191 374 2494 email: r.w.dutton@durham.ac.uk