Old knowledge, new techniques – working together to rehabilitate degraded farmland
- From
-
Published on
03.06.21
- Impact Area

For World Environment Day, Mira Haddad, ICARDA’s Associate Researcher in Spatio-temporal Assessment and Rangeland Rehabilitation, joined the WOCAT/UN “Restoring Life to the Land” webinar to discuss ways to combat global desertification, and talk about ICARDA’s work with Bedouin communities to rehabilitate severely degraded rangelands in Jordan.
During the webinar, Mira explained how in just five years, ICARDA -alongside the farming communities- has rehabilitated degraded rangelands by reintroducing water catchment systems, indigenous fodder and high yield barley to Jordan’s rangelands, using Sustainable Land Management techniques that merge cutting edge research with traditional approaches and local knowledge.
Sustainable Land Management (SLM) methods for global rangelands
Rangelands cover 90% of the landmass of Jordan, a country battling with crippling water scarcity. Decades of overgrazing and unsustainable agricultural practices, in a backdrop of intensifying climate change, have turned once productive rangelands into vast expanses of barren land.
ICARDA’s intervention is focusing on the central Badia region, an area where the depleted ecosystem is no longer capable of providing sufficient food and feed to semi-nomadic Bedouin communities and their livestock.
Crucially, the ICARDA research and innovations deployed on these rangelands is aimed to be scalable across global dry areas with the same challenges.
“Bedouin communities get most of their income from their livestock” says Mira. “This is why we needed to urgently restore rangelands’ ecosystem services, to produce fodder and crops again,”
For this watershed intervention, which started in 2016 in collaboration with Jordan’s National Agricultural Research Center and local agropastoralists, Mira and her team devised three Sustainable Land Management technologies: Mechanized micro water harvesting, Gully plugs and Marab technology.
ICARDA would like to acknowledge the donors and partners who made this work possible: The United States Forest Service (USFS), Utrecht University, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies(WOCAT), the Jordanian National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), and the Watershed and Development Initiative (WADI).
Related news
-
SOILutions for Security: CGIAR at the 2025 Borlaug Dialogue
Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program22.10.25-
Biodiversity
-
Environmental health
-
Environmental health & biodiversity
-
Food security
-
Nutrition
From October 21–23, CGIAR will join global partners in Des Moines, Iowa for the 2025…
Read more -
-
There are many ways to halt and reverse deforestation. We need a global space for countries to share collaboration that works.
Eisen Bernard Bernardo22.10.25-
Climate adaptation & mitigation
-
Mitigation
By Steve Leonard and Eliza J. Villarino Halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation b…
Read more -
-
From Relief to Resilience: Rethinking Flood Response in Pakistan
Ibukun Taiwo21.10.25-
Climate adaptation & mitigation
Authors: Shahab Khalid, Adam Savelli, Alessandra Vaselli, Ashleigh Basel, Jonathan Tsoka, Alliance o…
Read more -