Land and water management: lessons from a project on desertification in the Middle East

摘要

A diplomatic and technical support structure exists to help resolve the conflict in the Middle East, which was established at the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991; a process infrequently described, but well summarized for its first 5 years in a bookby Joel Peters (1996). The multilateral talks were devised to provide a multilateral forum for discussion of non-political trans-boundary issues of concern to all parties that would independently build confidence through dialogue and stimulate the discussion of country-to-country issues among the front-line states. The basic structure of the process, which continues to this date, includes five different Working Groups (arms control, regional economic development, refugees, water and the environment]. One project in the Working Group on the Environment (WGE] was designed to control natural resource degradation in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Tunisia. The project had a large focus on rangeland, which was but one of many projects in the WGE; nevertheless, it can be safely stated that this project reflects some of the challenges faced by the entire Middle East peace process.