Youssef Ayyoub, a shepherd from the village of Al Manara in West Beqaa, Lebanon, grazed his flock of goats early on a cold February day. He wanted to join his friends, six shepherds from the village, in the municipality for a meeting with the mayor, the Ministry of Agriculture representatives and staff from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon. In this meeting, representatives of FAO and UNDP presented the desired results of their interventions and the complementarities the UN agencies can achieve in the context of rangeland management actions in the village to ensure the sustainable management of rangelands, a joint responsibility of the Ministries of Environment and Agriculture.

“Now that we know what the plan is, we will be waiting for the implementation of the projects, hoping that this will be beneficial to us,” said Youssef.

The local community in Al Manara lacks specific management plans to sustainably use its rangeland resources. For this, FAO in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, is conducting large-scale rangeland management actions, which include understanding the stocking rates and carrying capacities of rangelands to better plan grazing activities, promote rotational grazing and the reduction of stocking rates, among other practices. To do so, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture will be working on building local capacities on the needed tools and techniques for efficient rangeland management planning, implementation and monitoring.

In this context, both UN agencies are collaborating to share knowledge and resources to develop management plans for the area. As part of the project on Sustainable Land Management in the Qaraoun Catchment, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNDP and the Ministry of Environment have developed National Guidelines for Rangeland Management. They have also initiated the required fieldwork and mapping exercise to generate rangeland management plans for five grazing areas among which the Manara site. FAO will build on the guiding principles of the plan to implement indicative actions under the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI).

“Rangelands are providing less feed for the animals. We are forced to buy feed to supplement the diet of the flock and prices are very high,’’ said Mahmoud Ayyoub, raising a common concern with other shepherds in the village. With appropriate management, it is hoped that the community’s range resources will provide most of the flocks’ dietary needs, thereby relieving the shepherds’ dependence on costly imported feed.

For more information contact: [email protected]

Elias Chnais (FAO)