SPNL Lebanon's Kfar Zabad marshlands are managed by local communities using the traditional hima system Zoom In

Aid helps protect Lebanese IBA

21-09-2006

The Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL, BirdLife in Lebanon) has orchestrated shipments of aid to villages around the Kfar Zabad Important Bird Area (IBA), which are accommodating around 120 displaced families.

The aid, provided by the Jordan River Foundation through the intervention of the IUCN (World Conservation Union) WESCANA (West Asia, Central Asia, and North Africa) office, will ensure that the increase in population does not put additional pressure on the environment.

Kfar Zabad is part of SPNL’s revival of the hima, a traditional means of conserving water, grazing lands and other resources that also benefits biodiversity.

“...we wanted to do what we could to protect Lebanon's natural sites.” —Assad Serhal, Director General of SPNL

“We established the SPNL during the Civil War,” says Assad Serhal, SPNL’s Director General.. “We started working in 1983, and the idea was that one of these days, the war would be over and we wanted to do what we could to protect Lebanon's natural sites. We were afraid that when the war ended...encroachment on natural resources would really begin—stealing sand and stone, cutting down trees. Now, after nearly 20 years, we are faced with the same dilemma again, and it is really frustrating.”

Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper commented: “Kfar Zabad has become an experiment in a different kind of environmental protection policy, home-grown and community-based. Now, with the eruption of another war in Lebanon and the arrival of another postwar reconstruction period, arguably more threatening to the environment than the war itself, Kfar Zabad might become an experiment all over again—this time illustrating how nature conservation strategies make for markedly more efficient responses to crisis management and humanitarian relief.”