How ancient conservation traditions can shape climate action in the Middle East

For dugongs, grazing and nutrient recycling influence the growth of seagrass and the movement of carbon through the ecosystem. Other species play different ecological roles, but the broader lesson is the same. Understanding these relationships gives us a fuller picture of what we protect when we conserve wildlife.

Protecting individual animals matters in its own right, but when healthy populations are able to fulfil their ecological roles, the benefits can extend through ecosystems and to the people who depend on them. That raises an important question for conservation in the Middle East. How do we restore systems that can sustain those relationships over generations?

Part of the answer may be found in a tradition that has existed in this region for more than a thousand years.

Hima is a traditional, community-based system of natural resource management with deep roots in the Arabian Peninsula and wider Middle East. For centuries, forms of Hima have been used to manage shared resources such as grazing lands, forests, and water, balancing their use with their continued protection.

Its application has varied across places and periods, but the underlying principle has enduring relevance. The people who depend on a landscape and its natural resources can also play an important role in their stewardship. This does not replace the essential role of governments, environmental policy, or protected areas. Rather, it recognises that lasting conservation also depends on the people who live alongside wildlife and often hold generations of knowledge about those places.

The modern revival of Hima shows how these approaches can complement one another. In Lebanon, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon has helped adapt Hima as a contemporary community-based conservation model, and the approach has gained formal recognition within the country's legal framework. Hima principles are also gaining renewed attention elsewhere in the region, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, with support from international conservation organisations including IUCN and BirdLife International.

In many ways, this is a revival rather than a new idea. Throughout the Arabian Peninsula, tribal shepherds have historically used time-bound restrictions on grazing to protect communal rangelands and allow them to recover. As communities once again look for ways to prevent overgrazing and conserve scarce desert resources, practices rooted in this tradition have renewed relevance.

Here in Oman, there is another reminder of the longevity of community stewardship. The ancient Aflaj system of gravity-fed water channels is still used to carry water from natural springs and underground sources to agricultural land and communities. Hima and Aflaj are different systems, but both reflect a long history of communities collectively managing scarce natural resources with the future in mind.