The World Bank-assisted Protected Area Management (Jabal Bura'a)(PAM 1) project within the Environment Protection Authority, scheduled for 2002-2003, was directed at a dryland forest area in a dissected highland part of Hodaidah Governorate in western Yemen.
The forest and its rich biodiversity is unique in the Arabian peninsula, yet under threat as a result of extractive pressure from the communities living around it, especially the Tihamis of the coastal plain. That this forest has survived for so long is in large part due to the existing waqf religious protection that applies to it.
The project brief was to formulate a Protected Area Management plan for the area, to be designated a National Park. The plan was to be user-friendly to communities which use the forest as a resource, as a result of reciprocal consultation between project staff and the communities concerned. In this way the extractive pressure would be contained such that the forest remnant remains a resource, but sustainably so in perpetuity.
There is a need to formulate income-generating activities to offset the opportunity cost borne by neighbouring communities if they live more in harmony with the forest rather than over-exploit it. One strategy to enable this is to devise and facilitate means whereby productivity of the surrounding arable land is improved, creating incremental income such that, for instance, the country's natural bottled gas can be purchased in preference to extracting firewood from the forest. A second strategy is to lay the foundation of a local eco-tourism industry for discriminating visitors to the country.
