Watersheds and Development Initiative-WADI

WADI aspires to be the knowledge broker for informed restoration decision making that will lead to aquifer recharge and healthy ecosystems while engaging traditional and non-traditional stakeholder groups and promote long-term stewardship across the Jordan Badia by building capacity and engaging local communities.

The vision for WADI is to advance water conservation and land stewardship practices to build resilient communities and healthy watersheds by actively engaging local communities in building shared ownership in science-based practices that foster land ethics, sustainable water conservation and land stewardship. WADI will work on creating viable ecosystems by establishing soil and water conservation sites that serve as reference models for scaling watershed restoration techniques. WADI aspires to be the knowledge broker for informed restoration decision making that will lead to aquifer recharge and healthy ecosystems in Jordan.

WADI will provide technical assistance and expertise on landscape-level water conservation in cooperation with the Government of Jordan, local NGOs, and local communities utilizing different techniques that can hold water on the land and enhance infiltration, with a quantity of the infiltrated water expected to percolate to replenish ground water. Native plants will be used as part of the overall approach, and WADI will support the production of healthy, high quality native seedlings that will be planted in key watersheds around the Kingdom. The native vegetation will help stabilize soil around the water conservation structures. They will also be planted in strategic locations to control erosion and prevent costly siltation problems in important watersheds.

Deploying community-based natural resource management programs in key communities in Jordan will result in broader watershed restoration and enhanced land management practices at the local level. This builds on a global body of literature that a decentralized approach to landscape rehabilitation is by far the most effective in the long-term. This is attributed largely to the understanding that communities must have a vested interest in the success of the plantations for them to thrive. When such programs are centrally imposed with few recognizable benefits to communities, there is little incentive for communities to protect the plants from fire, grazing, encroachment and over harvesting.