Final Report Summary - DEBPAL2 (Reinforcing Capacity Building for Defending Biodiversity in the Palestinian Territories)
Executive Summary:
DEBPAL2 is a FP7 Coordination Action financed by the European Commission to reinforce the cooperation capacities of Al Quds University, to improve its actions, researches and environmental activities in defence of Biodiversity (including Agro-Biodiversity), in the interlinked fields of conservation, restoration and legal protection, as requested by the international Convention on Biological Diversity, a major commitment in the European Union main politics.
The overall objective of the project is to increase the capacity building of Al Quds University in the strategic field of bio-diversity conservation research, by a coherent plan foreseeing networking and joint research activities with a well experienced Italian University; training in technological transfer towards local SMEs; training in H2020 project appraisal and development of its own research strategy
Project Context and Objectives:
The specific objectives of the whole project are:
- Re-organisation of the Biology Laboratories of Al Quds University and improvement of its staff; mobilisation of Palestinian human resources already existing in the biodiversity research, networking with an ItalianUniversity and the related scientific circle in the specific field.
- Enhanced participation of Palestine in the Horizon 2020 programme, that started few months after the beginning of the second reporting period.
- Increased scope of Al Quds University in Biodiversity research, regional coverage for biodiversity recovery and conservation plans, training activities for participation in European research projects. Increasing of its linkage with the local economic and social environment, also through the involvement of local SMEs.
- Contribution of Palestinian capacity building in a strategic field (Biodiversity and Agrobiodiversity) for its future sustainable development Policy, also targeted to the related socio-economic aspects .
- Dissemination of scientific information, short term visits, exchange of staff, meetings and seminars.
- Development of a “Palestinian Biodiversity Recovery Plan” and its linkage with wider regional plans.
Project Results:
Aims of a working strategy for the Palestinian Authorities
In order to achieve the strategy’s intention, research should focus on creating the knowledge necessary to:
A. Ensure the long-term survival of species and the ecological integrity and functionality of habitats and ecosystems. This implies the assessments of status, trends and functional relationships, the understanding of drivers and mechanisms of change, and the development and evaluation of effective management and conservation.
B. Ensure the long-term provision of ecosystem services by means of their measurements and evaluation and their use by the society.
C. Evaluate the species adaptability to global change toward the understanding of the effects of induced drivers such as climate change, land-use change, pollution, over-exploitation, and invasions of non-native species. This will lead to forecast tipping points and resilience of ecosystems under the interaction of these drivers of change, in order to avoid non-reversible changes of ecosystems.
D. Reinforce species occurrence and recovery natural and semi-natural landscapes. This aim is crucial for long-term actions devoted to extend natural heritage, to increase green areas, to depict a “green” policy and to create or improve local economies and services.
DEBPAL2 focused on a selection of study cases, representative of the landscape diversity in West Bank, and geographically distributed across several administrative Governorates following a north-south axis. As showed in the previous figure, five out of eight sites are already part of the natural reserves network funded or proposed by the Palestinian Authorities, thus they concern environments supposed to have been investigated by the Government or known, at least, as strategic areas worthy of protection. However, each strategy line leading to a management policy for natural areas should take into account the complex and unique administrative condition existing in West Bank, i.e. a heterogeneous mosaic of lands where Israeli and Palestinian control alternatively discontinuous areas. In the figure below it is shown as the green areas of DEBPAL2 occur in all the three areas of West Bank: three of them are completely within Area A (Full Palestinian Control), one is within Area B (Palestinian Civil Control and Israeli Security Control), three are within Area C (Full Israeli Control) and the last is partially inside Area A, B and C respectively. The depicted situation, also clarified by the following map claims for a deep round table among the different political Authorities, in order to find tools and programmatic activities for a reliable strategy line about environmental management. It is undoubted that many problems could arise, as long discussions are needed; this report is not intended to give solution to such a complex scenario, but aims to provide data, results, studies and everything useful to build up guidelines, good practices and tools to be delivered to the Palestinian Authorities which should finally provide an agenda of specific actions and policies in agreement with the academic researchers and local people.
Multidisciplinary approach for an integrated research and management
To generate the knowledge necessary to bring governmental authorities and local society into a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship with the natural resources we need a constructive mix of expertises to be combined into a common framework, namely ranging from taxonomy, ecology, genetics to forestry, cartography and ecological modelling, in addition to others to jointly approach research on the objectives mentioned above.
Many research approaches within these areas may require active participation from different disciplines. Improved understanding in one field is often required before work can progress in another one. All three areas are equally important: research projects will be needed to investigate what is happening, why it is happening, and what to do about it in an integrated way, addressing thus ecological, societal and the economic aspects. Furthermore, the research environment as implemented in the abovementioned scheme will also support the transfer of technological competences to Al Quds University and will allow a further involvement of local Palestinian entrepreneurs in possible related businesses. In fact, all the research strategy lines hereafter presented include a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, targeted to the sustainable use of biological resources and potential business opportunities involving local small and micro-enterprises. The Palestinian Authorities are suggested to keep the output of such approach as the starting point for a new business model based on an enhanced concept of a “Distributed Company” composed by small and micro-enterprises. Moreover, the involvement of NGO and private owners to reforestation efforts is strongly encouraged and recommended. The employment of volunteers is also suggested; the first benefits would be in terms of ready manpower, but a stronger positive feedback would be generated in medium-long time period. Indeed, by means of a volunteer approach, many persons might obtain a chance to get the new expertises, then opportunities to have a job in forest management.
Potential Impact:
DEBPAL2 AND ITS SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT
The Socio-Ecological-Environmental work in the West Bank was conducted during the summer and autumn of 2012 and then the winter 2013.
In this activity the collaboration of Dr Fadwa Al-Labadi, sociologist at the University of Al-Quds, was crucial. A group of her students was participating in the activity.
Also the young Italian scholars Elena Quadraccia, Valentina Mancino, Loredana Petrulli, and the young scholar from London, Alexsandra Gorb, participated in this work: it has been for them an exciting experience.
The main objectives were:
1* investigate the ecological problems that endangered both nature and people in the West Bank (listed in the previous pages)
2* investigate the environmental problems that threaten a future sustainable development of the country (listed in the previous pages)
3* deepen the impact of the mentioned geopolitical circumstances (summarized below) that entail considerable damages on both ecological and environmental conditions as well as on people's life
4* verify the West Bank people’s awareness about the above issues
5* spread information about the results, in order to help change people's mind (that is the first essential step of the process towards the preservation of nature and the conservation of the environment)
6* establish contact with the administrators of local communities to submit the results of the study carried out by the équipe, so that they can be used to encourage initiatives to improve people's awareness on the ecological - environmental issues, and people's participation in the safeguard activities.
It now becomes necessary to clarify what is meant by the "geopolitical circumstances" that have been mentioned in the preceding parts. The work has considered the very concrete circumstances of the new geographical realities which today exist in the West Bank after the long decades of Israeli occupation, that have totally transformed the human habitat and disintegrated the certainties and habits of local people. They has been chiefly generated by the confiscation of land for different politic and economic reasons (as the control of water resources), for military use, to establish Jewish settlements and connected infrastructure, to create roads-bridges-overpasses to be used by the Jewish settlers as well as military forces, and finally for the construction of the Separation Wall (Separation Barrier), today 700Km long. All this has resulted in large tracts of land lost by Palestinian people and land cleared and no longer available, including the areas which are today located outside the Separation Wall-zone and to which Palestinians are forbidden entry. In addition, numerous tracts of lands are today separated from each other by the Wall and by checkpoints.
So, the work of the équipe has examined how these circumstances changed the human geography of the West Bank, affect the local ecological condition, on the one hand, and on the other threaten/undermine the environment and a sustainable development of the country.
This is why, intentionally, the équipe has chosen to investigate the awareness of the Palestinian people on the global ecological issues that seriously endanger nature as well as human being, and on the local environmental problems that acutely threaten the development of the country. In fact, the fundamental belief that has driven the work of the équipe is that the deterioration of the ecological system and the degradation of the environment are the utmost violation of Human Rights. Unfortunately, however, today's ecologists and environmentalists and human rights defenders work without communicating with each other, as if the problems were totally distinct. Therefore, the activity of the équipe has been directed to overcome this theoretical and practical separation, and link together the two sets of problems. The other characteristic of this work consists in the fact that it aims to draw the attention of people and of local authorities on these crucial issues.
The work has also taken into account the bad condition of animals (pets, working animals, and those destined for slaughter), the awful breeding methods and cruel ways of killing them for human food. They do not fall within the concept of Biodiversity, but constitute an ethical problem that in any way cannot be ignored in a country expected to follow a sustainable development, also on moral grounds. It should be emphasized that, on this issue, there is not exhaustive search, and that the concept of Animal Rights, in the West Bank, is practically absent, being an issue followed only by niches of intellectuals who have studied abroad, or by people with a strong faith and consequently know that animals are part of God's creation (for Christians) and are members of the Garden of God (for Muslims).
List of Websites:
http://debpal.veltha.org
DEBPAL2 is a FP7 Coordination Action financed by the European Commission to reinforce the cooperation capacities of Al Quds University, to improve its actions, researches and environmental activities in defence of Biodiversity (including Agro-Biodiversity), in the interlinked fields of conservation, restoration and legal protection, as requested by the international Convention on Biological Diversity, a major commitment in the European Union main politics.
The overall objective of the project is to increase the capacity building of Al Quds University in the strategic field of bio-diversity conservation research, by a coherent plan foreseeing networking and joint research activities with a well experienced Italian University; training in technological transfer towards local SMEs; training in H2020 project appraisal and development of its own research strategy
Project Context and Objectives:
The specific objectives of the whole project are:
- Re-organisation of the Biology Laboratories of Al Quds University and improvement of its staff; mobilisation of Palestinian human resources already existing in the biodiversity research, networking with an ItalianUniversity and the related scientific circle in the specific field.
- Enhanced participation of Palestine in the Horizon 2020 programme, that started few months after the beginning of the second reporting period.
- Increased scope of Al Quds University in Biodiversity research, regional coverage for biodiversity recovery and conservation plans, training activities for participation in European research projects. Increasing of its linkage with the local economic and social environment, also through the involvement of local SMEs.
- Contribution of Palestinian capacity building in a strategic field (Biodiversity and Agrobiodiversity) for its future sustainable development Policy, also targeted to the related socio-economic aspects .
- Dissemination of scientific information, short term visits, exchange of staff, meetings and seminars.
- Development of a “Palestinian Biodiversity Recovery Plan” and its linkage with wider regional plans.
Project Results:
Aims of a working strategy for the Palestinian Authorities
In order to achieve the strategy’s intention, research should focus on creating the knowledge necessary to:
A. Ensure the long-term survival of species and the ecological integrity and functionality of habitats and ecosystems. This implies the assessments of status, trends and functional relationships, the understanding of drivers and mechanisms of change, and the development and evaluation of effective management and conservation.
B. Ensure the long-term provision of ecosystem services by means of their measurements and evaluation and their use by the society.
C. Evaluate the species adaptability to global change toward the understanding of the effects of induced drivers such as climate change, land-use change, pollution, over-exploitation, and invasions of non-native species. This will lead to forecast tipping points and resilience of ecosystems under the interaction of these drivers of change, in order to avoid non-reversible changes of ecosystems.
D. Reinforce species occurrence and recovery natural and semi-natural landscapes. This aim is crucial for long-term actions devoted to extend natural heritage, to increase green areas, to depict a “green” policy and to create or improve local economies and services.
DEBPAL2 focused on a selection of study cases, representative of the landscape diversity in West Bank, and geographically distributed across several administrative Governorates following a north-south axis. As showed in the previous figure, five out of eight sites are already part of the natural reserves network funded or proposed by the Palestinian Authorities, thus they concern environments supposed to have been investigated by the Government or known, at least, as strategic areas worthy of protection. However, each strategy line leading to a management policy for natural areas should take into account the complex and unique administrative condition existing in West Bank, i.e. a heterogeneous mosaic of lands where Israeli and Palestinian control alternatively discontinuous areas. In the figure below it is shown as the green areas of DEBPAL2 occur in all the three areas of West Bank: three of them are completely within Area A (Full Palestinian Control), one is within Area B (Palestinian Civil Control and Israeli Security Control), three are within Area C (Full Israeli Control) and the last is partially inside Area A, B and C respectively. The depicted situation, also clarified by the following map claims for a deep round table among the different political Authorities, in order to find tools and programmatic activities for a reliable strategy line about environmental management. It is undoubted that many problems could arise, as long discussions are needed; this report is not intended to give solution to such a complex scenario, but aims to provide data, results, studies and everything useful to build up guidelines, good practices and tools to be delivered to the Palestinian Authorities which should finally provide an agenda of specific actions and policies in agreement with the academic researchers and local people.
Multidisciplinary approach for an integrated research and management
To generate the knowledge necessary to bring governmental authorities and local society into a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship with the natural resources we need a constructive mix of expertises to be combined into a common framework, namely ranging from taxonomy, ecology, genetics to forestry, cartography and ecological modelling, in addition to others to jointly approach research on the objectives mentioned above.
Many research approaches within these areas may require active participation from different disciplines. Improved understanding in one field is often required before work can progress in another one. All three areas are equally important: research projects will be needed to investigate what is happening, why it is happening, and what to do about it in an integrated way, addressing thus ecological, societal and the economic aspects. Furthermore, the research environment as implemented in the abovementioned scheme will also support the transfer of technological competences to Al Quds University and will allow a further involvement of local Palestinian entrepreneurs in possible related businesses. In fact, all the research strategy lines hereafter presented include a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, targeted to the sustainable use of biological resources and potential business opportunities involving local small and micro-enterprises. The Palestinian Authorities are suggested to keep the output of such approach as the starting point for a new business model based on an enhanced concept of a “Distributed Company” composed by small and micro-enterprises. Moreover, the involvement of NGO and private owners to reforestation efforts is strongly encouraged and recommended. The employment of volunteers is also suggested; the first benefits would be in terms of ready manpower, but a stronger positive feedback would be generated in medium-long time period. Indeed, by means of a volunteer approach, many persons might obtain a chance to get the new expertises, then opportunities to have a job in forest management.
Potential Impact:
DEBPAL2 AND ITS SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL-ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT
The Socio-Ecological-Environmental work in the West Bank was conducted during the summer and autumn of 2012 and then the winter 2013.
In this activity the collaboration of Dr Fadwa Al-Labadi, sociologist at the University of Al-Quds, was crucial. A group of her students was participating in the activity.
Also the young Italian scholars Elena Quadraccia, Valentina Mancino, Loredana Petrulli, and the young scholar from London, Alexsandra Gorb, participated in this work: it has been for them an exciting experience.
The main objectives were:
1* investigate the ecological problems that endangered both nature and people in the West Bank (listed in the previous pages)
2* investigate the environmental problems that threaten a future sustainable development of the country (listed in the previous pages)
3* deepen the impact of the mentioned geopolitical circumstances (summarized below) that entail considerable damages on both ecological and environmental conditions as well as on people's life
4* verify the West Bank people’s awareness about the above issues
5* spread information about the results, in order to help change people's mind (that is the first essential step of the process towards the preservation of nature and the conservation of the environment)
6* establish contact with the administrators of local communities to submit the results of the study carried out by the équipe, so that they can be used to encourage initiatives to improve people's awareness on the ecological - environmental issues, and people's participation in the safeguard activities.
It now becomes necessary to clarify what is meant by the "geopolitical circumstances" that have been mentioned in the preceding parts. The work has considered the very concrete circumstances of the new geographical realities which today exist in the West Bank after the long decades of Israeli occupation, that have totally transformed the human habitat and disintegrated the certainties and habits of local people. They has been chiefly generated by the confiscation of land for different politic and economic reasons (as the control of water resources), for military use, to establish Jewish settlements and connected infrastructure, to create roads-bridges-overpasses to be used by the Jewish settlers as well as military forces, and finally for the construction of the Separation Wall (Separation Barrier), today 700Km long. All this has resulted in large tracts of land lost by Palestinian people and land cleared and no longer available, including the areas which are today located outside the Separation Wall-zone and to which Palestinians are forbidden entry. In addition, numerous tracts of lands are today separated from each other by the Wall and by checkpoints.
So, the work of the équipe has examined how these circumstances changed the human geography of the West Bank, affect the local ecological condition, on the one hand, and on the other threaten/undermine the environment and a sustainable development of the country.
This is why, intentionally, the équipe has chosen to investigate the awareness of the Palestinian people on the global ecological issues that seriously endanger nature as well as human being, and on the local environmental problems that acutely threaten the development of the country. In fact, the fundamental belief that has driven the work of the équipe is that the deterioration of the ecological system and the degradation of the environment are the utmost violation of Human Rights. Unfortunately, however, today's ecologists and environmentalists and human rights defenders work without communicating with each other, as if the problems were totally distinct. Therefore, the activity of the équipe has been directed to overcome this theoretical and practical separation, and link together the two sets of problems. The other characteristic of this work consists in the fact that it aims to draw the attention of people and of local authorities on these crucial issues.
The work has also taken into account the bad condition of animals (pets, working animals, and those destined for slaughter), the awful breeding methods and cruel ways of killing them for human food. They do not fall within the concept of Biodiversity, but constitute an ethical problem that in any way cannot be ignored in a country expected to follow a sustainable development, also on moral grounds. It should be emphasized that, on this issue, there is not exhaustive search, and that the concept of Animal Rights, in the West Bank, is practically absent, being an issue followed only by niches of intellectuals who have studied abroad, or by people with a strong faith and consequently know that animals are part of God's creation (for Christians) and are members of the Garden of God (for Muslims).
List of Websites:
http://debpal.veltha.org