Jan 14,2020
AMMAN — On the occasion of Arbor Day, which annually falls on January 15 in Jordan, the office of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) inspected a forest named after the FAO in Jerash and reviewed plans to protect the Kingdom’s “scarce” forests.
According to an FAO statement made available to The Jordan Times on Tuesday, FAO staff toured the forest and took note of its condition, reviewing plans to stop urban and agricultural encroachment on the site, planted with conifers, wild almonds, eucalyptus and acorns.
The forest was allocated to the FAO in 2014 when Jordan hosted the 21st session of the Near East Forestry and Range Commission, according to the statement.
In coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture, the FAO Amman office has developed plans to increase the number of trees in the forest and protect it against illegal logging, fires and overgrazing, the statement said.
The protection and expansion of forests fall within FAO’s second strategic goal to “make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable”. To meet this goal in Jordan, a country suffering from dwindling forestation, estimated at 88,000 hectares, less than 1 per cent of its overall area, the FAO supports the Jordanian government in shifting towards a “green national economy”, the statement noted.
In 2015, the organisation provided technical support to the Ministry of Agriculture under its Technical Cooperation Project, with the aim of “supporting and developing Jordanian national forest policies”. The support provided for developing a solid forestry policy comes through the inclusion of local committees as part of the cooperation between the public and private sectors, added the statement.
In 2018, the FAO sponsored the creation of a policy paper on national forestry. The statement added that the paper, prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture, was designed to achieve sustainable integrated development through updating pertinent legal, administrative and financial frameworks.
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/fao-reaffirms-efforts-protect-jordans-dwindling-forests
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Forests covered 1.5% of Jordan in 2018 — DoS – Jordan Times
Jan 14,2020
AMMAN — The area of land registered as forests amounted to 1.3 million dunums at the end of 2018, approximately 1.5 per cent of the total area of Jordan.
The Department of Statistics (DoS) noted during its announcement of its agricultural survey results on the occasion of Arbor Day that vegetation covers 3.7 per cent of the Kingdom’s area.
The surveys, which were carried out during the 2010-2018 period, show that trees account for 63.7 per cent of Jordan’s vegetation, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
Statistics indicate that increasing forested areas is one of the Ministry of Agriculture’s priorities. In 2018, the area of trees planted alongside roads around the Kingdom reached 5,137 dunums, according to the DoS.
The DoS stated that the results of the plant production surveys showed that the highest production amount of fruit trees was in 2015, reaching 621,200 tonnes.
The least productive year for agricultural production was 2011, with a production amount of 426,500 tonnes, the department said, adding that these differences are due to climatic conditions and common natural phenomena.
Results of the agricultural nurseries survey showed that 2011 saw the highest amount of tree seedling production, registering 6.9 million seedlings, while the year 2015 was the least productive, with 4.9 million seedlings.
http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/forests-covered-15-jordan-2018-%E2%80%94-dos