Sustainable Development and Nature Conservation in Jordan - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 316

FIGURE 16.12 ( Continued ) The Wild Jordan Café, situated on a large jebel overlooking
downtown Amman, sells handicrafts manufactured in the various RSCN nature reserves.

• not as places planned against people but rather as ones created with and
for them,

• not as places that exist solely for their value for wildlife and scenery but in

recognition of their larger contribution to society, and

• not as places designed only for tourists but also as ones taking into consid-

eration the needs of the local community.

In this regard, the RSCN considers that its greatest success is in developing a strong
component of capacity building with other institutions throughout the overall process.
The RSCN started this strategy when they first began the Dana project and it has enabled
them to move the project forward and to continue the work by putting these mechanisms
in place such that the work becomes sustainable in the long term. Issues addressed in this
procedure included strategic planning, task delegation, organizational decentralization,
and business management, all of which were very important in enabling the creative part
of the team to take the lead in developing the conservation process (Irani 2004).
The lessons from the Dana experience for desert tourism (Johnson 2007) include
the following:

• Tourism can sustain protected areas and offers the best potential for bring-

ing financial benefits to local people.

• Attempts have to be made to shift the economy away from environmentally

destructive activities such as goat grazing.

• Planners of nature reserves should not succumb to compromise in terms

of their initial conservation objectives, and all zoning land uses must be
strictly enforced.