Buffalo total about 31 million head, 18% of the world total. Over 80% of CWANA's buffaloes are in Pakistan and 13% are in Egypt (FAO, 2006a).

Annual meat production from livestock in CWANA is estimated at 6.5 million tonnes, 55% from cattle and buffalo, and the rest from small ruminants. CWANA consumes about 24% of the world small ruminant meat. Additional 5.5 million tonnes of meat came from fish, poultry, and game, making total meat production 12 million tonnes in 2003, about 5% of world meat production (FAO, 2006a). The biggest producer of meat in the region in 2003 was Pakistan with 1.89 million tonnes; followed by Iran (1.6 million tonnes); Egypt (1.45 million tonnes); and Turkey (1.35 million tonnes).

Fish catch in CWANA was 1.3 million tonnes in 2002. Egypt caught half of that with Pakistan and Iran almost equally catching about 17% of the CWANA catch. Egypt and Pakistan got their fish mostly from fresh water; Iran got its fish equally from marine and fresh water (FAO, 2006a).

1.3.4 Policies and interventions in rangeland management

The primary concern for governments of the region is to develop policies to check overgrazing, a problem recognized by all. Developing water resources was thought to spread the burden of livestock over a wider area and reduce overgrazing. This could work only if livestock populations were stabilized. But, uncontrolled by governments, the livestock population is rising steadily in most CWANA countries. The inevitable result is more overgrazing. Land tenure was the next to be tried. Three land-tenure systems were progressively established in the region following independence from foreign rulers:

• government lands not subject to any public use
• government lands subject to use by a tribe or village or group of individuals
• private lands registered to individuals

Most CWANA countries established state ownership of rangelands during the twentieth century. The rangelands of Algeria, Iran, Jordan Sudan and Syria, to mention a few, were considered government property, with tribal rights to use these rangelands recognized. Tunisia and Morocco recognized and established collective properties of tribes to the land as early as 1918. But soon after its independence, Tunisia chose to promote privatization of common land. Some of these reforms were accompanied by measures to promote settlement of nomadic pastoralists, improve rangeland management by limiting stocking rate, establish reserves, ban cultivation and ban uprooting of shrubs in rangelands. As these measures led to a clash of interests, they could not be applied.

The attempt was to organize pastoralists to sustainably use common rangelands through state ownership and state cooperatives, herder cooperatives, community cooperatives and comanagement of community rangelands. Governments also built roads to facilitate moving herds and access to markets. Expanded road network and improved transportation subjected areas high in biodiversity and in good range condition to grazing pressure never before experienced; pastures near the most popular routes were overgrazed.

To help herders reduce drought losses, governments throughout CWANA introduced drought-management policies, such as feed subsidies and credit rescheduling. While these interventions succeeded in protecting incomes in drought years, they introduced a bias to keep livestock numbers high, which accelerated rangeland degradation. This protection undermined adjusting herd size to annual climatic variation and increased herd size. In parallel, policies such as subsidizing agricultural inputs, like fuel or tractors, were not restricted geographically, and they favored crop encroachment in pastoral areas.

After several decades of rangeland management through promoting rehabilitation measures, planting shrubs and cactus, and preventing grazing, most experts agree that rangelands are still degrading and solutions should rely on institutional change and tenure reform. Approaches promoting natural resource management in local communities or "co-management" of resources under the regime of common property rights are relatively new in the region. Implications of the initiatives have not been discussed extensively (Dutilly-Diane, 2006). In Sudan, it was recommended in the mid-1950s that rangelands be allocated and registered to tribal owners. This was considered crucial because until individuals or groups knew the benefits of new or improved ranges would be theirs, all efforts to develop rotational grazing would fail (Wallach, 1989).

1.4 Key Issues

Ecosystems

Some 85% of the CWANA land area is considered desert and dryland susceptible to desertification; 70% of the region's agricultural areas are arid or semiarid, and only 35% is cultivable. During the last 20 years many CWANA countries have suffered long-term droughts, with various degrees of severity: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Turkmenistan (FAO, 2001). The successive droughts that hit CWANA countries have devastated plant, animal and human lives alike. Livestock herders suffered most as incomes fell sharply and vulnerability to food shortages increased dramatically.

Desertification continues to be the most significant environmental issue in most of CWANA. It has affected wide areas of rangeland. Soil erosion in excess of 20 tonnes ha-1 per year is common in many areas. There is a close correlation between drylands and the location of areas that are likely to be affected by desertification in the future. This correlation may be explained by the peculiar vulnerability of fragile dryland environments to wind and water erosion, soil salinization, and loss of vegetation by overgrazing by livestock, overcutting of fuelwood and trees, and other excessive uses of the land and natural resources, and also by the deregulation of natural resource management. The prevailing climate also exerts persistent stress on both soil and vegetative resources. Relatively little disturbance can cause instability and imbalance, leading to desertification. Drought, overgrazing, clearance of woody species and tillage are the principal causes of rangeland degradation. In North Africa up to 90% of the area is affected by desertification (UNEP, 1997).