Procedure_Part 5_Household Survey

Abstract

Considered as steppe and desert, the Badiah is the terrain of Bedouins since hundreds of years. Those ones have developed many strategies to face the erratic environment, and established over time laws to regulate the exploitation of resources. During the last century, many structural changes and several governmental interventions came to transform deeply Bedouins strategies, notably in terms of herding. The first one was probably the definition of official boundaries inside the steppe, where Bedouins used to travel without any borders. The following state interventions after the Independence - among them the nationalization of the steppe, and more recently the ban of cultivation - transformed deeply the institutional pattern in the Badiah and consequently the breeding strategies of the Bedouins. Aside from political aspects, the Syrian pastoral system is marked since the last decades by a strong increase of the number sheep grazing in the Badiah, due to an increasing demand of animal products. In addition, the abandon of camel breeding, and the mechanization of transportation contributed to accelerate the degradation of the rangelands. Therefore there is a need today to better understand the rangeland management system existing in Syria, and the socio economical mechanisms that induce this system.