Combining an ancient tradition with practical steps for local action, the Hima Playbook shows how communities can protect nature while sustaining the livelihoods, knowledge and relationships that depend on it.
A municipal council considering how to safeguard communal land. A farmer looking for ways to maintain production without exhausting the soil. Young people seeking a meaningful role in the future of their village.
SPNL’s new publication brings these concerns into the same conversation. Hima: Nature Protection Through Community Partnership introduces a conservation approach in which caring for the environment becomes a shared local responsibility—and offers a practical guide to putting that responsibility into action.
Subtitled An ancient stewardship system, revived for our generation and a practical guide to starting one, the playbook connects the history of the Hima with the decisions communities face today: who sets the rules, how natural resources can be used sustainably, and how protecting a landscape can also support the people who live within it.
Its central message is expressed in a simple line: “Hima makes humans partners in conservation, not just consumers of it.”
For the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, that partnership is the foundation of a model it has worked to revive since 2004.
In his foreword, SPNL Director General Assad Serhal describes the Hima as a living tradition built on stewardship, equity and the sustainable use of natural resources. He places its contemporary relevance against the pressures of biodiversity loss, climate change and ecosystem degradation, arguing for conservation grounded in local knowledge and shared responsibility.
The publication carries that argument from principle into practice.
One of its most useful starting points is a question familiar to anyone encountering the Hima model: how does it differ from a nature reserve?
The playbook presents the two approaches as complementary. Its emphasis is on the Hima’s community leadership, locally agreed rules and provision for sustainable resource use. Farming, herding and harvesting can continue within limits designed to allow ecosystems to recover and resources to renew.
The distinction is useful without being absolute: protected areas have varied governance arrangements, and community participation can also be central to nature reserves. What the playbook foregrounds is the Hima’s particular route into conservation through municipal institutions, local livelihoods and cultural knowledge.
Protection, in this account, becomes part of everyday decision-making. It involves agreeing where grazing should be limited, how land should be managed, and what responsibilities different members of a community will assume.
That connection between nature and daily life runs through the programmes featured in the publication.
Doroub Al Hima links conservation with walking trails and opportunities for local tourism. The playbook reports a network of more than 219 kilometres of ecological trails, creating ways for people to experience landscapes while supporting surrounding communities.
School With No Walls, known as SNOW, takes environmental education outdoors. According to the publication, it has engaged more than 5,890 students, bringing learning into direct contact with the places children are being asked to understand and protect.
Homat Al Hima, the youth volunteer programme, develops ecological monitoring and conservation leadership skills. SPNL reports a network of more than 1,550 guardians, giving young people practical responsibilities within the wider conservation effort.
Alongside these initiatives, Hima Farm supports more than 200 farmers in adopting sustainable practices, while Souk Al Hima connects rural producers—especially women—with consumers. Together, they show why livelihoods matter to the model: conservation needs durable relationships with the people whose work shapes the land.
The playbook reports more than 60 active Hima sites across Lebanon and more than 460,000 beneficiaries. These figures convey the scale of SPNL’s work, but the publication’s most immediately useful contribution may be its explanation of how another community can begin.
Its “Golden 10” process starts with a joint site assessment and the preparation of maps defining boundaries and land-use zones. It then moves through drafting and adopting a municipal Hima decision, forming a committee drawn from local stakeholders, and appointing a coordinator.
From there, the work becomes ongoing: developing a management and action plan, training a local Homat Al Hima team, initiating trails, and preparing a first project proposal to secure funding.
The sequence makes clear that declaring a Hima is a beginning. Its future depends on organisation, agreed responsibilities, skills and resources.
This is where the publication moves beyond celebrating a conservation tradition. It gives municipalities and community groups a structure for discussing what they are prepared to protect—and how they will do it together.
For readers elsewhere in the region, it also presents Lebanon’s experience as an invitation to explore an approach rooted in a shared cultural history. The model’s relevance lies in the questions it helps communities answer about authority, access, responsibility and the future of their natural resources.
The playbook closes by inviting municipal leaders, farmers, students and others to take part, with SPNL offering support from the first conversation onward.
That first conversation is ultimately where the publication directs its readers: towards a map, a meeting, a proposed site, and the people willing to care for it.
