Memorandum of Understanding

Description of this Document

This Memorandum of Understanding is a written expression of shared intent among municipalities, local communities, ministries and public institutions, educational and research institutions, religious authorities, landowners, civil society organizations, conservation partners, youth and women's groups, and regional and international organizations across the Levant.

Within this shared framework, UNESCO is invited to provide technical guidance and an international platform for cooperation, particularly in areas related to cultural and natural heritage, environmental education, scientific knowledge, Biosphere Reserves, UNESCO Global Geoparks and the strengthening of dialogue and peace through the responsible stewardship of shared landscapes. SPNL remains the Founding Custodian and initial Secretariat of the Hima for Peace movement.

It does three things, and only three:

• It records why the signatories have come together — the value they place on the Hima tradition and on the landscapes and communities it protects.
• It sets out, in the Charter of Hima for Peace, the ten commitments the signatories make to one another and to the generations that follow them.
• It names the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL) as Founding Custodian and initial Secretariat, so that there is a point of contact through which cooperation can be coordinated.

The document does not transfer land, funds, authority, or rights. It does not alter anyone's legal position. It does not require any signatory to do anything it has not chosen to do. What it offers is something different and, in its way, harder to give: a public world freely given, among people who share a place and a responsibility for it.

Introduction

The Hima is among the oldest continuously practiced systems of community-based conservation in the world. For more than four thousand years across the Levant and the wider Arab region, communities have set aside land, water, and pasture for the common good, governed by rules the community itself agreed and enforced. Grazing was rested. Springs were protected. Trees were left standing. Nobody wrote a law; the community simply held itself to what it had promised.

That system worked because it belonged to the people who lived within it. Where the Hima survived, land recovered. Where it was abandoned — replaced by distant authority, open access or neglect — degradation followed, and it followed quickly.

Through the Hima Revival Movement led by SPNL, this tradition has been restored as a living contemporary practice. Municipalities have declared Himas by their own decision. Local committees govern them. Shepherds, farmers, fishers, schoolteachers and hunters sit at the same table. Scientists and traditional custodians read the same landscape together. The results are visible in restored rangelands, recovering bird populations along one of the world's great migratory flyways, and village economies that earn a living from a landscape they are keeping rather than consuming.

It rests on a simple conviction. Nature does not observe the borders drawn across the Levant, and neither does drought, fire, water scarcity or the loss of a species. The management of what is shared can divide communities, or it can bring them to the same table. The Hima has always been an argument for the second possibility. Where people govern a landscape together, they build the habits of trust that peace is made from.

Therefore the signatories place their names here: not because they are required to, but because they have decided to.

The Charter of Hima for Peace

The Ten Commitments

We, the signatories of this Memorandum — municipalities, local communities, civil society organizations, religious authorities, educational institutions, landowners, youth, women, government agencies and conservation partners of the Levant — united by our shared commitment to nature and people, adopt the following Charter as the heart of our understanding.

Recognizing that healthy ecosystems are the foundation of sustainable societies, and that the Hima represents one of the world's oldest and most enduring systems of community-based governance, we commit ourselves, each within our own means and mandate, to the following:

Our Common Vision

We envision a Levant where communities and nature flourish together through the Hima tradition; where biodiversity is conserved, cultural heritage is celebrated, livelihoods are sustainable, and cooperation transcends borders.

Together, we affirm that community stewardship is essential for achieving environmental sustainability, social well-being, climate resilience and lasting peace.