This paper presents an ex-ante cost-benefit analysis of large-scale rangeland restoration through the Hima system within the Zarqa River Basin, drawing on experience from a pilot initiative by IUCN and the Jordanian Ministry of Agriculture since 2010. The ecosystem services that arise from rangeland restoration are valued using a combination of stated preference, avoided costs, replacement cost and market prices approaches.
Housing may be the Third World's most intractable problem, but mud, adobe, earth-bricks, soil-cement and other traditional building materials are cheap, readily available and can be made and used by the poor people themselves to build their own homes. Today, mud perhaps offers the only practical prospect for building the millions of houses which will be needed over the next twenty years.
