West Asia

About West Asia: a variety of ecosystems

The IUCN Regional Office for West Asia (ROWA) was established in October 2004 covering the region of West Asia, which comprises of 13 countries including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, the Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen and Iran in addition to the Gulf countries including Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

ROWA aims to be active in all 13 countries in various conservation and sustainable development activities. The critical issues facing the region are:

• Land degradation, aridity and desertification
• Unsustainable water extraction and use
• Biodiversity and habitat loss, and species extinction.
• Threats to sensitive marine ecosystems through pollution, habitat destruction, Invasive Alien Species, and unplanned coastal development.

Our Mandate 

• Serving as a bridge between the national and regional/global levels, particularly in relation to regional environmental agreements and global environmental conventions
• Involving both governments and civil society, notably by using the Union's gathering power to organize multi-stakeholder forums
• Facilitating communication, coordination, and information exchange among different actors in the region, through the establishment of specialist networks and other mechanisms
• Providing a neutral platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue on contentious environmental and developmental issues
• Promoting the testing, refinement, and adoption of new tools and approaches to key conservation issues
• Synthesizing information about previous and ongoing conservation and development initiatives, in order to assess their effectiveness and impact, identify lessons learned, and reveal gaps and future priorities

Our Work in West Asia

IUCN ROWA has taken a pragmatic direction to focus on the major priorities that draw all of the region's countries together.

According to this idea, the following programmes have been developed: The Drylands, Livelihoods & Gender Program, The Water & Climate Change Program, The Protected Areas & Biodiversity Program and finally The Marine & Coastal Management Zone Program.