The Italian Ambassador in Lebanon, Gabriele Checchia, introduced the project on “The promotion of eco-tourism to conserve the Jaba Moussa nature reserve” in the Christian district of Kesrouan in Lebanon. The initiative, financed by Italian cooperation with just over 1 million euros as part of the Emergenza Ross programme, is intended to promote the region’s biological, cultural and historic values by creating a basic eco-tourism structure. The project will benefit the area’s Maronite Catholic villages, which lose many of their young people to emigration. As a consequence, the villages have seen their agricultural land abandoned (agriculture being the region’s main economic activity).
The initiative is part of Italian Cooperation’s strategy to finance important projects in the Christian area of Mount Lebanon. Considerable pockets of poverty still exist in the area, where Italy is increasingly present and is following its principle of equal distribution of aid amongst Lebanon’s different religious communities.
The project is a continuation of the one initiated last year to encourage Christians from the Chouf (a mixed Druze-Christian area) to return to the lands they had left after the tragic fighting in 1983-84, during the Lebanese civil war.