Under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Basma Bint Talal, organized by The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, “Dana +20: Mobile Indigenous Peoples, Conservation, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change" will be held between 7-10 September at Dana Biosphere Reserve.

As the 20th anniversary of the Dana Declaration, which was signed in Wadi Dana in 2002, approaches, the workshop will take stock of ecological, and technical developments of the past two decades and bring the implications for local communities to the attention of global forums. The Dana+20 workshop aspires to outline forward-moving ways in consultation, with local community representatives, to improve engagement on the interrelated priorities of conservation, climate adaptation / resilience, habitat loss and sustainable development.

The workshop conference seeks to work with local communities as rights holders and change agents to reconfirm, direct and review ways to improve participation and maintain sustainability in the interrelated priorities of environmental conservation, climate change adaptation, and natural habitat protection.

Establishing a strategic framework to reduce the marginalization of local communities is a crucial objective of the conference, in addition to addressing the issues faced by local communities in the context of the aforementioned priorities At the close of the workshop a Dana+20 statement will be delivered.

The workshop is organized by the Refugee Studies Centre from the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) – an international NGO, and the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan (RSCN). The funders of this workshop included, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, University of Nevada, the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Misereor, and United Nations Development Program Small Grants Program UNDP/GEF.
To this end, the conference will also aim to develop an action plan to advance the rights of local communities in international and national policy-making on protected areas. And other non-governmental organizations through a detailed work program to mainstream the concerns of local communities concerning adaptation to climate change and sustainable development models.