This paper analyzes the restoration of Jordan’s UN Dana Biosphere Reserve cottages for eco-tourism and home-building in neighboring village Qadisiyah as competing land projects. Whereas a multi-million dollar U.S. Aid endowment restores Dana’s houses as a “heritage” village for a tourist economy, families in Qadisiyah build houses slowly with income from provisional labor to shore up a familial future. Each aesthetic act manifests economic and political networks in tension. The paper makes the case for provincializing environmentalism, for thinking about global ecology movements in relation to other unauthorized, transnational economies that do work with land.