Revision as of 05:59, 25 May 2017

Summary

The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project is a multinational proposal by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Israel and Palestine to build a 180 km pipeline designed to carry up to two billion cubic meters of desalinated seawater per year from the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea through Jordanian territory to the Dead Sea. For the past few decades, the Dead Sea has been shrinking rapidly (receding approximately 3 feet or 1 m per year) due to the diversion of water from the Jordan River into irrigation agriculture and domestic uses as well as mineral mining from its waters in the south. To address the ecological crisis in the Dead Sea, while also generating hydropower and increasing water supply through desalination, the three states signed a Memorandum of Understanding to realize the Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project with the mediation of the World Bank in 2013, despite criticism from civil society organizations and environmental groups. The first phase of the project, costing US$10 billion in total, involves the construction of a desalination plant in the coastal town of Aqaba on the Read Sea, which was completed in March 2017. The Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation has chosen five international consortiums made up of 20 engineering firms from across North America, Europe, and Asia to carry out the first phase. The subsequent phase of the project, pumping stations and pipelines that will transport desalinated water to the Dead Sea, is planned to be completed in 2021.

Natural, Historic, Economic, Regional, and Political Framework

The Dead Sea sits in what is referred to as the Jordan Valley rift system between the African plate on the west and the Arabian plate on the east. The lowest point in the Jordan Rift Valley is the Dead Sea. At 400 meters below sea level, the shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest land on earth but rises sharply to almost 1,000 meters in the west and east. A highly saline body of water with no natural outlet, the Dead Sea is bordered by three states: Israel, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Palestine. The main source of freshwater flow into the Dead Sea is the 251-kilometre-long Jordan River, which flows from the Sea of Galilee to the north.

There are five riparian states that share the Jordan River: Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The valley north of the Dead Sea has long been a site of agriculture, with some of the earliest evidence for the domestication of agricultural crops, due to the water available from the Jordan River and numerous springs located on the valley’s wadis. The Jordan River originates from three spring-fed streams that contribute about 660 MCM/yr into the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberias, which stores approximately 4,000 MCM of water. About 500 MCM/yr flows out of Lake Tiberias into the Lower Jordan, which converges with the Yarmouk River 10 km, contributing an estimated 40% of the total combined flow. The Lower Jordan River flows along the northwest border of Jordan, forming the border first with Israel and then with the Palestinian West Bank, finally emptying into the Dead Sea (Priscoli et al. 2010).

7.1. Water Supply

Jordan ranks as the 3rd poorest nation in terms of freshwater resources at 133m3/person/year. Jordan produces around 880 billion cubic meters distributed over drinking household consumption and other economic activities and agriculture which alone consume 58% of total water. In 2015, Jordan faced a water deficit of 104.8 MCM per year (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2014). As the Upper Jordan River flows south into Sea of Galilee, which provides the largest freshwater storage capacity along the Jordan River and winds further south through the Jordan Valley, Palestinians are denied any access to the water of the river. About a quarter of the 420 MCM Israel pumps from the Sea of Galilee goes to the local communities in Israel and to Jordan, the rest is diverted to Israel through the National Water Carrier (NWC) before it can reach the West Bank.

In the region at large, there is also a broader trend of an increasingly drying climate that raises further concerns about water availability in the Jordan Valley. The Mediterranean basin is one of the few regions where circulation models concur in their prediction of decreasing precipitation totals (Bates et al. 2008). In a recent study, scientists from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and University of Arizona analyzed 900 years (1100–2012) of Mediterranean drought variability and found that the recent 15-year drought in the Levant (1998–2012) was the driest in the record (Cook et al. 2016). Simulations show about a 10% decline in precipitation across the region by both the middle and the end of the century, with considerable variation between countries and international river basins (Chenoweth et al., 2011).

=== 7.2. Water Demand

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Located in an area that receives less than 100 millimeters (under 4 inches) of rain per year and where temperatures often exceed 45°C, the Dead Sea is completely reliant on inflow for its continued existence. It is estimated that the total inflow to the Dead Sea has been reduced from around 1,250 million cubic meters (MCM) per year in 1950 to around 260 MCM per year in 2010. About two thirds of the reduction in the Dead Sea’s water level is due to this diversion of the water upstream by companies and farms in Israel, Jordan and Syria. The remaining 30 to 40 percent of the reduction is caused by the large mining companies in Israel and Jordan located in the southern section of the Dead Sea that transfer the water into evaporation ponds to make potash and bromine (Kool 2016).

Approximately 600,000 people are living in the valley on both sides of the lower part of the Jordan River, including 55,000 Israelis (49,000 in Israel and 6000 settlers in the West Bank) 62,000 Palestinians, 247,000 registered Jordanians, and an estimated 250,000 foreign workers in Jordan, primarily from Egypt, Iraq, and (more recently) Syria. The Jordan Valley is the major agricultural production region for Jordan and Israel. 61.5 % of the area between the Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea consists of uncultivated land, with 32 % used for agriculture and 3.6 % as built-up area, defined as “space required for infrastructure and urban areas” (Kool 2016).

On a national scale Jordan’s agricultural export, mainly fruits and vegetables, accounts for about 550 Million JOD (2014), mainly to the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France, and to a lesser extend to the Gulf States. 20 % of Jordanians are employed in the agriculture, fishing, forestry sector. Israel is likewise a major exporter of agricultural products (accounting for about 2.2 Billion USD) as well as agricultural technologies. However the Jordan Valley plays a minor role in the agricultural production, since the bulk is produced in the central and western regions of the country. The diversion of water to irrigation agriculture, industry and domestic use has reduced the flow of the lower Jordan River to less than 2% of its original flow with the quality of water compromised by the seepage of sewage and agricultural runoff (Kool 2016).

As a result of reduced inflow from the Jordan River and mining operations in its southern banks, the Dead Sea has lost more than a third of its surface over the past two decades. Data from the Geological Survey of Israel (GSI) shows that in 1976, the Dead Sea was at -398 meters below sea level, whereas in December 2015 it had reached almost -430 meters. The rate of recession is accelerating – in the first two decades since 1976, the water level dropped by 6 meters each decade, in the third decade it fell by 9 meters and in the last decade it plummeted by 11 meters. Sinkholes around the Dead Sea started forming around 1990 and in 2013, there were 4,336 sinkholes along the banks of the Dead Sea, with some of these craters having a depth of 80 feet (Hasson 2016).

Issues and Stakeholders

The Jordanian government is unilaterally leading the construction of the conveyance project, even though NGOs are still contesting the project’s ecological value and potential negative impacts on the ecosystem of the Dead Sea. How can the Jordanian government address the concerns of non-state actors like Friends of the Earth Middle East?

The cost to finance the 180 km conveyance project both in terms of short term construction and long term maintenance is very significant. Friends of the Earth Middle East has proposed an alternative regional plan to build smaller infrastructure projects such as wastewater treatment plants and water efficiency measures for irrigation agriculture in the valley to increase the flow of the Jordan River, which will also serve to replenish the Dead Sea. The Jordanian and Israeli governments should make a commitment to realize these projects in tandem with the Red to Dead Sea Conveyance project to provide co-benefits to the communities that live in the valley.

Stakeholders: • Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Ministry of Water and Irrigation • Government of Israel • Jordan Valley Authority

The impact of mining operations on the southern banks of the Dead Sea has not been featured sufficiently in the discussions leading up to the signing of the MoU in 2013. Are there any initiatives to address water use intensity of the mining industry as a demand-side measure to replenish the Dead Sea?

According to the Red Sea – Dead Sea Water Conveyance Study Program Chemical Industry Analysis Study, sponsored by the World Bank, there is no clear path, at this time, for reduction of brine intake from Dead Sea. The report suggests that any significant reduction in Dead Sea brine usage is unlikely under current scenario and that any such prospect would require a separate study and cooperation with DSW and APC. The Red to Dead Sea Conveyance proposal and the regional master plan prepared by Friends of the Earth Middle East should include actionable solutions to address the impact of mining operations on the Dead Sea water levels and ecosystem, such as water efficiency measures for salt and potash mining.

Stakeholders: • The Dead Sea Works LTD • Arab Potash Company • Jordan Valley Authority • Government of Isreal • Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Analysis, Synthesis, and Insight

No ASI articles have been added yet for this case

Key Questions

Power and Politics: How does asymmetry of power influence water negotiations and how can the negative effects be mitigated?

Water sharing and transfer is an important mechanism that the three states are using to address asymmetry of geopolitical power in the basin. For example, Jordan receives 35 million cubic meters of water from Israel every year, according to the peace treaty signed between the two countries. In the Red Sea to Dead Sea Conveyance project the desalination plant that will be built by Jordan and will run through Jordanian territory will provide freshwater from the port of Aqaba to Israel’s southern Arava region as a water swap. Similarly. Jordan will buy Israeli water from the Sea of Galilee in the north to provide drinking water to Amman, the capital of Jordan, instead of building extraneous infrastructure to pump water to the city from the south (Reed, 2017). Identification of such mutual gains and competitive advantages is one way to address asymmetries in power and access to resources. Nonetheless, Palestine’s access to water remains a key question that is unresolved and may require repeated negotiations through the Joint Water Committee.