Day 14 – Amman, Dead Sea

This morning we have two meetings with NGOs. The first is with Safa Al-Jayoussi of the Jordan Environment Society (JES), which runs various projects including two recently completed relating to water management: Awareness Project in Water (APW) and Water Efficiency and Public Information for Action (WEPIA).

APW is a five-year programme, part-funded by USAID and intended to raise public awareness of water management. “It is designed to implement sustainable “information, education, and communication” campaigns and activities throughout Jordan with the specific targets of decision makers, businesses, public and private organizations, community leaders, women, university students and children.”

WEPIA’s various sponsors include the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Part of the project is the promotion of an aerating device that can be easily retrofitted to taps and other appliances by a layperson. These were initially free, then subsidised, and are still available at 2-3 JD each (£ 1.70-2.55).

Funding is being sought for various other projects. Unlike in the UK where climate change dominates, water management is considered the top priority here.

Water is only supplied to each property in Jordan for one day per week, when the washing and cleaning is done, and the storage tank replenished. Typically a 4,000 litre tank is expected to supply a family for the remainder of the week, though some houses have surreptitiously installed a second tank. (Al-Taibah, a village in Al-Karak, has been cut-off from mains water for three months due to contamination of its water supply.)

Overall 70 % of water is used for agriculture, even though it represents a small proportion of Jordan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), well behind tourism and exporting potash. At Al Kherbeh al Samrah a French funded and operated waste water treatment plant incorporates centralised recycling of grey water for agricultural use.

The major infrastructure project under consideration is a canal connecting the Dead and Red Seas, which will replenish the receding Dead Sea with sea water and in doing so reduce the salinity, allowing less energy-intensive desalination closer to areas of high population density, such as Amman. The project is sponsored by the World Bank and also involves Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

We are also interested to learn that a Jordan Green Building Council is being established. The huge mixed-use scheme at Abdali, currently under construction, is expected to be the ‘greenest’ development in Jordan, meeting the new voluntary, good practice standards being established.

The second meeting is with Dr Fadi Sharaiha, Executive Director of The Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan (JREDS).

One of JREDS main roles is as Jordan’s national member organisation of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), “a non-governmental and non-profit organisation aiming to promote sustainable development through environmental education (formal school education, training of staff and general awareness raising).”

As the national member JREDS is responsible for implementing FEE’s five environmental education programmes in Jordan. These are: Blue Flag; Eco-Schools; Young Reporters for the Environment; Learning about Forests; and Green Key.

It is also running a public awareness campaign funded by HSBC, with activities including promoting “eco-diving” with Red Sea diving centres, running the Clean Up the World campaign in Jordan and organising an EcoClub in every school in Aqaba.

Like JES, JREDS has been consulted on the terms of reference for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the proposed Dead Sea Red Sea channel. Dr Sharaiha explains that the energy source for the desalination plant has not yet been determined but could be a nuclear reactor at Aqaba (which would require 100 billion litres of water per annum for heat rejection). An alternative source is Jordan’s shale oil reserves, which could be exploited commercially in the future. We agree that Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) would probably be preferable.

Solar water heating is subsidised and has a 2-3 year simple payback but is not widely adopted in residential buildings; big corporations such as the hotel operators are more likely to recognise the value. In rural areas hot water is generally not used, except for cooking.

Jordan is the fourth most water stressed country in the world. Dr Sharaiha tells us that domestic use averages 15 litres per person per day, though it varies widely, being perhaps ten times higher in urban areas than rural. (Consequently in rural areas grey and black water recycling not viable because volumes are so low.) We find this a little hard to believe, particularly since in urban areas ‘Western’ flush toilets are apparently widespread, and dual-flush WCs are only just being introduced.

Despite the scarcity water is not expensive. Dr Sharaiha’s colleague tells us that the water bill is 7 JD (£ 6.00) per quarter for her two person household and 40 JD (£ 34.25) for her parents’ five person household. Dr Sharaiha, who is a strong advocate of practising what he preaches, spends 8 JD (£ 6.85) per quarter for “four people and a pet”. Apparently this is partly attributable to his following the 1970s Californian mantra, “if it’s yellow, let it mellow”, which seems to cause a little friction with his wife!

(Dr Sharaiha also demands high standards of his employees, refusing to travel in one colleague’s 2.7 litre engine car, and reprimanding his staff for not going to a widely advertised, HSBC sponsored promotion where collect water saving devices were being given away.)

Later in the afternoon we visited the Dead Sea itself, the lowest elevation on the earth’s surface on dry land, at Amman Beach, and briefly floated in its incredibly saline water.

In the evening we visited the westernised Sweifieh district of Amman, depressingly complete with four Coca-Cola branded Hummers.

Day 11 – Damascus

This morning I met Anne Marie Galmstrup, project architect for Henning Larsen Architects (HLA), designers of the new Massar Children’s Discovery Centre in Damascus. Anne Marie was very helpful, talked me through the project and gave me a number of leads to follow up, including contacts at Buro Happold, the civil, structural and M&E engineer for the project, and at Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the federally owned “international cooperation enterprise for sustainable development…[supporting]the German Government in achieving its development policy objectives”.

Massar, part of the Syria Trust for Development, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation established in April 2007 by Her Excellency Mrs. Asma Al Assad the First Lady of Syria, is “creating a major national learning and development programme for young people in Syria from 5 to 21 years old…[using] non-formal learning techniques to inform, involve and inspire young people across all Syria.”

Its first regional Discovery Centre opened in Lattakia in 2007, and a second in Homs, focusing on music, is under construction. Massar’s Green Team “has been on a national touring program since July 2005 reaching 100,000 children in Syria on 01/06/2008”.

The site lies between two branches of the Barada River (which is more of a stream these days) on a “cultural strip” stretching west from the old city that also features the opera house, library and national museum. The scheme incorporates landscaped gardens, underground car parking and the new building, two-thirds of which will accommodate interactive science exhibitions with the remainder housing library, education and administration space.

HLA were one of five practices shortlisted for an international design competition; or, more correctly, a strategic design approach competition, as the design was developed in partnership with the client and later local consultants. An early activity was a fact-finding mission to Syria focusing on ‘buildability’, i.e. which materials, constructions and technologies could be sourced and delivered locally.

Water management is an issue that has come to the fore over the life of the project (four years to date). Initially the design team struggled to get information and engagement on the subject. However there has been increasing public awareness over the period and the building will incorporate low-flow fittings and appliances and grey water recycling. The latter uses sand filters as part of a “dry wetland” area of landscape, the filtered water being used for irrigation and, potentially, WC flushing. Black water recycling was also proposed but not accepted.

Solar water heating provides some renewable energy generation but overall the design philosophy advocates building ‘lean’ and avoiding ‘green bling’, which is less likely to be adequately maintained.

Anne Marie also showed me some other projects in Middle East (HLA generally being supported by Buro Happold), where water management was a recurring theme.

 

After the meeting I went to see whether the train from Damascus to Amman, Jordan is running, having been suspended during 2006, due to Syrian tank manoeuvres destroying the tracks according to one source. Alas, it is still not running and worse still the Hejaz station in central Damascus, in shades of London St Pancras, is being pushed further out to accommodate retail and hospitality development. (Khaddam, 5 km to the south, is now the main station for Damascus.)

After a pleasant amble back to the Old City and through the souqs…

 

…we found the salubrious headquarters of the Syrian Environment Association (SEA).

 

There did not appear to be anyone there so we went to the SEA’s Ecological and Biological Garden, immediately to the north of the citadel, where I was able to briefly meet Ms Etab Al-Takee, Head of the SEA (and also NPPP – Gender & Communication for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)). I was invited to a seminar on local markets that was about to start but decided that my Arabic wasn’t up to it (shamefully I have just about mastered reading Arabic numerals, and little else) and settled for a cold drink at the cafe instead.