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.