WATER ISSUES IN HASHEMITE JORDON.

• Author: Haddadin, Munther J.

INTRODUCTION

THE WATER ISSUES THAT JORDAN has been facing and will face are outlined. Most of them stem from the imbalance in the population-water resources equation. The imbalance has been due to surges in population levels and a high rate of natural growth on the one hand, and to the trespassing of the neighbors against Jordan's rightful water share in international watercourses on the other. The impact of this imbalance is briefly reviewed in environmental, economic, social and public health dimensions, and viable options to augment the water resources of Jordan are presented. The impact of the historical developments in water legislation and institutional arrangements is presented and proposals made to enhance the institutional set up and the administration environment.

BACKGROUND

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, declared independent in 1946, is vastly arid territory. Bound by Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the east. Palestine and Israel to the west, Syria to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south, the country is about 92% arid, and the agricultural land does not exceed 400,000 hectares, with only half that area on the average cropped each year due to uncertainty of rainfall. The country receives about 8.5 BCM, [1] of which an estimated annual quantity of a little over half a billion can be economically harnessed.. Thus the loss to evaporation if substantial and is estimated at about 94% of the annual precipitation. However, part of that evaporation occurs in the form of transpiration yielding grass that benefits livestock for a short period in spring. Another quarter million is available to the Kingdom from an international watercourse, the Yarmouk, which is the largest tributary to the Jordan. The Jordan, an international river, is totally used upstream before it approaches the Kingdom's borders with Israel. It is more like a drain for agricultural drainage water and other wastewater.

The government has invested handsomely in the development of its water resources. Dams have been built with a total capacity of about 160 MCM, and more are under construction. It also invesd in the development of irrigation infrastructures in the Jordan Valley, north and south of the Dead Sea, bringing some 35,000 hectares under perennial irrigation. The waters of the tributaries to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea are being utilized almost to their limits. No part of the Jordan River flow has been used by the Kingdom since 1964, the year that Israel began to control the outflow of the river from Lake Tiberias.

One wonders why the Kingdom, named after the holy and eternal Jordan River, does not use any of its water; and the answer to that is simple. The Kingdom draws its water rights on the Jordan directly from its tributaries before they discharge into the river. There is convenience in such an arrangement. It saves on energy cost that would otherwise be incurred if the water were to be pumped from the river, and, more importantly, the water, tapped from the tributaries, is of a superior quality to that of the Jordan river itself. The water quality in the course of the Jordan River after it leaves Lake Tiberias has deteriorated progressively since 1964, the year the flow out of Tiberias was stopped under the Israeli plan that diverted a good part of the river flow to the coastal areas and the Negev in Israel. The deterioration of the water quality is due to two reasons with cumulative effect. The first is the depletion of the freshwater flow in the river out of Lake Tiberias by virtue of Israel's diversion and oth er consumptive uses, and the second is the diversion to it of water of degraded quality. Saline water springs, naturally discharging into Lake Tiberias, and municipal and industrial wastewater, have all been diverted by Israel to discharge into the river course south of the lake. Additionally, the agricultural drainage water in the river basin on both the Jordanian and the Israeli sides, finds its way to the river course, thus adding to the environmental degradation of its waters.

NATURE OF THE WATER PROBLEM IN JORDAN

Unlike most other analyses encountered in the local, regional and international literature about water in Jordan where experts speak of water shortage as though it is the work of nature, I represent that the water problem in Jordan is not natural but is man made in most of its aspects. To elaborate, the Kingdom, upon its proclamation as an independent country in May of 1946, had close to 350,000 people who would double approximately every twenty years. The water resources totaled 1000 MCM per year, making the annual average per capita about 3000 CM. Left to the natural population growth, the country would have reached a population level of about 2.6 million by 1999 compared to the 4.8 million people of today. The population boom has not been natural but has been the direct outcome of the creation of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were compelled to migrate out of Palestine to take "temporary" refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. Jordan has been host to about 40% of those Pales tinian refugees. A corollary outcome had been the unity between part of Palestine (the West Bank) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which unity allowed free movement of people, and the movement was from west to east. The phenomenon was repeated in 1967 with more displaced people pouring into Jordan from the West Bank and Gaza. Finally, the second Gulf war in 1990 forced about 300,000 Jordanians to return to Jordan from the Gulf countries that had provided them with employment and residence. The surges in population levels have therefore been not by work of nature or act of God, but were rather a direct outcome of the work of man.

For over two millennia the water resources of the country have been fluctuating around a stationary average and none of the immigrants carried with him/her a bucket full of water. With the natural resource availability running around a stationary average and the population steadily and, on several occasions, abruptly increasing, the results have been a huge tilt on the population-resource balance.

The erosion of the Kingdom's water resources caused more tilt. They dropped from 1000 MCM annually to about 750 MCM in 1999, reducing the per capita share from 3000 CM in 1946 to 175 CM half a century later. This erosion of the water resources available to the Kingdom has been man made also. It was due to the neighbors [2] trespassing against Jordan's water share, and due to the loss of water resources for environmental reasons (pollution), and both reasons are man-made.

In my efforts to calculate the population carrying capacity of the Hashemite Kingdom, I concluded that its land and water resources, utilized in the traditional methods of use prevailing in the Middle East, are capable of supporting about 1.0 million people, i.e., about 22% of today's population. Concisely put, the country in 1999 is accommodating over four times the population that its water and land resources can comfortably accommodate. This big tilt in favor of the population translates itself into parallel deficit in the foreign trade in food commodities, and in hardships encountered in the supply of municipal water to the population. However, the introduction of new technical advances in agriculture and irrigation, helped to make the agricultural trade deficit less dramatic. Finally, the water legislation and institutional arrangements devised for the organization and administration of the Water Sector in Jordan are as important as the imbalance in the population-water resources equation in the country , displaying chronic deficits in the annual water budget of the country.

THE CURRENT WATER BUDGET

Water is needed primarily for municipal, industry and agricultural (including livestock) purposes. Other beneficial uses include landscaping, tourism, transportation, power generation and another less important uses. Current uses in Jordan are primarily municipal (260 MCM) and industrial (60 MCM), and agricultural uses (620 MCM), a total of 940 MCM of which is in excess of the renewable resources currently available for use with an average of (630 MCM). The gap of 310 MCM is closed by using treated wastewater (55 MCM), non-renewable fossil water (60 MCM), by over-exploiting renewable aquifers (140 MCM), and by trans-boundary water transfer from Israel under the peace treaty (55 MCM). The exploitation of renewable groundwater aquifers stands today...