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(MENAFN - Jordan Times) Experts taking part in international event warn of grave consequences if projects like Red-Dead cancel and recycled wastewater are not realised
STOCKHOLM - A major decrease in the amount of water available for agricultural and household purposes in Jordan is anticipated as a direct effect of global warming, according to experts participating at the August 12-18 Weekly Water Week 2007 in Stockholm.
Increasing temperatures in the Jordan Valley, coupled with varying amounts and timing of rain in the next few decades would put many Jordanian farmers out of business, posing an extra challenge to policy makers.
"We expect revenues from the farming industry in the eastern side of the Jordan Valley to drop significantly," according to Heinz-Peter Wolff, a scientist who led a study at the University of Hohenheim in Germany on the socio-economic impacts of changing water availability in Jordan.
"With a 15 per cent reduction in Jordan River water production, about 22 per cent of farming systems would come close to the brink of their existence, while 47 per cent would suffer from significant, but not threatening, losses in family income and the remaining third would be able to compensate potential losses in agriculture by alternative use of family resources," he said.
Jordanian experts added that a noticeable number of farmers have been leaving their farms due to increased farming costs, despite being subsidised by the government. Currently, less than 12 per cent of the Jordan Valley population works in farming, while 70 per cent switched to government jobs during the last few decades.
Only 2.1 per cent of women work on farms, according to Ziad Ghazawi, who carried out a survey on this topic commissioned by the Jordan University of Science and Technology.
Currently, farming in Jordan takes up most of its scarce water resources and contributes less than 2.2 per cent of its gross domestic product, Shaminder Puri, a UNESCO expert told The Jordan Times.
Decreasing water availability, coupled with ever increasing population growth rates, could put Jordan at an even higher position in the top 10 water poorest countries in the world, he said, unless several projects are put in place effectively.
One of these projects is the Red-Dead Canal, which would provide at least 800 million cubic metres (mcm) of water per year for desalination in Jordan. Another project is to pump groundwater from the Disi aquifer in the south, along 300 kilometres to feed Amman with 100mcm of water a year.
Puri said the Jordanian government has reportedly finalised a deal with Saudi Arabia, which shares the aquifer's base, and finally decided on a consortium to carry out the multimillion project. However, he warned that this solution is only temporary since water in the aquifer is non-replaceable.
"Any policy and political decision for coping with [climate] changes will have to focus on the interest of the people in the concerned areas since the use of resources depends highly on the individual decisions of the end-users," Heinz warned.
One of the major themes focused on in Stockholm is sanitation and the efficient use of wastewater. To this end, Jordan has been working on upgrading its wastewater treatment systems across the country; however, the priority is to increase the number of households connected to the sewage system, which currently is in the vicinity of 60 per cent, experts said.
According to Ahmad Uleimat, an expert at the Water Authority of Jordan, there are still untapped opportunities to use wastewater in agriculture. "Water scarcity in the Jordan Valley should be addressed through a well-structured system that treats grey water especially when its disposal is being planned in arid and semi-arid regions," he said.
With today's technologies, it is possible to maximise crop production through treated wastewater. So far, the technologies used are quite "obsolete and inefficient", according to Uleimat.
That is where the private sector opportunities are, argues the Asian Development Bank, explaining that there is a $3 to $36 return on investment for every $1 spent on improving sanitation.
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