The Ministry of Water Resources has shown that it understands the challenges that face the country and has adopted a strategy that will help alleviate water scarcity in the future. Despite this, several crises threaten to push the country towards further deterioration. Failing infrastructure, outdated agricultural and irrigation systems, upstream development, the IS insurgency, budget shortfalls, political instability and climate change all require discreet solutions, any one of which is difficult on its own let alone in tandem.

Four dams and a rehabilitation project at Kouachra Lake are currently under construction. Some of the projects are controversial, such as the Brissa Dam in the north.

Shifting regional relationships have affected Jordan’s access to these shared resources throughout the country’s history. In several cases, Jordan has received less than its equitable share of the resource, as upstream neighbours overexploit rivers and groundwater sources through damming, diversions and pumping.

After the peace treaty in 1994, the implementation of a canal linking the Red Sea and the Dead Sea became the focal point of Israeli-Jordanian cooperation. In February 2015, Jordan and Israel signed an agreement to implement the first phase of the project at a cost of $900 million over a period of three years.

The water crisis in Palestine cannot be presented in isolation from the political context, which continues to affect the economy, population, resource distribution and land ownership in the territories. However, because of the complexity of the issues and the limited scope of this report, the events that have impacted the water situation are only briefly discussed on this page …

Given the issues discussed above regarding the amount, reliability and quality of surface water sources, the Jordanian population relies mainly on groundwater for its domestic water supply.

With much of its land an arid, inhospitable desert, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, one of the world’s driest countries, threatens to die of thirst. Analysts have long warned that Jordan, saddled with shrinking renewable resources and a quickly growing population, faced a reckoning. In recent years, however, the challenges confronting this parched kingdom have accelerated.

Gaza requires massive rehabilitation efforts which have barely begun. Of the 500,000 people who were displaced from their homes, 100,000 remain homeless.

Jordan’s water resources

The cost of the falling level of the Dead Sea has been estimated at $73-227 million/yr. The cost of producing potable water at Aqaba and transferring it to Amman is estimated at $2/m3, considerably higher than the cost of water produced through the RSDS Project (<$1.5/m3).