Dealing with Closed Basins: The Case of the Lower Jordan River Basin

Abstract

During the past 50 years, the Lower Jordan River basin experienced a rapid and comprehensive process of development of its rare water resources. This led to its progressive closure; almost no water is left that can be mobilized and used while demand, notably in urban areas, keeps increasing. Despite the need to consider demand management options to alleviate the Jordanian water crisis, the potential of these options appears limited in the mid-term; the growing demand of the population and the sustaining of agriculture are unlikely to be met without supply augmentation measures which will reopen the basin.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Government of the Netherlands to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, through the French Regional Mission for Water and Agriculture, Amman-Jordan.

Notes

1. Most of the conclusions presented in this paper are derived from Courcier et al. (2005) and Venot et al. (2007).

2. This view considers the Dead Sea as a sink; current flows are under ‘natural’ flows so much that there is no way environmental sustainability of the Dead Sea can be factored in as a policy objective under current circumstances (unless seawater is transferred from the Red Sea).

3. Jordan underwent successive waves of migrants due to the wider political situation in the Middle East: 350 000 Palestinian refugees after the 1948–49 Israeli-Arab war; 405 000 persons after the 6-day war of 1967; 635 000 persons between 1988 and 1992 (after the abandonment of any administrative relations with the west bank in 1988 and the Gulf Crisis of 1990/1991). It is estimated that a further 500 000 persons (mainly Iraqis) have fled the Gulf for Jordan after the second Gulf War of 2003. The population of Jordan was estimated at 5.35 million in 2004 (Pre-1948 population was approximately 430 000 persons).