AMMAN — Jordanians are looking at a
“critical summer” as the water supply is running short.
This year’s rain season was half
that of last year’s, which affected dam storage and decreased the per capita
share of potable water.
اضافة اعلان
“COVID-19 increased water use by
around 10 percent. Today, the water deficit stands around 30–35 percent. … We
are facing a drought and the situation is difficult,” Sami Tarabieh, environmental
projects coordination specialist at the
UN Development Program (UNDP), told Jordan
News.
The expert highlighted that external
factors play a major role in the water supply, which include an exponential
increase in population, heat waves, and climate change.
“It becomes very difficult to manage
resources in light of these factors, especially with the Kingdom’s economic
challenges. In 2016, the UNDP worked with stakeholders to establish a national
drought committee and I believe this committee should be activated because I
would predict that we live in a state of drought,” added Tarabieh.
“This summer is going to be
critical. This year’s rainy season is around 50 percent of last year’s; this
had a clear impact on dams, especially dams allocated to supply drinking
water,” Omar Salameh, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation’s spokesperson, told
Jordan News.
According to Salameh, the decrease
placed “major strains” on water supply and demand. This year’s rain season came
80 million cubic meters short of last year’s, he noted.
The water occupancy rate of dams
across the Kingdom reached only 42 percent this year, at 140 million cubic
meters, compared to the 65 percent occupancy rate at 220 million cubic meters
last year, Salameh told local media on Sunday.
The Ministry is committed to
providing water in the critical stage of summer with an average of between 4 or
5 cubic meters of water weekly for every household, he added.
“UNDP worked with the Crisis
Management Cell and drought was listed as one of the natural disasters. We also
need to address drought from a legislative perspective, whether by finding a
legal definition for drought or by stipulating the levels of drought,” Tarabieh
argued.
Munther Hadaddin, water expert and a
senior negotiator during the Israeli-Jordanian peace talks in 1994, told
Jordan
News in an interview over the phone that Jordan needs to depend on the
extensive sandstone layers available in the country.
“This sandstone layer is thick, as
in it has enough water for 300 years of drinking and manufacturing,” he said.
However, he elaborated that this
process can be expensive due to the deep digging required to get to these
layers.
The ministry has called on citizens
to do their part this summer by slashing water consumption as much as possible
and use it for essential needs, “and not for unnecessary activities such as
gardening, car-washing, and washing street pavements”.
“We need to work together with the
public and we call on people to rationalize water use and install tanks on
ground levels, because there might be some problems pumping water to higher
floors,” Salameh told
Jordan News.
Jordan’s annual renewable water
resources are at around 88 cubic meters per person, which is considered one of
the lowest percentages in the world and below the global line for absolute
water scarcity of 500 cubic meters, according to
UNICEF. A “comprehensive
solution” is needed to replenish the vastly decreasing water levels in Jordan,
UNICEF adds on its website.
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