AMMAN — Water and agriculture expert, Theib Oweis, called on
the government to implement a well-disciplined national strategy to combat the
effects of the Kingdom’s difficult water situation.
اضافة اعلان
Speaking at the Amman International Rotary Club on May 3rd,
Oweis warned that Jordan is facing water scarcity difficulties that require
immediate action.
Water scarcity and its impactDespite Jordan receiving an average of 8 billion cubic
meters of rainwater annually, most of it is lost in evaporation, with over 80
percent lost this way. Only 500 million cubic meters of water recharge
groundwater aquifers, and 400 million cubic meters flow as surface runoff.
Per capita, Jordan's annual water availability is now below
100 cubic meters, making it one of the lowest four globally in terms of water
availability. Irrigated agriculture is losing about 1 percent of its share of
water every year, with over one-third of it being treated sewage.
Climate change is exacerbating the situation, he said, and
the expected decline in precipitation in Jordan could be up to 25 percent by
the end of the century. The continued over-pumping of groundwater resources
will lead to even more losses.
However, it is possible to recover 2–3 billion cubic meters
of the lost rainwater in evaporation annually in the rainfed areas and the
Badia by adopting in-situ rainwater harvesting on a large scale.
The more relevant in-situ techniques allow crops to use
rainwater directly and prevent most of it from evaporating while supporting
improved field crops, trees, and forests and can rehabilitate the Badia with
grasses and shrubs for livestock.
Gov’t strategy is ‘confused’While welcoming the government's recent decisions to begin
the desalination process and build the National Water Carrier, Oweis noted the
government's current strategy saying it is "confused."
He said: “many years were wasted as the government put all
its eggs in the now failed basket of the Red Sea-Dead Sea project hoping that
it could produce the needed energy to desalinate seawater.”
He added that the government did not properly calculate the
external risks when making its plans. “They did not give enough consideration
to an obvious risk that Israel, due to its accessibility to the dead sea, would
veto the Red Sea-Dead Sea project. Neither did they consider a parallel backup
plan to avoid losing many years of planning for an alternative.”
“The government has regularly allowed political
consideration to cloud the sustainability of national resources,” he said.
As an example, he said that huge sums were invested in
projects that remained with little usage. “Badia livestock water harvesting
ponds (hafaer) are not well planned for the beneficial use of all collected
water. Livestock needs 5–10 million cubic meters in total and ministries have
constructed ponds with a capacity of 125 million cubic meters.
Meanwhile a “full few million cubic meters may recharge
groundwater but nearly 90 percent of the collected water evaporates with no
benefits”.
“Poor capacity and knowledge for planning and implementing
water supply initiatives are prevalent.”
What needs to be doneConventional water-saving practices such as focusing on
increasing land yields, which requires more of the non-available water, or
demand management, which is not working, and modern irrigation systems that
proved not effective but were still the only ones adopted.
Government policies applying economic instruments such as
subsidies are either lacking or harmful, he said. For example, barley subsidies
resulted in huge increases in livestock which overgrazed the Badia and
contributed to its severe degradation and further losses of its rainwater.
Heavily subsidizing irrigation water led to a slow
transformation to more water-use-efficient practices and cropping patterns.
Oweis suggested that instead of subsidizing irrigation
water, the government should support farmers and create an enabling environment
for investment in higher technologies such as greenhouses or hydroponics which
produces 4 to 20-times higher yields for the same amount of water,
respectively.
He said continuing groundwater mining can deprive future
generations of sustainable fresh groundwater resources and damage the
environment. Oweis said that, on this critical issue, the Jordanian government
lacks transparency and has shown little determination to stop this misuse of
precious water.
Oweis was critical of the calls for self-sufficiency in
terms of food security saying that “producing wheat and barley using fresh
groundwater is irrelevant to current water crises.”
Oweis suggests changing strategies and associated policies
to cope with agricultural water scarcity in Jordan.
Desalination, he said, is preferred to secure water for
domestic, industry, and tourism. This will allow the allocation of low-cost
surface and groundwater water for agriculture.
He also suggested
changing the focus from land productivity to water productivity (returns to a
cubic meter of water) with new policies and measures to encourage investment in
advanced technologies and provide incentives for changing cropping patterns and
adopting precision agriculture.
Crops like the Medjool date palm and protected vegetables
are highly water productive and should get priority in water allocation but
also the government should help small farmers to adopt such practices.
Read more National news
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
