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The water level of the Dead Sea is declining at a rate of one meter per year |
In one of the most politically tense regions of the world, researchers are putting aside their political sensitivities to collectively create a sustainable environment for their people and the creatures of nature that share it with them.
The land that was once referred to by Arabs simply as Ash-sham, comprising what is now Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, is one of the most fertile in all of the Middle East. This same land is also facing an imminent water crisis; one both of quantity and quality. And it is not only the land that is suffering; complete ecosystems are in danger of disappearing forever, and the wellbeing of its occupants is at stake, if immediate measures are not taken to save them.
The Lowest Point on Earth
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| The Dead Sea basin is home to over 450 species of plants |
At the lowest point on Earth, 417.5 meters below sea level, lies a sea. A dead sea; or so one might imagine, its waters devoid of any life form other than an endemic species of hypersaline-tolerant bacteria, of which even these have not been seen since the mid-1990s. The waters of this dead sea—The Dead Sea—are 10 times more salty than those of the ocean; so salty they can corrode iron and stainless steal. A curious attempt to taste the water brings a sensation that not even pure table salt can produce, leaving a residual painful sting on that too-curious tongue.
The Dead Sea, however, contrary to what its morbid name suggests, supports an ecosystem that is home and habitat to over 600 species of plants, animals, and fish, many of which are rare or endangered. It is also home to several nature reserves.
The Dead Sea basin is an important tourist destination, especially for members of the three monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For it is here where Jesus is said to have been baptized, where a cave exists where the prophet Lot is said to have stayed, and where the fortress of Masada stands on a mountain overlooking the sea’s western shores, signifying Jewish resistance to Roman slavery over 2,000 years ago. The Dead Sea basin also boasts the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth, the city of Jericho. And in recent times, it is where the oldest known copy of biblical texts—the Dead Sea Scrolls—was discovered.
The Dead Sea, bound on its western shores by Jordan and its eastern shores by Palestine’s West Bank and Israel, attracts a host of visitors seeking the purported cosmetic and medicinal benefits of its muds and waters. In addition, it forms the closest available one-day vacation spot for the peoples of the region.
The Dead Sea minerals, including potash, magnesium, and bromide, form a major portion of the Gross National Product of the countries of Jordan and Israel, employing over 4,000 people and bringing in annual revenues of US$ 650 million.
A Dead Sea In Need of Awakening
All of this is now at stake. Between 1930 and 1997, the water level of the Dead Sea declined over 21 meters, while it continues to drop at a rate of one meter per year. It has already lost one third of its original surface area, and its northern and southern parts have completely separated.
The reasons are simple. The waters responsible for recharging those lost by evaporation from this terminal lake are being diverted elsewhere. As much as 90 percent of the Jordan River waters have been diverted by Israel and Jordan, primarily to serve the agricultural sectors of both countries, leaving a mere 10 percent of the natural flow of the river to reach the Dead Sea. Spring waters that once fed the Dead Sea are also being diverted, depriving the thirsty lake of any hope of replenishment.
As if this were not enough, the mineral extraction industries of both Israel and Jordan are physically pumping water out of the Sea’s northern basin into its southern basin, where shallow evaporation ponds have been constructed to accelerate the evaporation of water and thus allow for the easy extraction of its rich minerals.
The results have thus far been devastating.
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| Abdel Rahman Sultan from FoEME Jordan demonstrates two huge sinkholes in the midst of agricultural land |
The rapidly dropping sea level has been accompanied by a drop in the water table along the coasts. This has resulted in a multitude of problems. Springs and their associated habitats are drying up, threatening the rare species that inhabit the Dead Sea basin. Estuarine ecosystems (where the freshwater from springs meets the saline waters of the Dead Sea) are also disappearing. And, as the groundwater levels drop, salts are dissolved from the soil, leaving it porous and unstable. As a result, sinkholes have developed with the land becoming prone to caving in on itself, sometimes forming craters as large as 15 meters in diameter. Immense damage has consequently been done to agricultural lands and to infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and human safety in the region is in constant jeopardy.
The sinkholes and receding water levels form a serious threat to the local tourism industry. Hotels once residing near the shores of the sea are now gradually falling back from the coastline, and destruction to infrastructure from the sinkholes is having a major economic impact on the industry. In addition, the mudflats forming in place of the receding coastlines are seriously endangering the lives of humans, animals, and birds, acting similar to quicksand, and making rescue difficult for those trapped in its muddy grasp.
The receding water levels have even had a negative impact on the mineral extraction industries, which must endure costly relocation of their pumping stations every 10 years. The mineral extraction industries, however, have the least to complain about; as the sea level drops, the water becomes more saline, resulting in an increased concentration of minerals that are more rapidly extracted from the evaporation ponds.
Putting Numbers to Conservation Value
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| Researchers attempted to quantify such things as the aesthetic pleasures derived from visiting the basin |
Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), with its three offices in Amman, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, has been among the first to frantically ring the warning bells. Calls have been made to all three bordering governments and to the international community to register the Dead Sea basin as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and/or World Heritage Site. This would require all three governments to work jointly to develop and implement a plan for the sustainable development of the basin. And although all countries involved have responded positively in principle, says FoEME, none have yet committed to its adoption and implementation.
It is this dire situation that motivated FoEME to approach the International Development Research Center (IDRC) to fund a project towards advancing conservation and sustainable development of the Dead Sea basin.
Researchers from Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Canada coordinated their efforts both to economically quantify the various water uses affecting the Dead Sea basin, and to study three North American models of joint water management in the Great Lakes region, to draw comparisons between these models and similar models that might suit joint management of the Dead Sea waters.
The various stakeholders in the Dead Sea basin were first identified, which included agriculture, the mineral extraction industry, the tourism industry, wildlife and environmental enthusiasts, the residents of the region, and the international community.
An economic analysis was performed, placing emphasis on valuation of non-market goods, such as recreation and environmental quality, which are often left out of policy analyses due to the difficulty in quantifying them. Using a method known as contingent valuation, the researchers attempted to quantify such values as the sense of satisfaction one gets from knowing that something exists and will continue to exist for future generations, and the satisfaction one gains from hiking and from the aesthetic pleasures derived from visiting the basin.
Large random samples of local residents in Palestine, Jordan, and Israel were thus surveyed on how much they would be willing to pay annually towards a fund to preserve the Dead Sea; an indication of the value they place on these non-market goods. Defined as Willingness to Pay (WTP), all three peoples demonstrated a positive attitude despite their low incomes, with a total WTP topping US$ 59 million annually. This result did not include a WTP figure from the international community, which if added, is expected to at least double this value using the most conservative estimates.
Researchers then estimated some of the use-values of preservation of the Dead Sea basin by quantifying the economic returns to tourism in the Dead Sea, and determining how these returns might be negatively affected over time by the deterioration of environmental quality in the basin. All costs incurred in a visit to the Dead Sea basin, including direct costs from travel and lodging, and indirect costs from lost wages, were used to calculate the overall travel cost. The travel cost studies were conducted by surveying samples of Israeli and Jordanian visitors to the Dead Sea basin. Palestinians were not surveyed since they do not have control over tourist facilities along their shorelines, nor do they have the freedom of travel to visit the Dead Sea shores. A total consumer benefit from visitation to the Dead Sea was calculated, with estimations of consumer benefit of Palestinians added to the Israeli and Jordanian results, giving a total national annual consumer surplus of US$ 193 million for the three countries together.
FoEME researchers estimated that a drop in visitation rates by local tourists of 0.67 percent per year can be attributed to drop in sea level and the associated damages resulting from this drop. Based on this, and including estimates for international travelers, the researchers estimated that US$ 4.2 billion of undiscounted consumer surplus will be lost over the next 60 years due to the drop in sea level.
Selling Water Cheap
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| Agriculture consumes 75% of Jordan’s water, but represents only 2% of its GDP |
On the other hand, the annual return on water used for agriculture was estimated to be US$ 377 million for the region as a whole. According to World Bank figures, whereas agriculture in Jordan consumes 75 percent of the country’s water, it represents only 2 percent of the value added to its Gross Domestic Product. Similarly, agriculture consumes 60 percent of water in Israel, yet provides less than 2 percent of the country’s Gross National Product and of total employment. Palestinian water use in agriculture has a relatively minor impact on the overall water balance of the Dead Sea.
It is this water, which is providing so little economically to the countries involved, that is being diverted from recharging the Dead Sea. Abdel Rahman Sultan from FoEME’s Amman office and a researcher in the FoEME study explained that a large portion of agricultural produce in the region is being exported with minimal financial gain. “Why sell our water cheap?” he asked. Sultan believes that it might be more economically efficient to decrease the amount of water used in agriculture, growing only what will sustain the country, and put this water into tourism by conserving the Dead Sea basin. Other industries that will not cost the country water should also be encouraged, such as the IT industry, he added.
Not only is there minimal financial gain from diverting precious waters from recharging the Dead Sea into agriculture, but the resulting damages from these diversions and the consequent drop in Dead Sea levels have been devastating. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurrent costs have been lost from sinkholes that have damaged roads, agricultural lands, tourism development, and evaporation ponds. These damages and the imminent danger of more to come have also prevented the implementation of development projects worth millions of dollars more.
FoEME researchers believe that it is obvious from the above results that all three peoples in the region “place a high economic value on the conservation of the Dead Sea basin…There are also clear economic benefits to doing so,” reads their final report.
In order to achieve this, however, joint management of the region’s waters is required. This is easier said than done. A group of Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian experts surveyed by Dr. Elly Hermon, a Canadian partner in the study, agreed that the region’s governments should make use of the experience gained by the transboundary water management of the Great Lakes in North America between the United States and Canada. This would require not only inter-governmental cooperation, but also intra-governmental coordination at both the ministerial and local government levels.
In a region where violence, political uncertainties, and mistrust are part of the day-to-day experience, it would seem that achieving this sort of cooperation is far-fetched. Violet Qumsieh, from FoEME’s Bethlehem office and one of the authors of the economic analysis portion of the study, believes in the importance of an immediate resolution to the problems facing the Jordan River and Dead Sea basins. “Political problems could take years to be solved and at that time we will find that we have lost the Dead Sea and the Jordan River forever,” she emphasized. Munqeth Mehyar, director of FoEME’s Amman office and another author of the same portion of the study agrees. “We must sit down together,” he concurred. “There is no other way of doing it.”
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