Country Reports
In comparison with Europe or Germany,
climate change and its consequences
only take up a secondary
role in the Jordanian public debate.
There is, however, a certain level of
awareness, especially among a more
highly educated population. The central
environmental issue in Jordan is
sufficient water supply for the population
and the agricultural sector - an
issue that is perceived rather as an
ongoing local phenomenon conditioned
by the natural environment
but unrelated to global climate
change. This perception has not been
shattered even by the heat waves in
the summer 2010 and the drought
during the winter 2010/2011. The
current debate on climate change in
the media and scientific publications
is comparatively limited and shows
that there is a lack of empirically secure
data, which would prove or
rather demonstrate climate change
and its consequences in Jordan. At
the same time, Jordan has started to
play an active role in international
negotiations on environmental and
climate policies particularly as water
problems increasingly became the
key issue in development cooperation
for the past years. However, regional
cooperation in dealing with
climate-related problems has clearly
not been used to its full potential,
the reason behind that being the difficult
political conditions, particularly
with Israel.
According to the Jordan Meteorological
Department (JMD) 2010 was the driest
year since 1992. In Jordan, one of the
four most arid countries in the world,
drought, heat waves, lack of rain and water
scarcity are no new phenomena: heat
waves and lateness or sheer absence of
rain have become normalcy during the
past six years, inter alia due to natural
events such as the Red Sea Troughs
(RST) and, according to the Director of
the JMD, the phenomena have no direct
connection with climate change. Other
Jordanian experts have reached similar
conclusions. As part of a study published
by the renowned “American Journal of
Environmental Sciences”, a team of Jordanian
and Arab authors undertook the
attempt to investigate the link between
the development of precipitation in Jordan
and the global phenomena of climate
change. They assessed data from six meteorological
stations in Jordan in order to
compare the changes of temperature,
precipitation and relative humidity of the
last decades in order to be able to make
a statement on climate change in Jordan.
The authors reached the conclusion that
there is no evidence of a visible trend in
an above-average increase or decrease of
precipitation but there appears to be a
clear reduction of temperature range.
Thus scientific proof of a link to climate change could not be met by the authors.
There are, however, several clues that
this could be due to the fact, that sufficient
data generation and analysis cannot
be achieved in Jordan simply because of
limited meteorological infrastructure.
These estimations reflect in the public
perception of climate change: The Jordan
Times, the most important English speaking
daily newspaper with close links
to the government, interprets in its few
articles on climate change the drought
and the absence of rain as a result of
natural climate variations. Jordanian
Arabic-speaking newspapers do actually
point out that climate phenomena like
the drought during the winter 2010/2011
have wide and serious effects, especially
on the agriculture, but these findings are
generally seen as being unrelated to the
consequences of climate change.
Nevertheless the opinion poll “Arab Public
Opinion and Climate Change” in the annual
report of 2009 of the Arab Forum for
Environment and Development encompassing
the opinions of 2322 inhabitants
of the Arab World clearly shows that
there is a level of awareness about climate
change within the Jordanian population:
96% of Jordanian respondents indicated
that they consider climate change
primarily as the result of human activity
and 88% considered climate change a
serious problem for their country. The
problem awareness, which is above the
average of the Arab World, goes hand in
hand with a high degree of satisfaction concerning the government’s policies in
the combat of climate change: only 26%
consider it insufficient, 42% see it as
positive - the average across the Arab
world lies at a mere 30% of government
satisfaction in this policy field. The results
of this study surely only have limited
meaningfulness: It is not a representative
study, as questionnaires had been
sent out to the public in leading newspapers
(in the Jordanian case the renowned
Al-Dustour) and everyone who was interested
could fill out and send in the form.
This methodical approach brings with it
certain distortions – respectively three
quarters of respondents were men and/or
had a degree of higher education- and it
can be supposed that readers were more
likely to respond if they already considered
climate change to be an important
issue. At the same time, the results of
the study admit the conclusion that it
would be wrong to generally attribute to
the Jordanian population a low level of
awareness about climate change and its
consequences for Jordan.
Jordan has shown itself relatively active
in the context of international efforts in
the combat of climate change and its
consequences. In 2009 the “Second National
Communication report” was
launched within the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCC) to focus especially on
sectors where climate, environment and
adjustment measures are deemed important,
i.e. agriculture, energy, waste, industry,
land-use change and forestry.
Moreover, it has been stressed that the
vulnerability in terms of climate change is
particularly high in the agricultural, the
water and the health sector. The majority
of adjustment measures are thus
taken in these areas.
Jordan tries to implement, with international
support, the mechanisms of the
UNFCC and the Kyoto Protocol and to reform particularly the water, the agricultural
and the energy sectors. For example,
the government has been able to
undertake first steps in promoting a sustainable
water supply and an improved
health and food security with the help of
the UNDP and three other UN organizations
as well as the UNDP/Spain MDG
Achievement Fund within the “Adaptation
to Climate Change to Sustain Jordan's
MDG Achievements” program. Moreover,
Jordan is the first Arab country that
tries to integrate gender aspects into its
climate policy. This should be documented
in the “Third National Communication”
report which will stress the socioeconomic
effects of climate change on
the Jordanian society. A study carried
out over twenty years by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature
has shown that women are important
socio-economic actors and, owing to their
competencies and knowledge, they can
achieve change in society. These skills
should be used in the future for different
projects in order to carry out adjustment
measures to climate change in a better
way. During the 16th Conference of the
Parties of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (COP16)
in Cancún 2010, Faris Mohamad Al-
Junaidi, the Jordanian Deputy Minister of
Environment, stressed the gender aspect
in the Jordanian climate policy and underlined
that Jordan had already undertaken
important steps in order to fully
support climate protection. He also referred
to the fact that international support
is necessary for developing countries
so as to enable them to reduce the effects
and consequences of climate change through adjustment measures
and technology transfer.
The measures undertaken by the government
until now have shown that risk
perception about water scarcity has been
increasing amongst the population and
the political elite. Jordan’s water strategy
for the period 2008-2022 assumes that
the availability of fresh water per capita
has decreased from 3600m³ per year
(1946) to 145m³ per year (2008), which
is far below the absolute water shortage
limit of 500m³ per capita per year.
There are predictions according to which
the water deficit will increase from 692
million m³ (2010) to 1368 million m³.
The United Nations Development Assistance
Framework (UNDAF) for Jordan
from 2008 to 2012 states that Jordan’s
socio-economical development progress
of the past decades will be highly threatened
by the water shortage in the country.
Global climate change only plays a secondary
role within the National Water
Strategy from 2008 to 2022. However
the Jordanian government has undertaken
steps towards a strategy that perceives
the water issue not just as conditioned
by a natural scarcity but as a central
management problem within the environmental
policy of the Jordanian State.
The Water Strategy 2008 to 2022 intends
to reduce the use of ground water from
32% to 17% and to increase the use of
sewage in agriculture from 10% to 13%.
The use of desalinized water should also
be increased from 1% to 31% by 2022.
The government led by Prime Minister
Samir Rifa’i had undertaken concrete first
steps in order to adjust the price of water
to maintenance and investment expenditures:
consumers who use more than 60
liters a day would pay 9% or 33 piastres/
m³ (0,034€/m³) more from 2011.
Experts say that, despite the programs
conducted to combat climate change, the
establishment of climate saving and adjustment
measures in policies at national
level has not been receiving enough support
from most of the ministries. Like
for many initiatives of the Jordanian government,
there is a gap between planning
and implementation. The German Development
Cooperation, comprised of the
DED and the GTZ or the GIZ, respectively
support the various responsible ministries
in designing more effective climate and
resource protection policies, for example
through the monitoring and implementation
of precautionary measures for
ground water resources at the Ministry
for Water and Irrigation as well as the
promotion of better rationing of water
resources and the improvement of energy
efficiency at the Water Authority of
Jordan.
The most serious problem in effective
and efficient water management in Jordan
appears to be the agribusiness sector.
While irrigated agriculture represents
less than 5% of the GDP, it consumes
nearly 75% of the national water resources.
This disproportion is supported
by gigantic state subsidies in favor of irrigated agriculture: in 2009 alone about
10 million Jordanian Dinar have gone to
the water sector for the irrigation of the
Jordan Valley. The socio-political background
of this policy, which is aggravating
the environmental and water problems
in Jordan, is the fact that irrigated
farming is one of the few productive sectors
in Jordan providing employment: in
2007, 6% of the entire workforce, i.e.
107,000 Jordanians worked in the agricultural
sector. The danger exists that
the imbalance between water consumption
in the agricultural sector and its contribution
to the GDP will increase in the
next years because of population growth
as well as rising water demand. Therefore,
there are gradual attempts to adjust
the agricultural sector to climate-related
problems such as water shortage and periods
of drought. The introduction of drip
irrigation achieved a clear decrease of
water consumption in Jordan. Furthermore,
the agricultural sector has partly
changed over to less water-intensive
products such as dates and grapes, and a
considerable amount of farmers are
switching to ecological farming.
Measures such as the increase of the water
price and the restrictions of water allocation
for the agricultural sector show
that the Jordanian government also pursues
the goal of responsible usage of
scarce water resources by the society.
However, in an article of Venture magazine,
the Coordinator for Water of the
German Development Service (DED),
Dietrich Osswald, expressed his concerns
of whether the awareness for the need of
water-saving measures was deep-seated
within the Jordanian population. Government
adjustment measures have thus
to actively contribute to strengthening
awareness in the fields of environment,energy and resources within the Jordanian population, in order to support the
willingness for change in societal lifestyles
and thus in the long term to stop
the usage of natural resources beyond
the level of harmfulness.
In the energy sector, the Jordanian government
tries to react to climate-related
problems by diversifying the energy mix.
According to estimations, the electricity
demand should rise to 6000 Megawatts
by 2020. Currently, Jordanian energy
consumption mainly relies on imported oil
from Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as
natural gas from Egypt. Better usage
for national resources such as oil shale
and uranium should be found in the future.
The set goal is the increase from
4% to 39% of the part of national energy
sources in the entire electricity production
by 2020. In that sense the planned
nuclear power plant will cover 30% of
energy demand until 2020. Also, the
opening of the energy sector to national
and foreign investors should gradually be
pushed forward. The new energy and
mineral law of 2009 provided for the
creation of a Renewable Energy and Energy
Efficiency Fund, which should give
out subsidies to make the price of electricity
from renewable energies economically
viable. Wind and solar power should
be strongly promoted in the next few
years. By 2015, 600 Megawatt should be
generated through wind farms. The new
energy strategy provides that by 2020
10% of the energy demand will be covered
by renewable energies.
Within the Jordanian political elite there
is a certain awareness that problems of
water supply (and climate change) need
measures that are more innovative and
that lie beyond the borders of the state.
Prince Hassan Ibn Talal is particularly
committed to designing not only national
but also regional strategies for a sustainable
usage of water resources. During the
conference of the West Asia/ North Africa
Forum (WANA) in May 2010 he suggested
to build ‘Concentric Circles of Cooperation’.
The countries of the Middle
East should be classified into groups according
to their needs and their political
structures in order to handle issues of
water and environment management
more efficiently through an independent
regional in stitution. Prince Hassan has
on various occasions underlined the necessity
for a representation of the WANA
region as a unity on the international
scale. In the preface to the white paper
“Clean Power from Deserts – the DESERTEC
Concept for Energy, Water and
Climate Security”, that Prince Hassan
presented to the European Parliament on
November 28th, 2010, he refers to the
idea of a community for water and energy
management of the EUMENA
states, resembling the European Coal and
Steel Community, in order to promote
stronger cross-border cooperation in the
water sector.
The tensed political relations between
Jordan and Israel since Prime Minister
Netanyahu’s accession into power have
significantly deteriorated the prevailing
conditions for cooperation between the
two countries. This hinders, for instance,
the realization of the ambitious Two Seas
Canal project, which had been contemplated
in the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty
of 1994. The canal would transport water
from the Gulf of Aqaba up to the Dead
Sea, because nearly 95% of the southern
part of the Jordan River, which originally supplied the Dead Sea in water, is
used for industrial and agricultural
means. Only in 2008 the World Bank
started an extensive feasibility study, as
for a long time the project had been laying
fallow because of the politically difficult
situation in the triangle between Jordan,
Israel and Palestine. The international
interest in this project shows that
the construction of the ‘peace canal’ is
seen as a potentially important instrument
of cooperation in the region. The
canal as a regional cooperation model
would promote collaboration in different
sectors such as energy, agriculture and
water between Israel and Jordan and
would strongly link the economies of the
two countries. Although environmentalists
go by the fact that the construction
of the canal would also bring environmental
problems and although the implementation
of the project is still uncertain,
several experts concluded that the
“Two-Sea-Canal” project has already lead
to a harmonization between Israel and
Jordan in terms of environment protection
and water management.
Despite the low frequency of subjects
such as climate protection and climate
change in the current public debates,
there is a clear tendency towards an increase
in climate consciousness within
the Jordanian government and population.
Although the heat waves of the
summer 2010 and the droughts during
the winter 2010/2011 did not advance
the issue of climate change and its consequences,
nor achieved any importance
in the eyes of many Jordanians, a general
trend towards stronger resource and environment
protection is apparent. Since
the submission of the “First National Communications” report to the UNFCC in
1998 the government has carried out important
first measures to reform the water,
agricultural and energy sectors and
to actively promote resource protection.
Still, regional cooperation in the fields of
water and climate protection as well as
raising a climate and environment consciousness
amongst the population
should be promoted in the future.