To Jordanian readers, it goes without saying that this year’s Blog Action Day issue is probably one of the most relevant issues in our country. Amidst the ongoing election season, a season rife with slogans, practically no candidate seems to be talking about energy policy, and more specifically water. Probably not a shocking revelation given the lacking political development in the country, but it is indicative of something larger: the extent to which Jordanians take water for granted. And I say this in the context of a nation that is one of the poorest in the world when it comes to water and water sources, and yet has one of the fastest growing populations – to say nothing of unexpected population bursts manifested in the form of refugee crises.
Water bills are relatively cheap in Jordan, and so no one really complains when it comes to paying little for an incredibly valuable resource. The only real complaints regarding water in Jordan – at least from the masses – revolves around water delivery. Most homes receive water once a week. And in some cases, delivery is missed and homes are forced to wait another week. Recent water delivery issues in the north are indicative of such problems, with some homes having gone without water for nearly a month, prompting the government to even launch a complaint call center.
The government has kept the water conversation largely in the “here’s what we’ve got planned” context. Millions are currently being spent on implementing or studying so-called mega projects to change the water destiny of the Kingdom – from Al-Disi to the Red Dead Canal. Meanwhile, the Jordan River has been dried up, largely by Israeli actions related to diverting the water from upstream, towards Israeli farms, thus killing off not only a once essential water source, but also a religious site that actually brought in tourism dollars once upon a time.
Yet, in all of this, the public conversation is noticeably missing. It is often that I hear people complain that their home hasn’t received its weekly ration of water, but it is rare that I hear anyone talking about conserving water. The civil society sector, dominated by USAID and other foreign donors, has spent, what one can only imagine to be, millions in funding awareness-related projects in the country for well over two decades. Little has come about as a result, but then again, little can be expected from a donor-greedy, relatively co-opted civil society. The fact remains, that the people have done little to take personal action by adjusting personal habits and behaviors – and the state has done little to steer the conversation in that direction. This paradigm is typical of both the Jordanian society – that has long centered on what others (including the government) can do for them – and the state, which addresses problems by offering pipe-dream initiatives designed primarily to assuage the fears of the people.
Everyday we see signs of over consumption and wastefulness. Almost every household seems to have a car, and almost every car gets a daily wash. On water delivery days, it is a common scene to see the streets streaming with wasted water from hoses run amok. And there is a never-ending list of such scenes, but all in all, you will never see a single citizen being fined for committing what is, in my opinion, a crime.
Water remains one of those commodities in the country that is so taken for granted that an outsider would never assume we are one of the top 5 nations in the world when it comes to a shortage in water supplies. And I often look to foreign models and imagine what would happen if the governments of nations like Germany or Japan ran a country like Jordan – or if they themselves had little-to-no water in their own countries. Would we see unprecedented irrigation and water-collection systems? They seem to be non-existent in Jordan, especially when it comes to households. Would we see people consistently fined for wasting water? Would we see an educational system that entrenches the values of water conservation? Would we see water parks being permitted to operate? Would we see swimming pools heavily taxed? Would we see companies and factories draining water from important sources operate normally simply due to their government connections?
Yet, none of this is available in Jordan, and these are all things the country can easily afford simply because they cannot afford not to. Visit any historical site in the Kingdom, and you will see that after hundreds and thousands of years, some of the most significant artifacts left behind by our ancestors and other ancient civilizations, are water-related. From Petra to Wadi Rum, a water-collection system can easily be seen engraved in the sides of the mountains, and the irony is that some of these systems still operate today (think of water wells in Rum).
The social and community conversation is missing and both the state and the people are to blame. Spending millions on mega-projects is a grand endeavor, but the money may be better spent on fueling those conversations – ones that not only “raise” awareness, but embed awareness as a part of our daily psyche. If you live in a western nation, you may often spend a decent chunk or time during your week dedicated to sorting out your garbage in to various recycling bins: glass, paper, etc. Citizens do this because they are forced to. By not dedicating that kind of time towards such a tangible (and perhaps tedious) exercise, the consequence is not having one’s garbage picked up that week. The consequence is immediate and reactionary, thus forcing a citizen to become proactive because they must, or else face the denial of a key government service. That entire process, while done perhaps subconsciously by most, is a process that forces a constant state of awareness upon a citizen, and that kind of awareness, the kind that doesn’t come in hotel workshops funded by the civil society, or even in the form of posters and slogans, is absent in Jordan.
The conservation needs to happen, it needs to evolve and it needs to involve all the players at once. It needs to happen locally and nationally. It needs to happen in town halls and in big speeches. It needs to happen in the classrooms, in the mosques, in the churches and in the households. It needs to be constant. It needs to be consistent. It needs to be online, offline and inline. It needs to yield a system of consequences; of reciprocal exchanges between the government and the people. And it needs to happen today.
Just as importantly, this is a conversation that needs to spread beyond our borders and pour in to the rest of the region which is relatively better but not necessarily better off. It is a conversation that is Middle Eastern and Arab just as much as it is global.
And what better model to start that conversation than Jordan?
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Excellent.
This is one of the few crucial regional issues that the every day Jordanians can impact positively just by returning to the water-use practices of a previous generation. Nothing new, not rocket science, just implementing a mindset that was the ‘old-normal’.
Thanks for raising this issue. It is a huge problem, and not just in Jordan. Areas in Syria (http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?Reportid=85963) and Iraq (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8279290.stm) are drying up very quickly. It’s not realistic to expect the government to fix the situation really.
I find it useful to know that politicians avoid the topic of water in Jordan. It is the same here in the US desert and I’m also amazed at the relatively cheap price of our water. It doesn’t set us on a realistic path to conserve scarce resources. Yes, this crucial topic deserves far more than a day.
there is no water problem in jordan , the problem is the population explosion, jordan is overpopulated, jordan has low carrying capacity it can’t hold 6 millon people ,the main cause of this problem is the palestinian presence in jordan.
Awesome post. But one thing about recycling being forced – in the U.S. anyway, this comes after extensive public education programs – as you mention, raising awareness. They don’t start out forcing anyone – they start out by encouraging. Then they build it into public consciousness before they start forcing. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think people feel “forced.” From what I see, by the time rules go into place people (mostly) feel compelled because its the right thing to do.
BTW, I’d like to see more recycling in Jordan. Yes, I know that I can take my recycled goods to Cozmo and drop them off – and I have – but what a pain in the butt! I see recycling as part of an old-time Jordanian mentality which was lost. My mother-in-law grew up very poor and recylcles everything – EVERYTHING! She saves the tin cans for the neightbor boy to pick up for his collections. All kinds of jars are saved and reused again and again. Newspapers are reused somehow, someway. She even has me taking my coffee grounds (from American coffee) out to fertilize the garden. But I don’t see any of this happening around me, in general, other than with the MIL.
It seems to me that public awareness needs to be built in many, many ways; water, of course, being the most urgent!
Hello!
We’re trying to do here also an awareness in this regard the consumption of water responsibly.
After all, is what my country has the largest watershed in the world, so all this wealth has to be well administered for all mankind in the near future.
a big hug from Rio de Janeiro
(I used the translator tradukka.com to read your blog)
mhmd,
unless that was a beep of a fascist manifesto, its better to tag your approach as the political bottle necks, you would maybe like to consider the Israeli theft of regional water all over rather than blaming a category of the society. Just to entertain your entry, on average, a resident’s current share in Jordan is about a seventh of the global average. Again, just to entertain your thoughts, take out the 50% Palestinians, the “ethnically pure” Jordanian would receive something between a third or a fourth of the global average. Second, there is nothing called carrying capacity, it is not a vessel or a plane. There are developed states who provide relevant welfare and underdeveloped or developing states that work towards that or just doesn’t bother until a specific point. It is the core responsibility of state to provide human safety for its citizens.
Naseem,
Dialogue is vital, but what mechanisms are there if societal formations are blocked? and if the executive branch is not accountable, how will policy be coerced?
Jordan is the 131st most densely populated country in the world, the fact that countries like Singapore are about a hundred times more populated (180 per mi2 compared to 18,000 should put our mind at ease).
On another note congratulations you are quickly joining the pessimistic camp, but sadly this is just one of the many issues where a functioning civil society is a must, and tackling this before other things would be putting the carriage before the horse
@Ahmad: i agree with both notions, and that is why those blockages need to be reformed.
@bambam: im not so sure your calculation of population density is logical, when taking in to consideration the parts of the country that are habitable, urban, and population prone.
second, im not joining any camp, pessimistic or not. i’m attempting to point out a problem and a solution. lastly, de-prioritizing the water issue as you (and others) have done, is incredibly folly. water and energy is a priority. without either, we cannot survive. and by de-prioritizing them, well, in an energy crisis like the one that was experienced in the summer of 1998, in which Amman came to a grinding halt for several weeks – you can see how quickly a lack of supply and consistent presence of demand can turn a de-prioritized issue in to a crisis situation…over night.
For pop. density check the link . habitable, urban and population prone is irrelevant since we are not even approaching over population… by a mile.
As for my logic, i perfectly understand the water situation in Jordan and i’m close to another water crisis in the making as well, yemen and my following diatribe pertains to them. so i fully understand the magnitude of failing to tackle a multifaceted problem such as water.
The solutions to social problems require not only participation from the public and private sectors but depend on more than just that. Especially when facing a multi-faceted problem such as water(consumption and availability in the private, public and geogrophic domain… nevermind the ecnonomical and political sides to the problem) it is more about the contract between a population and its nation more so than sum of both parts.
To explain further solving a water problem requires changing not only economical perspective (like stopping the cultivation of qat or bananas, or raising the cost of water), nor does it depend on programs to educate the population frugality but it takes something more than that… It takes for people to internalize their realities, accept their duties as citizens of a country and proselytize for the civil contract that they believe in which in turn helps in developing an attachment to their country beyond “the merely existing” in it concept or “the waiting line” concept or the “I should be thankful to even exist” concept
Without this fabric that creates a society and binds a nation to its citizens there is really little to be done outside of the realm of postponing the inevitable. Without people worrying about their future you can never count on them to have the impetus to solve future problems. so you will have to create a future first and then open their eyes to its problems, otherwise they will solely focus on their current day to day living and leave the rest to allah …
For pop. density check the link . habitable, urban and population prone is irrelevant since we are not even approaching over population… by a mile.
As for my logic, i perfectly understand the water situation in Jordan and i’m close to another water crisis in the making as well, yemen and my following diatribe pertains to them. so i fully understand the magnitude of failing to tackle a multifaceted problem such as water.
The solutions to social problems require not only participation from the public and private sectors but depend on more than just that. Especially when facing a multi-faceted problem such as water(consumption and availability in the private, public and geogrophic domain… nevermind the ecnonomical and political sides to the problem) it is more about the contract between a population and its nation more so than sum of both parts.
To explain further solving a water problem requires changing not only economical perspective (like stopping the cultivation of qat or bananas, or raising the cost of water), nor does it depend on programs to educate the population frugality but it takes something more than that… It takes for people to internalize their realities, accept their duties as citizens of a country and proselytize for the civil contract that they believe in which in turn helps in developing an attachment to their country beyond “the merely existing” in it concept or “the waiting line” concept or the “I should be thankful to even exist” concept
Without this fabric that creates a society and binds a nation to its citizens there is really little to be done outside of the realm of postponing the inevitable. Without people worrying about their future you can never count on them to have the impetus to solve future problems. so you will have to create a future first and then open their eyes to its problems, otherwise they will solely focus on their current day to day living and leave the rest to allah … hence it makes such a big problem secondary if we want to be frank about our odds.
If water is being wasted, it must be too cheap. The obvious thing to do is raise the price. At least the mega-water-projects should be paid for by water consumers.
Presumably these projects involve desalinisation of sea water, and water grids to move the water from Aqaba to the rest of the country ?
Bambam,
Fully agree with your point, but, I would add the power structure to it. Citizens act as such under certain pressures, and it would take a varying time period to mobilize for their demands and achieve increments to their movement.
Don Cox,
Yes, 2 mega projects are of sea water desalination, and one of a distant aquifer from the densely populated area. Raising water prices are part of the neoliberal economy that had dominated this country for almost two decades now. Jordan has 30% of its population in poverty, while its middle class is being eroded fiercely. Raising prices do not solve problems since the major leakage is in pipelines before reaching consumers’ meters. Majority of the population receive a 2-4 cubic meters once a week, or even every other week. In short, raising prices would drive people thirsty!
I don’t get it. Go to the streets of Amman and ask people: when is the last time you filled up your tub tub for a bath? ‘never’. Do you have a swimming pool? ‘no’. How about a back yard with grass? ‘no’ How many times do you wash laundry a week? ‘once, on the day we get water. I rarely see people wash their cars with a hose. Usually it’s using one bucket of water with soap and then 1 more filled up with water for rinsing, if even that. It can’t get any more frugal than that.
I lived in the states for many years and they use 10x the amount of water we do. Many shower more than once a day, many have pools, back yards with sprinklers turned on at least an hour a day, water parks,…etc.
Many of us already ration water by habit because we know if we don’t we will not have enough water to flush our toilets by the end of the week. The amount of water we are given(water has not reached some houses in Amman for weeks) barely meets our basic needs. To fill our tanks with 6 meters of water costs anywhere between 18-35 jds! And some think that part of the solution is to raise the price of water??!
The government has failed in their obligation to provide us with clean water to meet our daily needs so now they want to shift the responsibility of poor planning and poor management to us. They want to make us feel that we are part of the problem. Well, I’m not listening
Major leakage in pipelines are a big problem.
Maybe one of the solutions is to replace the pipelines or use a technology to find leaks and fix them.
(I’m not an expert.)
Just a thought.
Yasmeen (14), I think that i (15) is correct. A lot of the waste is not from the poorer families, but from a bad infrastructure which is poorly managed by the local governments.
RE the population density debate, I would just say that, unfortunately, not all countries are made equal. Some countries have huge amounts of freshwater, more then they need, like Scotland. Others have a few areas with water, but most of the country is desert (Egypt, which is also in big trouble on this issue, as it relies almost entirely on the Nile). And then there are countries like Jordan which, with a dispersed population, and good care of the water infrastructure, probably could have enough to barely get by.
RE population growth, I don’t like the idea of making this Jordanian v. Palestinian, but I do think the population is growing too quickly in Jordan given the natural resources. Is there any reason Jordan could not approach a sustainable and slow growth rate like some of the countries in N Africa and Iran? Countries and regions with exploding population (Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine, Yemen) really have no way to solve their problems. I think they will be headed for political instability, if they are not already there.
Conclusion: If Jordan could (1) slow population growth a bit, (2) work with the US and (sorry to say) Israel on desalination, (3) teach children and young adults water conservation methods, and (4) urgently fix the water infrastructure, I think all of those together would make a big difference. I’m drawing on everyone’s ideas here. I think they are good, and I think something like this could work.
to bambam and sholi
don’t forget jordanians live on less than 10,000 sq km and the rest of the country is uninhabitable, the west bank has more carrying capacity than the whole jordan ….. and its not working that plasetinians playing every trick to legitimize their presence in jordan instead of stopping profilareting like rabbits.
m7md,
grow up and elevate discussion to a respectable level, where it deals with facts, ideas, and feedback. Hate slandering does not offend anyone but the little person who propagates it.
First, culturally, a Jordanian is a Palestinian as much as a Palestinian is Jordanian. Apart from wishful thinking and propaganda, you can scientifically trace it in linguistics, social habits, family formation, production methods, ideals, connectedness, and government. Given the geography of the land, you can find closer ties running horizontally (i.e. north assimilates with north, south with south), and not vertically as the current situation is.
Reference to Palestinian or Jordanian is a contemporary notion of nation state. In our part of the world, formation of nation states was not an organic process. It is a product of colonial imperialism and thus it does not relate conceptually to the people. Let alone the shortcomings of the nation states in the region to reconcile the gaps created by this process.
Second, Palestinians were integrated in Jordan since its formation. From the annexation of the West Bank in 1950, any liberated part of Palestine was to be annexed to Jordan, which by the way was not contradictory to the people of Palestine ambition to self determination. Being part of Jordan is not conceptually rejected, the friction since late 1950s till 1971 was fueled by the plans of concessions to Israel given the international system. i.e., if the monarch stretched over the region and the zionist project was defeated in the early 1920s, we would have lived in the united country that should have been. Riots against colonization of Palestine (where the geography of colonization projects in the early twentieth century included north west of modern Jordan and south of modern Lebanon) were fierce across Jordan as it was in Palestine.
Given that, Palestinians are natural citizens of Jordan. The time that passed, the investment in the social reality that it is today, is reversible only by a fascist process. A process carried by a segment of the society against another. Rights were accumulated by the state towards those citizens as they had accumulated duties towards it.
Third, any person fleeing war zone has the right to refuge and full services. A right guaranteed by international law, a duty imposed on neighboring countries, let alone if they were being internally displaced (which applies technically 100% to residents of the West Bank), as it is socially for Palestinians fleeing other regions.
Based on all the above my friend, I am Jordanian as a Jordanian can be. I do not need to play ‘tactics’ to protect my existence in Jordan. I am a natural product of this land, and a good citizen of this country with all the rights and duties this existence entails. So I am for Palestine, and I do not see how the real interests of these two countries can go in opposite directions. No one can strip me off my identity.
Fourth, it is the common practice of poor classes to populate highly. This is 101 class economics. Poor classes barely survive through manual hard work in agriculture and industry. A lot of infant disease, death, and malnutrition. Higher population is societal survival. If you wish to ignore the fact that many families in Jordanian countryside (largely ‘Palestinian-free’ environments) have same patterns of population, you are just fooling yourself.
Back to the water discussion:
Fifth, natural resources are not constant. Be it water, farming capacity, or mining abilities. A healthy society turns towards human security. Welfarist programs aim to redistribute and create decent level of living. It is a reactionary idea to consider controlling family numbers rather than thinking of why is the economy not serving its population. The right to determine one’s right to form a family, and a couple’s right to its number are rights guaranteed in something as basic as the universal human rights declaration.
Even the west bank in its current economic disparity is unable to ponder the number of Palestinians you wish they move there. The question should be how the economy can be inclusive and contributive to the people it encompasses.
@m7md Actually thank you for proving my point, which is before tackling the social fabric issues it will be impossible to even move a pea without devolving into this demagogy.
On the other hand i’m surprised how many times people are repeating that there is only 10,000 square km’s of inhabitable place, or that the rest of the country is uninhabitable …
who the hell drilled that idea into your heads, do we have a Chernobyl in jordan that i don’t know about or is because you think that 90% of the country is a desert?
It’s a completely irrational idea to justify a bigoted mindset is what it is.
palestinians and jordanians are different ,just look into recent dna tests and you will see the difference, the studies conducted by carlos flores in amman(where a palestinian majority live) and west bank found that only 38% of palestinians have arab haplogroup (j1e) while the study conducted in rural areas of jordan by dr. ma7asneh showed that 93% of jordanians are arabs ( the study was not published i don’t know why but i read about it in newspapers)..on the basis of culture you can easily differentiate between a palestinian coming from the mediterranean coast and a bedouin in the desert.. jordanians are bedouins and “semi-bedouins” peasantry( r3yan ghanam as palestinians always call us)..while the majority of palesinians are close to lebanese and syrians.
i warn jordanians that jodan will become a hopeless country like bangladesh if palestinians continue developing their demographic bomb.
@mhmd: can you please keep the xenophobia to yourself. it’s so 1970’s.
let’s focus on the issue at hand.
Naseem,
Sorry for taking it to this level, but this is a dangerous argument and I feel compelled to respond.
Mhmd,
You continue to ignore social reality that you live in, just demands of that social reality too. You are degrading into racial theory similar to that of Nazism and Zionism, if you are not aware of that yet. This is your framework.
How does different DNAs (if any) change anything in actual history?
How can you claim that Jordan is a fully beduin community? where all the northern west which is the dense area of the country is an agrarian society (And I am talking a century ago), the semi agrarian is the middle of the country.
You ignore the fact that more than third of the Palestinians are bedouins?
I can go on for hours eroding your argument.
i think the water is not the problem. the problem is jobs, not enough income, and everythink getting expensive and population. if they fix the problem everyone will be happy.jordan is nice country to live in.its one of the best country`s in world.
why not discuss the real problems? we are all sitting in one boat now, even if we don’t like to admit it. Many think they know everything and have the solution, well if that’s true they should be decision makers! Why not look for facts first, some are published in reports, unfortunately most agendas are not. why not raise questions and try to get answers, e.g. from decision makers or some of the donors? why isn’t the media playing any role in obtaining and publishing the truth?
some more questions I have:
– how can public land be sold that easily?
– why is the government and the biggest donor in Jordan pushing for the development of natural areas in Ajlun, knowing that the kind of developments they are propagating will destroy the last natural woods in Jordan and increase demand for water?
– why isn’t there any serious strategy and action related to food and water security?
– what is the sense of the Disi pipeline, knowing that after 50 year that reservoir of drinking water will be gone?
– what is the sense of the Red-Dead water conveyance, knowing that the so-called tunnel scenario will last only for 80-100 years?
– what is the sense of dangerous nuclear reactors in Aqaba, knowing that water can be salinated using solar power?
– Why the hurry in building a nuclear power station based on out-dated technology using uranium while a research center in France is developing cleaner nuclear technology not based on radioacive uranium.
what is the real sense of these projects if they cannot be sustained for the future generations, in fact they are increasing demand for water and will thus increase burdens on coming generations…
my personal opinion: Jordan has chosen the wrong track in economic development, decisions are being made based on short-term and personal benefits; prove I am wrong, hope I am.