Jordan Times
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Int'l experts address issue of
water scarcity
AMMAN (JT) — No matter how much effort is put into economising water in Jordan,
the reserves will not be sufficient to satisfy the full requirement for future
decades, an environmental expert said on Monday.
“Our water demand is still increasing as a function of our steady social and
economic development... and the rapid population increase in the Kingdom also
leads to a rapidly growing demand,” explained Ahmad Al Qatarneh, deputy to the
Minister of Environment.
The crux of the problem, Qatarneh explained, is that “the resource is limited,
but the demand is growing.”
He was speaking at the opening of a workshop on water governance yesterday,
coordinated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) —
The World Conservation Union.
The one-day workshop gathered water governance experts to discuss legal aspects
concerning the issue and to propose recommendations for improving water
governance in the region, Alejandro Iza, a lecturer from the IUCN Environmental
Law Centre in Bonn, Germany, told The Jordan Times.
During the workshop public officials and policy makers in the field were trained
on strategies to develop “regulatory frameworks for water, and offer a platform
for debate to improve coordination and sharing of experiences between various
countries,” according to an IUCN statement.
The region is suffering from “water poverty in terms of quantity and quality,”
according to Wolfgang Reuther, UNESCO director in Amman. He stressed the
importance of efficiently managing the limited water supplies in the region as
well as exploring every possible way of increasing resources.
Although water scarcity in the region is not a recent problem, population
growth, improving living standards, expanding agricultural activities and
increasing urban pollution all exacerbate the problem, Reuther added.
IUCN is an internationally known union based in Switzerland with over 1,000
members including government agencies and NGOs. It is renowned as the world's
largest conservation organisation, with more than 12,000 scientists and experts
volunteering their services to the union's global commissions.