Jordan Times
Friday, November 24, 2006
Jordan River mayors
commit to water cooperation
By Paul Tate
AMMAN — Jordanian and Israeli mayors came together earlier this week in an
attempt to breath life back into the Jordan River tributaries and promote
tourism and development in their respective communities.
In a ceremony by the ancient ruins of the Roman city of Pella near the banks of
the River Jordan, the Jordanian mayor of the town, Maoun Alloneh, and his
Israeli counterpart from Beit Shean, Jacky Levi, signed a memorandum of
understanding to cooperate on shared water issues.
“The mayors at this historic ceremony committed to rehabilitate their streams
and the River Jordan, understanding that the cultural landscape of the Jordan
Valley is an untapped treasure that could attract tens of thousands of
tourists,” said Munqeth Mehyar, Jordanian chairperson of Friends of the Earth
Middle East (FoEME), a cross-border NGO that organised the meeting.
Under the terms of the memorandum, a master plan will now be developed for side
streams of the River Jordan’s Wadi Ziglab in Jordan and Harod Stream in Israel
based on the tourism potential of this historic landscape.
The agreement forms part of the Good Water Neighbours (GWN) project, established
by EcoPeace/FoEME in 2001 to raise awareness of the shared water problems of
Palestinians, Jordanians and Israelis.
The idea behind the project is based on identifying cross-border communities and
utilising their mutual dependence on shared water resources as a basis for
developing dialogue and cooperation on sustainable water management.
“We came to the conclusion that the best way to solve the problems of this area
was to let communities deal with each other directly, while also involving key
decision makers such as local municipal officials and mayors,” said Mehyar.
The river has suffered intense environmental degradation over the years as a
result of shortsighted development plans, according to FoEME.
During the 1960s, around 1.3 billion cubic metres of water flowed every year
from Lake Tiberias to the Dead Sea.
But dams, canals and pumping stations built by Israel, Jordan and Syria to
divert water for crops and drinking have reduced the flow by more than 90 per
cent to about 100 million cubic metres.
Years of conflict and mismanagement among the main users of the river have
contributed to the crisis, according to environmentalists.
Although the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel called for the
rehabilitation of the river, so far little progress has been achieved.
As a result, on both sides of the Jordan Valley, streams that once flowed
through communities such as those around Pella and Beit Shean are now either dry
or polluted.
“The environmental problems in the tributaries are really severe with no fresh
water as a result of the construction of dams and raw sewage flowing directly
into the river,” said Mehyar.
Israeli director of FoEME, Gidon Bromberg, said the organisation has been
campaigning for over two years on the need to rehabilitate the Jordan River and
the final push came from the communities themselves.
“The meeting is the product of community support and understanding by municipal
leaders that their residents cannot wait for central government and an end of
conflict in the region,” he added.
The GWN project is sponsored by the EU Partnership for Peace Programme, the UK
government and Goldman Fund.