Ambitious plan to quench the Dead Sea's terminal thirst
The Dead Sea, a place of immense historic, environmental and spiritual significance to the world, is dying. Simply put, the 80km-long, 18km-wide inland sea is dying of thirst.
Within the last century this magnificent, strangely silent silver sea set in the middle of desert has shrunk in size by a third. And each succeeding year, it loses another metre. In some places, the Dead Sea is now so shallow, it's possible to walk from the Jordanian side to the Israeli shore.
Known in the bible as 'Lot's Sea', the Dead Sea is actually part of the Jordan Valley, which itself lies at the northern end of the Great Rift Valley, a huge geological cleft in the Earth which runs from Syria in the north to Kenya in the south.
In ancient times, the Jordan Valley was renowned as perhaps one of the Middle East's most fertile oases. It became home to one of the world's oldest civilisations, and was a pulsating crossroads for three of the world's great religious - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
In modern times, the pressure of conflicting cultures has made the Middle East a cauldron of political trouble. So for decades, developers left the Dead Sea alone and untouched.
Indeed, until the mid 1990s the rocky, salt-encrusted shores of the Dead Sea appeared virtually unchanged since biblical times. In 1994, however, the much heralded peace agreement signed by Jordan and Israel ended this splendid isolation.
Within a few years, dozens of resorts and health spas sprouted on the Israeli shore of the Dead Sea. By highlighting the Dead Sea's unique waters, as well as its famous black mineral-packed mud, the resorts are able to draw hundreds of thousands of affluent tourists annually.
The Jordanians are rapidly catching up with the Israelis, and today their side of the Dead Sea boasts four five-star resort hotels and a grand convention centre.
Tourism now accounts for 11 per cent of Jordan's GDP and this year a record 1.8 million tourists are expected, a 40 per cent increase over 2004. There are now about 4,000 hotel rooms on either side of the Dead Sea, with reports of another 40,000 planned in the years ahead.
But for its part, Jordan is determined to protect the region's fragile environment. Akel Biltaji, tourism adviser to King Abdullah, says: 'The Dead Sea is the world's largest natural spa. But it does not belong just to Jordan or just to Israel; it belongs to the whole world, and not just to this generation, but also to all generations.
'Tourism is an important tool for peace for us. But at the same time we realise that this is a fragile part of the world, and so Jordan wants a niche market, not mass tourism.'
The decade-long peace dividend that has led to such economic benefits, however, is now jeopardising the Dead Sea. Its sole source of new water - aside from a mere 7.6cm of rainfall per year - is the Jordan River. But the governments of Israel and Jordan have diverted so much of the river's flow for irrigation that the Dead Sea now gets just 10 per cent of what it once received.
Year by year, for decades, the Dead Sea's magical mineral-infused waters have been rapidly receding. Since 1975, water levels have dropped by 25 metres and Jordan's King Abdullah has publicly declared that saving it for future generations is a national priority.
But in a region where hardly anyone can agree with anyone about anything, there is at last a plan to save the Dead Sea. Three nations - Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian State - have signed an agreement to implement a strategy first conceived 30 years ago to save the Dead Sea.
The ambitious plan calls for construction of a 180km-long channel linking the Red Sea with the Dead Sea, an audacious scheme which would bring millions of litres of needed water into the Dead Sea, thus ensuring its survival for centuries more.
Aside from saving the Dead Sea, the so-called 'Peace Channel' - which would run more than twice the length of the Panama Canal, and extend a greater distance than that between the mainland and Taiwan - would also generate hydroelectricity by taking advantage of the 400-metre drop between the level of the Red Sea and the subterranean Dead Sea.
In turn, the hydroelectric plants could be used to power desalination plants. According to the agreement, signed early in May, the channel would be built on the Jordanian side of the border with Israel, with both countries sharing the fresh water gained from the desalination facilities. The estimated cost of dredging the channel is expected to be US$3 billion.
Assistance from the World Bank would help finance the project, as well as loans from the US and the European Union.
The plan is not without its opponents. Some environmentalists say that building such a lengthy channel to the Red Sea could harm endangered native Jordanian wildlife and might also risk fragile coral reefs in Jordan's Gulf of Aqaba, which are among the world's most pristine waters.
However, Manqeth Mehyar, Jordanian director of the Friends of the Earth (Middle East), says: 'I myself look at the Red Sea as the only hope for the Dead Sea. But we really need to study the project properly.
'If the impacts are tolerable, we can work around them. My worry about the Dead Sea is that we will sit and do nothing. At the rate we are going we are losing a very beautiful and important place.'
