Jordan – a country located west of the Jordan river, also known as the Hashemite Kingdom. It is at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. The country is nearly landlocked and borders the Gulf of Aqaba (Red Sea) in a small outlet in the south. It has a lakeshore at the Dead Sea, the lowest elevation on land on Earth at 430.5 meters below sea level. The majority of the country is covered by the Arabian Desert with an area of about 89,000sqm.
A number of ancient kingdoms lie within its borders, as does the famed red stone city of Petra, the capital of the Nabatean kingdom and of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. Jordan has been an independent kingdom since 1946. The capital and largest city in the country is Amman – serving as one of the region’s principal commercial and transportation centers as well as one of the Arab world’s major cultural capitals. Jordan has 16 miles (26 km) of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba in the southwest, wher e Al-ʿAqabah, its only port, is located.The landscape suffers from erosion that is primarily caused by wind. Most recent records show the country has a population of around 9.9 million people, out of which 1.5 million reside in the capital city.
Saving Water
One of the main challenges faced by the country is that which is suffered by several other developing arid, semi-arid countries – being water stressed. As of 2015, Jordan was considered the 4th country in the world that was suffering the most from freshwater storage. Jordan’s water demand was 900 million cubic meters per year, with 75% of it arising from the Jordan river basin. Total dam capacity in Jordan was estimated at 350 million cubic meters, including those that were in the desert. There were seven dams that were constructed in the north and middle Jordan valley with a total storage capacity of 270 million cubic meters. Those dams included Arab, Ziglab, King Talal, Karameh, Shueib, Kafrein and Al Wahdah Dam. Moreover, there were three dams – Wala, Mujib and Tannur that were constructed in the southern Ghors with a total live storage of 30 million cubic meters. Stored water from these dams is used for livestock
and groundwater recharge according to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. This means that the total capacity of the dams only covered 38% of the country’s annual demand. Being water stressed, with less than 150 m3 annual per capita of water resources, while the world water poverty line is currently 1,000 m3. In order to try and mitigate these struggles in the future, Jordan adopted a National Water Strategy – a comprehensive set of directives that employed a specific approach to water demand and water supply management. It placed a particular importance on the need for improved water resource management, stressing on the sustainability of future use. Water scarcity is Jordan’s most critical environmental concern, with significant potential economic and social implications including reduced competitiveness of industries, increased costs of basic food items and social unrest.
Hydro-development
It is with this view of the challenges that Jordan was facing that the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) provided the country with a grant worth AED 103 million for the construction of the Kufranja Dam. The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development’s efforts towards social and economic development for Jordan began in 1974. Jordan has been a strong focus of the ADFD, having received a sum of AED 5.6 billion in total grants and loans. The fund has provided financial assistance for 75 projects in various segments of sectors; Agriculture, Electricity & Water, Social & Health services, Housing, Industrial, Transportation and others. Among these projects are the aforementioned Kunfranja, King Talal and Al – Wahda dams, which have played pivotal roles in supporting economic and social development, and for which Imad N Fakhoury, Jordan’s former Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, commended the UAE government on its continued support of his country’s key economic sectors. ADFD’s objectives cognate with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Dams serve as an enabler of the facets of social and economic development, serving multiple purposes including providing clean water and sanitation as mentioned in (SDG 6), creation of jobs and infrastructure erection for industry (SDG 8,9), and several more.
The Kufranja Dam was built between 2011 and 2017 in a Governate where the per capita water availability was the lowest in the country – Kufranja City in the Ajlun Governate. The dam measures 88 meters in height and 282 meters in length and boasts a capacity of 6 million cubic meters. Upon its inauguration in 2017, the Kufranja Dam – primarily built for the preservation of rain water for drinking purposes, effectively tripled the daily water supply to the estimated 40,000 residents of the city, from 22 to 63 liters per day. Whereas in the past, the people of Kufranja were heavily dependent on the rain-fed spring season for a fragmentary water supply. With the increase in population the country had experienced in its recent past, there was a paramount shortage of clean water.
As a direct result of the construction of the dam, UNICEF was supported by international governments to collaborate with the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation to build a water supply system connected to the Kufranja Dam. The new water supply system includes a water desalination plant, a 10 km pipeline to the network and three water pumping stations along the pipeline. In addition to this, in the Ajloun Governorate, support was provided for the drilling of two boreholes, benefitting 96,000 people. In the South of Amman, the water network was expanded to connect five schools, providing 6,600 children with water on a daily basis. Furthermore, to respond to emergency needs at the berm, an average of 12.4 liters per person per day was delivered to Rukban, and 30 liters per person per day was delivered to Hadalat, benefiting an estimated 46,528 people living in the two settlements.
Agriculturally, several farms benefitted from a 600mm diameter irrigation pipe with a maximum flow of 400 liters per second, connected to multiple irrigation resources that supply a total of 26.3 hectares of land with water. Recognized as a first of its kind project in Jordan, the Kufranja Dam constituted one of the government’s most ambitious initiatives to ease the stress on their water supply, in line with their National Water Strategy.
Mitigating Aridity
Despite of this critical contribution to the country’s water preservation mix, Jordan’s water supply faces future challenges if it does further develop projects due to decreased rainfall and increased consumption. According to the UN, countries with less than 500 cubic meters of water per capita are facing “absolute scarcity”, while an annual average of only 150 cubic meters are available to the people in Jordan. Recognizing these challenges, the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development will continue to provide financial assistance for various projects. Projects including the recent aforementioned dams will promote socio- economic development in line with the goal of the fund as well as of the United Nations, as part of the widely adopted Social Development Goals. The completed projects have provided the peoplewith necessities that were severely lacking prior to the support and guidance from the ADFD, the projects and initiatives that are in the pipeline will continue to provide for a better lifestyle with access to more water for the Jordanian. “The dam is of paramount importance, enhancing the water resources available in Wadi Kfarnja for irrigation, drinking and developing the surrounding environment while also contributing to protection from flooding”