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Greens seek action over shrinking Dead Sea

Conal Urquhart— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Ein Gedi (On the shore of the Dead Sea): Green campaigners are demanding that the new Israeli Government take urgent action to save the Dead Sea, which is shrinking by over a metre a year.

The surface of the salt lake has been reduced by a third — 25 metres below its historical level — and the receding waters have created thousands of sinkholes that have swallowed buildings, orchards and even people.

Israel has won international renown for "making the desert bloom", but it is this success which has ruined the Dead Sea by depriving it of water. In recent decades Jordan, which also borders the sea, has sought to emulate Israel, further reducing the flow of water to the sea.

The Dead Sea is the lowest, and saltiest, body of water in the world at 400 metres below the sea level. It is supplied by the river Jordan, which links it to the freshwater Sea of Galilee. In the Fifties, Israel began to divert all the water from the Galilee to cultivate the desert. In the Seventies, Jordan and Syria also dammed tributaries of the Jordan to reduce the flow into the Dead Sea to a trickle of highly polluted effluents.

Way to save the lake

Gidon Bromberg, the Tel Aviv-based director of the Friends of the Earth Middle East, which also has offices in Amman and Bethlehem, said the only way to save the Dead Sea was to stop a proportion of water going to agriculture and allow 650 million cubic metres to flow down the Jordan.

Jordan and Israel heavily subsidise the price of water to farmers. In Israel, agriculture uses a third of its water to produce 2 per cent of the GDP. Mr. Bromberg said Israel was misusing its water to grow produce unsuited to the environment. "We have to ask, `Why are we growing bananas, a tropical plant, in the desert?' The economic returns do not make sense," he said.

One solution is to provide more water and refill the Dead Sea. This plan, being examined by the World Bank, envisages the construction of a 165-km system of pipes and canals linking the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The water would be pumped high into the Moab Mountains in Jordan where it would be desalinated for the use of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The remaining water would then cascade down, providing hydro-electricity and salty water to replenish the Dead Sea.

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