Jordan - Management of Groundwater Resources
Country / Region: Jordan / Middle East
Focal Point: Groundwater
Begin of project: August 1, 2021
End of project: July 31, 2024
Status of project: September 15, 2022
Since the 1960s, Jordan’s population has almost decupled from less than one million to close to ten million people today, which results in a huge burden on Jordan's water resources. Over the same period, water usage has largely increased due to economic growth as well as for agricultural irrigation. Today, Jordan is covering its water demand by up to 70 % from groundwater sources, which are largely fossil or have very little recharge rates. Additionally, groundwater quality has decreased over the past decades due to overuse, unsustainable use of fertilizers in agriculture as well as improper storage and treatment of waste and wastewater.
BGR project vehicle during monitoring work in Jordan
Source: Alexander Jokisch (BGR)
Ongoing project: Program - Management of Groundwater Resources
The aim of the project “Management of Groundwater Resources” is to strengthen the national authorities, especially the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI), in the assessment and management of the available groundwater resources of Jordan. This includes enabling the MWI to assess the economic viability of groundwater extraction under different usage scenarios, in order to develop different options for long-term water supply in the kingdom.
In the light of the project activities, the BGR project team works closely with the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI), the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ) and the Jordanian water companies.
Groundwater monitoring well in the Jordanian desert
Source: Alexander Jokisch (BGR)
The project has the following four components:
Domestic Well Management
The component strives to increase the efficiency in water pumping through improved well management and preventative well maintenance. This also includes strengthening the institutional structures, which allows the water companies to protect the water resources and to supervise drinking water wells.
The extraction of water is currently still very energy- and cost-intensive. In particular, BGR supports the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ) and the Ministry’s Utility Performance Management Unit (UPMU) in their regulation of water companies.
In addition, the cooperation and transfer of knowledge between the water companies in the areas of well operation and maintenance are to be improved.
Abu Mahjoub groundwater comic Jordan
Source: BGR
Economic Viability of groundwater extraction
The aim of this component is to enable the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) to economically assess various options for water extraction in the future. So far, large-scale water infrastructure projects have been preferred over in most cases more cost-effective groundwater development.
The MWI with support of BGR obtains data in order to introduce the economic component as an important aspect in water production planning.
This data enables a comprehensive cost analysis of groundwater abstraction for drinking water supply as well as the cost comparison to alternative water sources (desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater).
In a next step, the MWI can enter the gathered cost data into the water management Decision Support System WEAP, which is already established as a planning tool in the Ministry, and expand it accordingly. This will allow the MWI to assess alternatives for future water supply.
Monitoring of groundwater quality
Supporting the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) and the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ) in establishing a regular water quality monitoring, would make a systematic nationwide inspection of the quality of Jordanian groundwater resources possible in the long term. To this end, the MWI and WAJ and their laboratories should introduce the systematic monitoring of groundwater quality and both plan and institutionalize the entire process chain of sampling, transport, analysis, evaluation and data interpretation. In addition, laboratory personnel should evaluate the hydro-geochemical data, and regularly publish the results in the future. A special focus of the component lies on the realization of case studies that concern sites with special hydro-geochemical issues, focusing on the chemical elements selenium and molybdenum, which should not exceed a certain limit value in the groundwater. Here, BGR and its partners jointly develop the planning of the studies as well as the monitoring, analysis and interpretation of the hydro-geochemical data.
Support for the Ministry’s Public Relations Department
The objective of the last component is to support the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) in improving the knowledge of policy-makers, main water users and the public about the groundwater situation in Jordan. Although the scarcity of water in the Kingdom is very well known, awareness about the valuable resource of groundwater in particular is not very widespread. For internal and inter-agency cooperation, the provision of scientific data on groundwater is a basic requirement for better policy coherence. Taking into account the great challenges of the Jordanian water sector, such as social inequalities in water supply and illegal water withdrawals, MWI’s capacities to formulate evidence-based key messages and to carry out targeted public relations campaigns, need to be strategically aligned and optimized. The establishment of an advisory board consisting of representatives from ministries, parliament, the media, the private sector and universities, intends to increase both the demand for and provision of reliable groundwater information and the ownership in the MWI.
The project “Management of Groundwater Resources (BGR)” has a duration of three years from August 2021 to July 2024 and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The overall German contribution to the project is five Mio Euro.
Screenshot of a comic strip on the groundwater situation in Jordan developed as part of the predecessor project
Source: BGR
Over 60 years of Technical Cooperation with Jordan
The Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) has been active in Jordan on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) since 1959. With a total number of 25 projects over the last 63 years, Jordan is one of the most important cooperation partners for BGR in the world. The focal areas of this long-term cooperation have changed over the past decades. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the cooperation with Jordan aimed at building up the Geological Survey. Later, the BGR provided support in the fields of groundwater exploration, the exploitation of phosphate deposits, the elaboration of a Jordanian water-supply plan, as well as geochemical investigations and surveys on Jordan’s oil shale resources. Since the 1980s, the focus of cooperation shifted to groundwater-related issues, including hydrogeological mapping, the development of groundwater models and support in the field of groundwater protection. In recent years, the priorities are monitoring, sustainable management and protection of Jordan’s groundwater resources as well as the validation and publication of data.
Videos:
Project contributions:
Literature:
- MWI (2018): Water Year Book - Hydrological Year 2016-2017. 111 p.; Amman, Jordan. (PDF, 12 MB)
- MWI & BGR (Ministry of Water and Irrigation; Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe). (2019): Groundwater Resource Assessment of Jordan 2017. - 151 p., ISBN 978-9923-9769-0-6 (PDF, 54 MB)
- Groundwater Vulnerability Map of the Ajloun and Balqa Group Aquifers 1:650,000 (PDF, 54 MB)
- Factsheet: Short-term support for Covid-19 adaption measures in Jordan. Assessment of groundwater extraction efficiency to cope with increased water demand (PDF, 1 MB)
Partner:
Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI)