Israel and Jordan signed a deal on Thursday to help save the Dead Sea and alleviate regional water shortages by building a pipeline to channel water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.
Thursday’s agreement follows a letter of intent signed in December 2013 in Washington by representatives from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, reports the Associated Press. It was signed in the presence of representatives from the United States and World Bank.
The agreement calls for the construction of a canal to carry water from the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea. During the first phase of the project, around 300 million cubic metres of water would be pumped annually from the Red Sea. In all, four pipelines should be built to eventually pump two billion cubic metres of water.
Under the agreement, some of the Red Sea water would enter the Dead Sea to prevent if from shrinking further, while the rest would be desalinated and shared among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
Without corrective action, the Dead Sea is predicted to dry out by 2050, explains the article.
However, environmental groups have expressed concern that the project could destabilise the fragile ecosystem of the Dead Sea as there is little evidence to show how it would react to water from the Red Sea.
Photo credit: Itamar Grinberg for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, flickr/Creative Commons
