EIB water expertise benefits Jordan

Jordan's image is intimately associated with water, the Mediterranean world, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea and the mythical River Jordan from which the country derives its name - so much so that it is hard to grasp that it is in fact one of the most arid countries on the planet alongside Tanzania, Sudan and Ethiopia. Yet more than 80% of this ancient land has been abandoned to the desert, even though in Jordan it takes on the magnificent forms of a land of ochre sand or a lost city hewn from the cliffs of pink sandstone bordered by a sea of salt.

In May 2009, the EIB granted Jordan a USD 100m loan to enable it to build a strategic aqueduct to carry water drawn from an immense aquifer beneath the desert. As well as providing financial engineering the EIB made its leading-edge water expertise available to Jordan, underpinning a long-term reform of the country's water policy.

The Hashemite Kingdom has launched several emergency plans in efforts to prevent complete desertification. One key element is a gigantic USD 1bn project to build the new aqueduct that will link Disi in the south of the country to Amman.

This will tap into an immense reserve of fresh water lying around 500 metres under the Disi desert that was formed drop by drop since the Pleistocene glaciations era. This reserve contains enough drinking water to supply Amman for some fifty years. At present, this precious resource is pumped mainly for irrigation purposes in the middle of the desert, sometimes for very water-intensive crops such as citrus fruit, bananas and tomatoes.