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| August 2009 |
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This month FoEME's Jordan River Rehabilitation Project conducted a second round of biological, hydrological and botanical sampling of the Lower Jordan River as part of the project's Environmental Flow Study. The team of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli experts visited five rarely accessed locations between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea uncovering a river in critical condition measuring a mere 30 cm deep in its southern sections and raising fears that the Jordan River will cease to flow in the remaining summer months. To see pictures from the study tour, please visit the Jordan River Environmental Flows Photo Album.
The Jordan River Rehabilitation Project also held Advisor Committee meetings in Israel and Jordan this month to review progress in both the Environmental Flow Study and the Transboundary Diagnosis Analysis, a cost benefit analysis of the potential opportunities and trade offs to return water to the Jordan River. The Palestinian Advisory Committee meeting will be held in the coming weeks. These meetings bring together key stakeholders including representatives from the relevant ministries, expert academics, international representatives and other NGOs to comment and advise FoEME's studies.
The Jordan River Rehabilitation Project is supported by USAID, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, the Green Environment Fund and the Global Nature Fund/ Ursula Merz Foundation. | |
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A recent success of the Good Water Neighbors project came from a strange source this month. Sandflies in the area of the Dead Sea and Southern Jordan Valley have long been a dreadful cross border nuisance. The flies issue was brought up by FoEME in our cross border mayors meetings between the Israeli and Jordanian mayors from the GWN Dead Sea communities. This led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which included the flies issue and specifically banning of non-composted chicken manure, the apparent source of the problem.
In a set of meetings between FoEME Amman staff with the Jordanian Environment Minister, the minister promised to take up the issue by first seeing to it that a compost plant be built, and then to ban the use of non-composted chicken manure in the Valley. The compost plant was completed last year in the Dir Allah Region, and the ban on use of non-composed chicken manure will be effective August 1st, given that alternatives exist.
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Summer camps have been organized in all our Jordanian “Good Water Neighbors” communities this month. Youth “Water Trustees”  in the 8 participating communities are taking part in environmental learning activities, visiting water resources, conducting clean up campaigns, creating cards, posters and brochures, designing power point presentations based on the WaterCare curriculum, and presenting them to other students.
They are also presenting their ideas and posing questions to their local decision makers in regards to environmental problems. All students are organizing exhibitions to display their hand crafts and publications developed during the summer camp period. | |
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A group of 70 youth from the Good Water Neighbors community of Beit She’an attended a “green” summer camp this month. They learned about the natural resources in their community, including water and local flora and fauna, they produced short videos on the importance of recycling, participated in a workshop to learn how to build with recycled materials, visited the Beit She’an Neighbors path, learned about local pollution issues, raised ideas on how to conserve water, and organized a clean-up effort at one of the local springs in the area.
A competition was held between the different video clips, held at a large auditorium in the community, and attended by representatives from the Ministry of Environment, the City’s municipality, as well as parents and students. | |
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On July 23rd and 24th, the Good Water Neighbors project held a cross border youth campaign with Israeli “Water Trustees” from Baka Gharbia, and Palestinian “Water Trustees” from Baka Sharkia and Tulkarem. The campaign calls for the protection of their shared water resource, the Mountain Aquifer.
Together they visited the Palestinian communities’ reconstructed wetlands, toured both Baka Sharkia and Tulkarem’s Neighbors Paths, and undertook a clean-up activity in one of the schools. In the evening, they attended a lecture on the uses of GIS mapping as a tool for identifying environmental hazards in their community, and then held a Questions & Answer competition on ecological issues. The event was attended by the mayor of Baka Sharkia as well as officials from the Ministry of Education, showing their support of the project.
The Good Water Neighbors project is supported by USAID, SIDA and the Belgium Foreign Ministry’s Peace Building Desk. | |
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