The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptized, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said yesterday.
The famed river “has been reduced to a trickle south of the Sea of Galilee, devastated by over exploitation, pollution and lack of regional management,” Friends of the Earth, Middle East (FoEME) said in a report.
More than 98 percent of the river’s flow has been diverted by Israel, Syria and Jordan over the years.
“The remaining flow consists primarily of sewage, fish pond water, agricultural run-off and saline water,” the environmentalists from Israel, Jordan and the West Bank said in the report to be presented in Amman yesterday. “Without concrete action, the LJR [lower Jordan River] is expected to run dry at the end of 2011.”
The river — which runs 217km from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea — and its tributaries are shared by Israel, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank.
In 1847, a US naval officer who led an expedition along the river described navigating down cascading rapids and waterfalls. Today the Jordan is a brackish stream barely a few meters wide.
Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian communities along the lower Jordan river — about 340,000 people in all — dump raw sewage into the river.
Ironically, if the sewage stops flowing into the river — which Israel plans to do on its stretch — the damage could be even greater unless additional measures are taken to reduce the salinity of the water.
FoEME believes the solution lies in releasing huge amounts of fresh water into the river.
The Jordan once had a flow of 1.3 billion cubic meters a year, but now discharges only an estimated 20 million to 30 million cubic meters into the Dead Sea.
“A new study we commissioned reveals that we have lost at least 50 percent of biodiversity in and around the river due to the near total diversion of fresh water, and that some 400 million cubic meters of water annually are urgently needed to be returned to the river to bring it back to life,” said Munqeth Mehyar, FoEME’s Jordanian director.
Israel, Syria, Jordan must all return water to the ailing river, the report says.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS