time to drop out of Earlham, do a lot of drugs, and go to creative writing school

Yesterday we went to the wetlands at Azraq, an enormous oasis in Jordan that’s not too far from both the Iraqi and Saudi Arabian borders. Or at least it used to be an enormous oasis—before it was drained almost completely dry. The water has been pumped up to Amman, where a very thirsty 70% of Jordan’s population needs to wash its cars.

What once must have been a fantastically beautiful place is now half-dead. We walked on a path where water would have once been up to our necks; we saw where pitiful man-made pumps trickle water into the empty waterbed in an effort to recreate what used to be a natural cradle of life. We watched six or seven birds play in the reeds—for the most part, birds don’t come to Azraq anymore.

For those of you who know I’m prone to exaggerate, let me be very, very clear about this: in February of 1967 there were over 300,000 birds in the wetlands. In February of 2002? 1200. And unfortunately for Jordan and for the collective conscious of humanity, he environmental disaster that has occurred in Azraq is indicative of a larger problem facing Jordan and the world: the water problem.

Last Wednesday in Political Economy we had a three-hour lecture about hydro-politics, a topic that at it’s most stressful indicates the certainty of this millennium’s impending water wars. For me, this topic came to life in one very simple statistic: the UN Water Poverty line is 1000 m3—that is, 1000 m3 (about 260,000 gallons? I think that’s the right conversion?) of water per person, per year. In our lecture, Bruce described Jordan as a “water-stressed” state—which is to say, Jordan can provide, on its own, 145 m3 of water per person per year.

Needless to say, they’re importing a lot of water over here—not to mention doing crazy stuff like delving into porous rocks to reach stores of rain from 10,000 years ago. But water is expensive—desalinization is expensive—and while those aquifers they’re breaking into will hold Amman for the next 15 years, they’re non-renewable and it’s kind of a last resort (http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=32709). Meanwhile, the Dead Sea has dropped 20 meters since 1950, the population is skyrocketing, and when you consider global warming, “water-stressed” is starting to sound like a euphemism for “WE SHOUDL HAVE STARTED PANICKING A DECADE AND A HALF AGO!”

Luckily, everyone, including the Jordanian government, is well aware of the problem and doing everything they can to preserve water, like having covered irrigation systems, and pricing water appropriately. Right?

WRONG.

The government’s importing—get this—an entire Nile River’s worth of water every year, and subsidizing it like crazy to appease the thirsty masses. Specifically, we’re paying 30 fils per liter of water here in the city (it’s delivered once a week to the neighborhood, put in a tank on top of the house. When it’s gone, it’s gone until next week), while the government is paying JD 1 (1000 fils, US$1.3) per liter. In the agricultural sector, they have it even easier: they’re paying 5 fils per liter—and using up 75% of the country’s water for 9% of the labor force to produce 2% of GDP. Not to mention the 5.8 million tourists Jordan gets every year—tourists who want to drink bottled water on their hikes and take hot showers after a dusty day at Petra.

Should the Jordanian government raise the price of water? Maybe, but food prices have been going up, too—10% in the last 6 months. And of course there’s the additional problem of stalled food production. And the ever-growing global population. In summary: running out of oil, running out of food, running out of water. Time to drop out of Earlham, do a lot of drugs and go to creative writing school.

I couldn’t think about any of this at Azraq, though. At Azraq, all I could think about was: this was where life started: here, in the Middle East.