A ”peace conduit” to prevent the drying up of the Dead Sea — bordered by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories — would promote peace in the warring region, UN Earth Summit delegates said on Sunday.
The canal, by piping water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea about 300 kilometres away, would bring extra water to the region through a desalination project and top up the declining sea by pumping brine into it.
”Bringing life to the Dead Sea could bring a better life to the whole Middle East region, to Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians,” said Ron Milo, the Israeli minister for regional co-operation.
”When we presented this to the World Bank, the Palestinians were part of this project and are going to be partners,” said Milo.
Warning that the sea was in ”immediate jeopardy”, Jordanian Environmental, Water and Integration Minister Hazim El Naser said the conduit would be a ”vehicle for peace and sustainable development”.
”It would diffuse future disputes and eliminate chronic disputes in the water-starved region,” he told the forum on protecting the ancient sea.
He said as the lowest and most saline place on earth, with a unique eco-system, and religious significance to the Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths, the sea was also a world treasure and the international community should preserve it.
Jordanian Minister of Planning Bassem Awadallah expanded on the importance of partnerships, saying: ”it symbolises the very justification of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
”It is a dream of what can happen in a global context, if we want to save the planet as well as the Dead Sea.”
Delegates at the forum were banned from talking about the Middle East conflict and confined to observations on the project.
The conservation group Global Nature Fund sounded a cautionary note about the project from an environmental perspective.
”We appreciate the need to protect the Dead Sea but are sceptical about the canal. More efforts are needed to recycle and conserve water in the region and the drying up can be stopped without building a canal,” said representative Stefan Hormann. – Sapa-AFP