Climate Change Policy for a Resilient Water Sector.

This sectoral Policy is an integral part of the National Water Strategy 2016-2025. The overall goal of the Policy is to build resilience in Jordan's water sector to respond to the combination of climate change and other disturbances and shocks. Thus, this Climate Policy for a Resilient Water Sector provides the background, concept, solutions and implementation mechanism for building resilience.
Guiding principles of this Policy are: (i) Resilience, as already mentioned, with its three main levels: persistence, adaptability and transformability; (ii) Integrated Water Resources Management, implementing and enforcing solutions and investments already planned in the water sector, and (iii) adaptive management, which means reassessing rational, objectives and priorities, monitoring the progresses and performances that need to be adapted to any new knowledge becoming available, in the water sector and in other sectors.
IWRM encompasses many water-related solutions, starting from hard (mostly infrastructure) solutions, and moving down towards softer solutions, as follows: water storage, water harvesting, desalination, wastewater collection/treatment/reuse, water quality protection and improvement to increase water availability for unrestricted use, virtual water through imports of water-intensive products, integrated water and land planning/management/zoning, protection of groundwater recharge areas from pollution and water-smart afforestation, economic incentives for reducing water (and energy) use, water (and energy) demand management either via technical measures or also economic measures or awareness raising and behavioral changes, improvements in water use efficiency, improved climate data collection, monitoring and early warning systems, training and capacity development.
The implementation needs to be set through two main steps: (i) prioritizing solutions taking into account some criteria, such as cost efficiency, feasibility, urgency, number of jobs created, adequacy with regard to the expected gravity of climate change; (ii) climate proofing of solutions and investments, that assesses for each solution or investment the relevant climate impacts, the biophysical and socio-economic context, and resulting vulnerability and risks.