National Resilience Plan 2014-2016.

This National Resilience Plan (NRP) provides a three year programme of high priority investments by the Government of Jordan in response to the impact of the Syrian crisis on Jordanian host communities and the Jordanian economy. The National Resilience Plan (NRP) strategy is designed to help host communities ‘cope’ (meet immediate needs), ‘recover’ (restore capacities and services to pre-crisis levels), and ‘sustain’ (lay foundation for long-term institutional and socio-economic strength). The flow of Syrians into Jordan (575,000 registered refuges as per January 2014 statistics) has placed a financial, social, and institutional strain on Jordan. The total cost for the proposed resilience plan interventions is USD 2.41 billion, totalling USD 4.13 billion with subsidies for Syrian refugees and security support. Key suggested areas of intervention are education, energy, housing, employment, municipal services, social protections, and water and sanitation.
Chapter 2 deals with suggested intervention to alleviate the crisis due to the influx of Syrian refugees. Section 2 concerns Water and Sanitation. The Overall Sector Objective is to enhance the capacity of the Government of Jordan and in particular the Host communities to meet the increase in demand in the Water and Sanitation service. It is hoped to achieve this through the following specific objectives: 1) Improving the quantity, quality and efficiency of water delivery; 2) Expanding and improving sanitation services; 3): Addressing cross cutting water and sanitation issues. The Response Plan envisages Water Conservation including projects on leakage control, rehabilitation of worn-out distribution networks, network restructuring/reinforcement to reduce excessive pressure and energy consumption due to pumping into undersized networks, containment of illegal extraction, rationing of water and provision for rainwater collection tanks at the community levels. Furthermore, special emphasis has been placed on the protection of ground water resources from over extraction from illegal wells, assessing safe aquifer extraction levels, and pollution prevention measures through implementation of watershed management, enforcement of protection zones around water resources and enhanced laboratory services. This will safeguard precious supply where they exist and prevent their premature depletion or pollution.
To remedy poor sanitation water should be reused and efficiency and capacity should be increased. Under the resilience plan, response planning and interventions should all link to serve and attribute to the main objective “To enhance the capacity of the Government of Jordan and in particular the Host communities to meet the increase in demand in the Water and Sanitation services’. Prioritization can be summarized as follows: a) Lack of access to safe drinking water; b) Underground water pollution and transmission of water borne diseases due to lack or poor access to sanitation; c) Vulnerability and number of population benefited from the intervention; d) Sustainability; e) Cost effectiveness and low operation and maintenance; f) Environmental sustainability.
Regarding energy the objective is to scale up and accelerate responses to Jordan’s energy crisis in a way that addresses incremental demand pressures from Syrian refugees and forced migrants. Within Jordan’s broad strategy for transformational change in both energy supply and demand dynamics, two key objectives of relevance to the Syrian crisis are: i) sustainable energy solutions to meet rising residential energy demands in the short-term, and ii) expand renewable energy solutions to growing pressures for energy supply expansion in the medium-term. The long-term vision to shift to a broader energy supply mix is reflected in the National Energy Strategy, including a diversification of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from alternative sources in the region, alongside exploring new oil import options and shale potentials
Chapter 3 on Operating Structure specifies that the Host Community Support Platform (HCSP) was established in September 2013 to coordinate execution of National Resilience Plan among the Government, UN agencies, and other donor organizations. The Platform provides overall direction and coherence to all partners working to mitigate the impact of the Syrian crisis on Jordanian host communities. To operationalize its work, five Task Forces with formal terms of reference have been established by this body: 1) Employment, Livelihoods and Poverty; 2) Education; 3) Health; 4) Municipal Services; 5) Water and Sanitation. Additional ad-hoc ‘Reference Groups’ have since been formed in relation to: 6) Social Protection; 7) Housing; 8) Energy.
Section 2 of Chapter 3 deals with Implementation, Monitoring and Accountability. An Annual Work Plan shall be prepared setting out a detailed sequenced and financed programme of priority interventions including the institutional roles and relationships between the main agencies in the sector required to realize the aims of the NRP. Moreover, an annual Report of Results consiting of a compilation by sector of the results achieved in the course of the operating period together with an accounting of the financial resources utilized. By the middle of 2016 an evaluation exercise will be initiated to take stock of the status and impact of the crisis on Jordan at that time and reflect on the effect of the NRP response interventions within each sector on mitigating its affects. Recommendations will be made at that time to conclude, extend, renew or redefine the NRP. The text consists of 3 Chapters as follows: Overview and Methodology (1); Investment Responses (2); Management (3).