National Water Strategy 2023-2040.

Jordan updates its 2016-2025 National Water Strategy. The need to carry out policy and legal reform is expressed in four pillar goals, which focus on addressing the way in which Jordan’s water sector and resources are managed to protect this vital national resource. These are: • Pillar Goal 1: Reform the legal and institutional framework to modernize the sector, clarify roles and responsibilities, enhance accountability, and increase public trust. • Pillar Goal 2: Restore balance between available and sustainable water supplies and water demand to sufficiently meet Jordan’s health and economic development needs to achieve lasting water security. • Pillar Goal 3: Achieve financial sustainability for water sector operations through the balance of full cost recovery and continued government support in critical infrastructure investment and pro-poor protections for water security. • Pillar Goal 4: Ensure impartial and transparent regulation of water sector services and costs. Each goal has its objectives and indicators/targets.
The Thematic part of the Strategy is divided into 10 Chapters (3-12). Each chapter describes for each theme the current situation, Key Challenges, Considerations, Opportunities, and Threats and goals to be achieved. The third Chapter is about achieving a sustainable balance between supply and demand, a gap that is currently widening. Water use efficiency, water reuse and desalination play an important role here. The fourth Chapter concerns integrated water resources management (IWRM) and environmental protection. One of the challenges here is the legal and institutional reform. Chapter 5 is about utility services and management of water utilities. It is also about sludge management. Bulk water supply and wastewater management need to be reformed. Chapter 6 concerns irrigated agriculture. Reference is made to the National Agricultural Strategy of 2020. Achieving the goals of irrigated agriculture requires collaborative monitoring among various institutions. There must be a balance between food security and water security. Chapter 7 deals with financial sustainability. The Strategy aspires to improve the financial health of the sector and promote its sustainability as a means to look beyond money and instead enable enhanced service standards and quality, efficiency in its provision, and improvements to the governance of the water sector. Chapter 8 is about sector governance and institutional development. This Chapter addresses the specific goals, objectives, strategies, and targets to meet Pillar goal 1. The 2022-2033 Economic Modernization Vision reaffirms the role of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) in water governance. Other institutions are the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA) and the Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ). Gender and inclusion is identified as one of the key challenges and gender mainstreaming is identified as a goal. Another goal is strengthening of sector-level strategic planning, management, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting. Energy efficiency and renewable energy in the water sector is the theme of the ninth Chapter. Energy efficiency and water operations shall be improved and renewable energy from water sources incremented. Chapter 10 is about innovation, technology, and private sector engagement. The final chapters are dedicated to the water-energy-food-environment nexus (11) and climate change adaptation issues (12). The main challenge of the integrated management under the Water-Energy-Food-Environment (WEFE) Nexus approach is that the entire governance structure in the country is based on sector-led management and policies, despite the establishment of some cross-sectoral committees between sectors to coordinate activities. Effective cross-sectoral management must be institutionalized. The MWI shall oversee monitoring progress against the goals, objectives, and targets as agreed by the WEFE Nexus council (to be established) inside the water sector and work with its entities to ensure that each entity carries out its agreed responsibilities toward achieving the set targets. Therefore, measures to adapt to the effects of climate change should be taken to ensure continued economic, social, and environmental development, provide institutional capacities to respond to it, educate society about it, and raise awareness about its risks.