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Ahmad Daoud studied tomato plants near the Jordan Dead Sea, which is already hit hard by the severe drought in the countries with the most water in the world.
“Look how thirsty the land is,” he said, walking over the cracked ground stained with white salt stains, shaking off five acres (12 acres) of his farm. “Everything I planted is dead.”
He inspected the marble-sized tomato, which had dried before ripening.
“If there was water, this tomato would be as big as my fist,” he said.
Daoud, 25, rents land in Ghor al-Hadith, about 80 kilometers south of the capital Amman.
The fertile areas are home to many market gardens, but the drought has had a major impact.
“We usually run out of water, but it’s much worse this year,” Daoud said. “Then the flow is too low to irrigate our crops or fill our tanks.”
The salt water in the surrounding Dead Sea is also falling sharply in height.
The last rainy season, usually from October to the end of April, was poor.
The rains were reduced massively, accounting for just 60% of the normal fall, said Omar Salameh, head of communications at the water and irrigation ministry.
“The situation is critical,” he said.
The worst that hasn’t come yet?
Experts say Jordan is now subject to one of the worst droughts in its history.
But many warn that the worst is yet to come.
The environment ministry says Jordan is among the countries with the most water in the world, and fears a warming planet could worsen the situation.
“Increased temperatures and lower rainfall as a result of climate change would damage crops and water availability,” the ministry says in its National Climate Change Policy.
The average annual temperature is expected to increase by two degrees Celsius, and rainfall will be reduced by a fifth by 2050, according to forecasts used by the World Bank.
On a nearby nine-acre (22-acre) farm, 43-year-old Ibrahim Dgheimat is sitting in his collection, overwhelmed by the heat. She sees several women picking beans.
“I usually grow peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini and cabbage,” he said.
“But this year, water shortages destroyed two-thirds of my crop.”
There have been huge financial losses – $ 42,000.
“I have no way to pay the staff,” Dgheim said.
To top it all off, product prices fell last year when exports fell by a fifth as coronavirus-related borders closed.
The pandemic has also hit big customers like hotels and restaurants.
‘Gora ke’
All that Daoud, a Jordanian-born Pakistani parent – like thousands of fellow countrymen who arrived in the 1960s, many of them on their way to the Mecca pilgrimage, next to Saudi Arabia – can do is correct the failed crop.
“Five months of work will be exhausted,” says Daoud, who works with his brothers and their children.
Beyond irrigating the crop, drought can also reduce access to safe drinking water.
Jordan needs about 1.3 billion cubic meters a year, but the quantities available are between 850 and 900 million cubic meters, and the shortage is due to “low rainfall, global warming, population growth and the influx of successive refugees,” Salameh said.
This year, the reserves of three drinking water dams have reached critical levels, currently only one-third of their normal capacity.
At the same time, household water consumption has risen by 10% since the beginning of the pandemic, as people remain at home among the restrictions.
In total, the country will have 40 million cubic meters of water this year, according to Salameh, and has asked residents to use it as little as possible.
Amman says that under a 1994 peace agreement with its neighbor, Israel is obliged to provide the kingdom with 55 million cubic meters of water a year.
This year, Jordan has asked Israel to provide another eight million cubic meters of water, but an agreement was reached to sell only three million cubic meters.
To make up for the shortfall, Jordan will have to pump from its water level, Salameh said.
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