Jordan Faces Water Crisis While the Dead Sea Is Dying esquire.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from esquire.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The government says a dam is necessary to provide drinking water in an era of rising temperatures and climate change. Activists say it’s another corrupt government project.
In the last three decades, the Dead Sea’s level has fallen almost 100 feet. The rate of loss is accelerating, and sinkholes now number in the thousands, like a rash spreading on the exposed seabed.
“When I was younger, the water used to reach all the way up to that field,” said Hassan Kanazri, a 63-year-old tomato farmer, as he pointed to a spot some 300 yards away from the water’s edge. He stepped onto a patch of dark brown earth speckled with holes; the soft dirt gave way underfoot.
The Dead Sea is dying Drinking water is scarce Jordan faces a climate crisis msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Sometime in the not-too-distant future, scientists predict that global temperatures may rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or even higher, on average. By 2100, the sea level is expected to rise between 0.2 meters in a best-case scenario to 2.5 meters in an extreme one, depending on efforts to curb emissions.
A rise of just half a meter, though, would be enough to inundate the Egyptian cities of Port Said and Alexandria, according to one estimate. An increase of a meter would cover a quarter of the Nile River Delta, the country’s breadbasket.
The slowly unfolding disaster may be enough to uproot six million Egyptians, in addition to millions more migrating from parts of the Sahel. There, land degradation is taking its toll and unbearable heat has become the norm, making a wide swath of Africa, already the continent with the fastest-growing population on the globe, unlivable.