Don’t Make the Desert Bloom

“Making the desert bloom”, a cornerstone of the early Zionist ideal, turns out not to have been such a smart idea. Agriculture consumes some 60% of the country’s total of 2 billion cubic metres of water a year, but contributes less than 2% of GDP, thanks partly to water-guzzling export crops such as bananas and citrus fruits, as well as dates (these are fine in their natural habitat of oases, but in Israel large plantations of date palms stretch across otherwise arid desert).

Israel shares its water sources with the Palestinians (the main aquifer that feeds many of its wells lies under the West Bank), as well as Jordan and Syria. Fast-growing populations are putting a strain on those sources. So is global warming: although average rainfall has not been dropping in the region, rain showers have become shorter and more intense, so more water runs into the sea instead of recharging the aquifers. The Jordan River is a trickle of its former self, and the Dead Sea, which it replenishes, is falling by around one metre a year.

More alarmingly, because rubbish dumping in Israel is better controlled than it used to be, contractors now dump more waste illegally in the poorly supervised West Bank, which adds to the contamination of the aquifer.

06/05/08 - more at The Economist