Launched by 7iberINC, Once Upon A Water aims to tell the story of Jordan’s vanishing water supply and how they can have a ‘happily ever after’
According to the WHO, Jordan has one of the lowest water resource availability per capita in the world. By the year 2025, if current trends continue, per capita water supply is expected to fall from the current 200 cubic meters per person to only 91 cubic meters, putting Jordan in the category of having an absolute water shortage. The Once Upon A Water In Jordan campaign, launched by the influential 7iber media site, is hoping to raise awareness of this dire water situation and also encourage Jordanians to take positive action now.
The title of the project plays on the Arabic for ‘once upon a time’ to which one letter is added to make it read ‘once a upon a water’. According to the campaigners this projects want to:
channel efforts and conversations around the water issues throughout Jordan into one platform that invites interested multimedia professionals and environmentalists to collaboratively produce digital stories of Jordan’s diminishing water, with the technical support from 7iberINC.
Such stories will seek to amass a wealth of oral history and thus put a human face on an ongoing issue, in the eyes of the average citizens and communities affected by the loss and scarcity of water.
As well as working with photographers to highlight water scarcity and wall stencils which explore problematic issues such as water theft, they have created a fact-packed infographic. The Arabic infographic shows that the average Jordanian consumes just 80 litres of water a day. That’s a lot less than the average Egyptian or Israeli who consume, respectively, 200 and 242 litres of water a day. It’s also a lot less than the average American who guzzles a whopping 340 litres of water a day. Another little interesting fact is that 28% of all houses in Jordan collect rainwater and also 35% of water is lost through leakages.
“Every year, we lose 70 million cubic metres of water due to water theft”
The campaign has also produced a video report (in Arabic) by Rami Abdelrahman about Jordan’s plans to drag waters from a desert aquifer in Disi along 350 km to the capital Amman. The campaign doesn’t yet have it’s own website but there are some great photos of outings to the Dead Sea and the Azraq Wetland Reserve on their facebook page.
: Images and information via Once Upon A Water In Jordan/Facebook.
For more information on Jordan’s water situation see:
Permaculture and Sustainability Project Takes Off In Jordan
7 Agricultural Solutions That Will Save The Middle East
Solutions To Jordan’s Energy Crisis Must Be Sustainable
Author: Arwa Aburawa
Arwa is a Muslim freelance writer who is interested in everything climate change related and how Islam can inspire more people to care for their planet and take active steps to save it while we can. She is endlessly suspicious of all politicians and their ceaseless meetings, especially as they make normal people believe that they are not part of the solution when they are the ONLY solution. Her Indian auntie is her model eco-warrier, and when Arwa is not busy helping out in the neighborhood alleyway garden, swap shopping or attempting fusion vegetarian dishes- with mixed success, she’d like to add- she can be found sipping on foraged nettle tea.
