Sustainable Development of the Eastern
Coast Region of the Dead Sea
Prepared by: Moayyad Abdel-Razaq Al-Fawaeer
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hoshiar Marouf
Abstract
Developing countries, including Jordan, face many
challenges towards achieving sustainable development by
investing resources consideration. The researcher found that
the eastern coast region of the Dead Sea is abundant with
natural resources, Which are not economically exploited,
Whether those existing inside the Sea itself in the form of salts
and minerals or those on its coast, Including sites of economic
importance from all historic, industrial and touristic aspects as
well as other actual or latent economic resources.
The study depended on the analytical descriptive method,
which in turn depends on deduction, inference and presentation
and analysis of the data related to the subject of the study.
The researcher started off within the theoretical framework
by discussing the sustainable development concept through an
analytical processing in order to eliminate confusion in
interpreting the concept, which is considered relatively new.
Discussion covered the requirements of achieving sustainable
development in the developing countries that face numerous
difficulties in achieving their developmental objectives in the
light of economic resources depletion and the consequent
imbalance in environmental equilibrium because they did not
reach the structural changes of all economic and social sectors
and the technological transformations necessary for investing
actual and latent resources and subsequently failure of the
strategies, adopted by most developing countries , like
specialization in exporting raw materials, import substitution
model or export promotion model, by achieving stability or
enhancing development in these countries.
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Jordan, like most developing countries, is facing many
difficulties in improving self-capacity in using actual and latent
resources due to deformity of sector structural relationships,
form
Which Jordanian economy suffers, scarcity of economic
resources and smallness of the economy size and the associated
incapacity of economic and social development plans and
development plans which were adopted, to direct resources
towards optimal use and create equilibrium between economic,
social and environmental dimensions in order to reach
sustainable development at the spatial and sector level, which
became clear from the fact on the ground at the area of study,
which is subject to two different investment strategies, where
investments on the western side outmatch their counterparts
on the eastern side. The resources existing in the study area, if
properly exploited, and will play a vital role in achieving the
sought after development at the region level and the country at
large.
The dipping of the Dead Sea water level, resulting from
diverting its tributaries, particularly by Israel, constitute a
serious danger to the investments under way in the region and
to all actual and latent resources. These include admixture of
potable ground water with salt water, formation of sinking
holes and devastating land slides, and causing climatic changes
that expose ground resources and natural environment as a
whole to numerous hazards, thereby entailing the intensifying
of national, regional and international efforts to avoid such
danger to the environment and resources, whose effect is not
confined on the study area but extends to cover all countries
with coasts at the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea-Red Sea canal
project is considered one of the vital developmental projects
that will save the Dead Sea from vanishing and provide
drinking water and energy and prosperity of the region in the
agricultural, industrial and tourism domains, which requires
planning for many integrated projects in the region.
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