Water Security and Climate Justice in Jordan: What Agenda Will Civil Society Bring to COP31?

Farah Atiyyat

Water scarcity and unequal access to resources call for national reforms, as Jordan presses for more equitable adaptation finance.

Jordan – Jordan will take part in the 31st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31), to be held in Antalya, Türkiye, next month. The country arrives facing a dilemma that can no longer tolerate a gap between climate commitments and the capacity to implement them: water resources are declining, development needs are growing, and communities’ capacity to absorb losses is uneven.

In a country where the gap between water scarcity and the loss of livelihoods is narrowing, adaptation finance – that is, enabling communities to cope with the impacts of climate change – falls short if it is limited to increasing supply while overlooking households’ ability to afford its costs or farmers’ capacity to sustain production.

The figures reveal the scale of the pressure facing the Kingdom. According to the National Water Strategy 2023–2040, renewable freshwater availability Per capita stood at around 61 cubic meters per year in 2021, compared with the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 cubic meters, which projects that this share will fall to 35 cubic meters by 2040. The strategy also points to a further expected 15 per cent decline in the Kingdom’s conventional freshwater resources by the same year as a result of climate change.

However, weak adaptive capacity deepens the impact of these risks. According to the ESCWA assessment of Jordan’s water sector (2022), spatial assessments based on the socio-economic indicators used show low adaptive capacity across around 70 per cent of the country’s area.

In the absence of adaptation measures, the assessment projects that the share of land classified as highly vulnerable in the water sector will rise from around 30 per cent over the 2021–2040 and 2041–2060.

These indicators place development policy under a direct test: how can production be expanded, and job opportunities and basic services protected, while the resources on which Jordan depends continue to shrink?

Answering this question requires a review of investment, allocation and supply, and the integration of climate risks into budgets and sectoral programmes. Such action must not be postponed, as delays that could raise the cost of intervention at a later stage and allow environmental damage to evolve into economic and social losses that are difficult to contain.

However, the scale of resources alone does not explain the crisis. Weak operational management, depletion, unequal distribution and reliance on external financing are all factors that interact with climate and demographic pressures, according to a paper published by the Institute for Politics and Society last March.

This interplay means that reducing water security to a lack of rainfall amounts to implicitly absolving policies of their responsibilities. Climate change makes management more challenging, but it does not absolve policymakers of their duty to improve management or ensure accountability.

The climate justice gap is widening between those who have the means to adapt and those who bear the cost of the damage

The imbalance becomes even clearer when moving from national indicators to the lives of those affected. Field discussions underpinning a recent report on climate justice published by the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies revealed disparities in the capacity to finance modern irrigation, water storage and renewable energy.

The report also noted that people with greater resources have wider options, while low-income households, smallholder farmers, daily wage workers and refugees face tighter financial and technical constraints. Consequently, adaptation solutions may deepen existing inequality if access to their benefits remains contingent on people’s ability to pay.

Accordingly, calling farmers to improve water-use efficiency must therefore go hand in hand with access to finance, extension services and technology, without leaving them to bear the cost of the transition alone, at a time when their income is at risk. That burden could push them further into debt and weaken their resilience.

Women working in agriculture and daily wage workers face a further dimension of loss: shrinking employment and income opportunities, along with exposure to heat and, at times, harsh conditions in field work.

However, the risks extend beyond agriculture to the economy, services and human capital. A 2022 report prepared by Economist Impact for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that, under its scenarios of rising water stress without intervention, output in the services sector could fall by between 2.8 and 4.1 per cent by 2030.

These conditional estimates show that the cost of water scarcity extends to employment, health, nutrition and education, and that investment in water safeguards development gains beyond the water sector itself.

The findings of Jordan’s Fourth National Communication on Climate Change also point to high vulnerability in the Yarmouk and Amman–Zarqa basins and parts of the Azraq and Mujib basins, indicating that projects should be targeted in accordance with differences in regional exposure to climate risks and adaptive capacity.

Water policy reform starts with equitable distribution of resources, not merely increasing supply

These findings indicate that formal equality in spending is not enough when needs are unequal. Justice requires prioritizing areas where climate risks coincide with limited resources and services, and providing greater support to those with fewer means to protect themselves.

The National Adaptation Plan, issued in 2022, provides a foundation for including the most vulnerable groups and mainstreaming gender, as well as for coordination, finance and monitoring. However, these priorities must be reflected in the criteria used to select projects and allocate funding.

This means that the success of projects should be measured by how much vulnerability they reduce and how far they reach women, smallholder farmers and low-income households. Data on the regularity, quality and cost of water supply should also be published by area, and clear channels for complaints and accountability should be made available.

The national reforms required must begin by linking water and adaptation policies to indicators of poverty, income, employment and access to services. It also requires social protection systems to respond to income loss caused by drought, heat and floods.

Reform must also address occupational safety, including regulating working hours and rest breaks, providing drinking water and protecting workers from heat stress.

Civil society: between conveying the demands of those affected and influencing climate decision-making

Achieving this requires the involvement of civil society in Jordan from the outset of reform, with genuine representation of workers, farmers, women, young people and affected areas. Civil society can thereby link field experience with research and decision-making, and develop actionable initiatives and monitor their outcomes.

However, its effectiveness also depends on overcoming the concentration of activities and competition for funding, and on building cooperation that lasts beyond the end of programmes, translating communities’ needs into priorities that can be advocated for at both the national and international levels.

COP31: a test of turning Jordanian civil society’s demands into equitable finance and genuine protection

Against this background, Jordanian civil society should take specific demands on adaptation, finance, and loss and damage to the COP31 climate summit. The priority is additional, predictable public finance, provided mainly as grants, with simpler access procedures and channels that reach the local level.

Calling for increased funding is not enough if the conditions remain complex, if it creates additional debt, or if the most affected communities are unable to benefit from it. Financing that increases the burden on affected communities requires scrutiny and accountability regarding its conditions and effectiveness.

Calls for financing must also specify what it is expected to protect in Jordan: water resources, agricultural production, income, health and households’ capacity to cope with drought.

Civil society should also call for technology transfer and capacity-building tailored to Jordan’s needs in drought management, early warning, improved irrigation, groundwater protection and safe water reuse.

For these demands to carry negotiating weight, they must be translated into a clear national position, supported by evidence and local needs, coordinated with the official Jordanian delegation and Arab coalitions, and followed up in the relevant negotiation tracks.

Jordan’s opportunity at COP31 lies in framing water security as an issue of justice, development and rights within the negotiations on means of implementation. The Kingdom needs resources that safeguard its ability to sustain itself, while its communities need policies that ensure their access to this protection.

Any progress that leaves low-income households, small farmers and agricultural workers bearing the heaviest cost will leave the gap open between what is proclaimed in the name of climate justice and what it actually delivers in people’s lives.