It is hard to imagine anything more vital for human survival than water. Growing populations and climate change mean that more and more countries are facing water scarcities, and many have predicted that the wars of the not-so-distant future will be fought over water. In fact, water and droughts have already played a role in many wars, including the civil war in Syria, a country located in the heart of the most water stressed region of the world. A few months ago I learned more about water scarcity in the Middle East, when I volunteered with Al Numeira Environmental Association, a non-profit organization based in the village of Ghor Al-Mazra’a in the South Ghor region of Jordan, close to the Dead Sea.
Al Numeira’s mission is to improve long-term human well-being in the Jordan Valley by promoting water and nature conservation through environmental education, focusing on small changes each person can do in their daily lives. At the heart of Al Numeira’s activities is its weekly environmental school club for local youth, but the site of the NGO is busy with activities every day. Al Numeira has its own organic farm that supports the organization’s dining service and cafeteria, and a new ecotourism program is hoping to bring more tourists to the site and the village. These activities support the organization and its environmental education financially, but they also provide financial benefits to the local community and those involved in the organization, showing that conservation can also be economically viable.
Environmental awareness and education
Al Numeira Environmental Association was founded in 2009 with the main objective of nature conservation and especially water conservation. Jordan is one of the most water scarce countries in the world, and the water situation is getting more and more pressing every year. The South Ghor region receives approximately 75 mm of rainfall per year, and this number is expected to drop quickly as a result of climate change. More water is currently being drawn from underground aquifers than what can be replenished naturally. This overuse of water also means that very little water is reaching the Dead Sea, and the level of the famous salt lake is dropping by more than one meter every year. Jordan has plans to build a desalination project that would provide fresh water and pump the leftover brime to the Dead Sea to slow down its shrinking, but political problems with neighbouring countries are slowing down the project.
Water conservation methods at Al Numeira include greywater recycling, rainwater harvesting and permaculture farming. But more important is education, not just about water conservation but about environmental awareness in general. Al Numeira’s environmental education focuses on showing how everyone can help solve environmental challenges by making small changes in their daily lives.
The focus is on children, and the starting point of Al Numeira’s environmental education program was the construction of greywater recycling systems at local schools. This has evolved into the environmental school club, with students from different schools and grades coming to Al Numeira every Saturday for environmental education. The group changes every few months, and the idea is that these students become environmental ambassadors in the community, spreading knowledge to their classmates and family members. Al Numeira also hosts workshops for other visiting groups.
The site of Al Numeira also plays an important role in spreading environmental awareness. This includes showcasing the reuse of recycled materials, and during my stay I helped design and build a bicycle rack out of recycled wooden pallets. Al Numeira had recently received a donation of used bicycles that were being stored in a container. The existing bicycle rack was not working well, and so we decided to improve the design. We wanted the bicycles to be visible so that it would be easy to inspect them and to see if some needed repairs or were missing. Another requirement was that no permanent changes, such as drilling holes, should be made to the container, so that the bicycle rack could be removed and the container used for other purposes if necessary. Since Al Numeira had plenty of recycled wooden pallets on site, we decided to use these to build a wooden structure that holds hooks for the bicycles, and the wooden structure was attached to the container with the help of metal straps and existing hooks of the container.
Community service and social meeting point
The environmental school club only meets once a week, but the site of Al Numeira is teeming with activities every day. The main activities are farming, a cafeteria, a dining and catering service, and ecotourism. If you visit the site on a regular day, it may be hard to see at first how all these activities connect to environmental awareness. But the activities are all interconnected, supporting each other and providing income for the NGO and its environmental education program. Tourism is the newest arrival, and just a few days before my arrival the first group of tourists tested a bicycle trail that passes through local farms and gives tourists a unique opportunity to learn about life in rural Jordan.
Apart from the occasional international volunteer like myself, Al Numeira is completely run by locals. While the main goal is generating income for the environmental awareness program, the locals taking care of the farm, cafeteria, dining service and ecotourism also get a certain percentage of the income generated. This gives them motivation to work harder at promoting the site and finding more customers. As the locals are trying to increase their own income, the income of the NGO also increases. Al Numeira also hires other local workers when needed, spreading the financial benefits to more families in the community.
Thanks to the cafeteria and the dining service, the site of Al Numeira has also become a social meeting point in the village of Ghor Al-Mazra’a. The organization is taking advantage of this by hosting occasional public events, such as showing movies or documentaries with environmental messages. These efforts bring even more people to the site which helps spread the organization’s message of environmental conservation. The solutions Al Numeira promotes are small, but if enough people adapt them, they have an impact that helps the whole community and Jordan fight environmental challenges and build a more resilient future.
