Technical Solutions to Avoid Water Conflicts: The Red-Dead Sea Canal Project

On 9 December 2013, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the World Bank Headquarters, in Washington. This deal aims to develop a desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan's port in the Red Sea in order to produce water which will be shared between Israel and Jordan. The project can be considered as a "pilot scheme", or even as a first stage of a potential Red-Dead project to test the environmental impact of adding the mix of the Red Sea water and desalination byproduct to the Dead Sea. This article aims to describe the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance Project (RSDSCP) considering the ongoing debate about its possible environmental impacts and trying to identify the real goals that drove interested parties to undertake a so costly and risky mega-project. To do so it is necessary to consider the hydrological characteristics of the region and above all take a step back in history to reconstruct the hydropolitical processes that have taken place since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. They will also be outlined the possible alternatives to the project that could be more efficient from a socio-economic and environmental point of view.