$4.3m for Jordan's adaptation to climate change

Jordan Times: The Ministry of Environment has launched a $4.3 million programme to develop the Kingdom's adaptation to climate change and sustain its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) achievements. The programme, financed by the UNDP-Spain MDG Achievement Fund, seeks to identify loopholes in the country's climate change adaptation process and assess the phenomenon's direct and indirect effects on health, nutrition and human security, according to ministry officials.

In 2000, the UN adopted eight goals to be met by all the world's countries by 2015. They include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.

…The Kingdom has progressed in achieving the MDGs, but some of these achievements are being jeopardised in light of the country's water shortage, which could threaten public health, food security, productivity and human security, the programme's coordinator, Munjed Sharif, said recently.

…The programme will assist Jordan in addressing strategic issues, including health and water, by ensuring a sustainable and improved water supply in light of a water shortage blamed on climate change. So far, climate change has caused a 30 per cent reduction in the Kingdom's surface water resources, as well as a decrease in the volume of rainfall and agricultural production, both of which the country and the Arab world rely on heavily….

Dated to the Roman period at the end of the 2nd century AD, the South Tetrapylon in Jordan is the intersection of Jerash's Cardo with the first cross street. Shot by David Bjorgen, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2