The first phase of the SALAM initiative was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the SMART-MOVE collaborative research project in the period between 2015 and 2018. It focused on transboundary water management in Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The expert group from the region worked under the supervision of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the consulting company Rusteberg Water Consulting. SALAM was actively supported by the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI), the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), and the Israeli water supply company MEKOROT. The work in the BMBF-funded SMART projects for representative river basins in the period 2006 to 2013 had already shown that local freshwater resources in Palestine and Jordan are almost exhausted and that external water resources have to be provided to cover water needs.
The first phase of the SALAM initiative proposed five so-called water production and water transfer options (SALAM WPOs) to address the region’s acute water problem. All WPOs are based on seawater desalination in various locations on the Mediterranean and Red Sea. The SALAM WPOs as a whole are able to solve the quantitative water problem of the region. More information about the results of the initiative’s first phase can be found here.
The second phase of the initiative ties in directly with these results. The aim is to develop transboundary integral water transfer strategies to solve the water deficit problem of the region and to implement an integrated water resource management (IWRM) in the partner countries. The project also contributes to climate change adaptation, ecosystem rehabilitation, implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and securing political stability by preventing the water crisis from worsening.