A focus on NEX-LABS Best Practices in Jordan: highlights on the importance of digitalization and cooperation to ensure future growth in Water, Energy and Food.

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During the past months, NEX-LABS project partner countries have worked with an incredible commitment to defining a list of their country-specific best practices which are helpful to build a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive Mediterranean ecosystem for water, energy and food security. 

Best practices are a fundamental ingredient to building a catalogue which can be useful for policy building, as well as for improved local entrepreneurship and community resilience. 

The survey conducted in Jordan, together with research papers, was helpful in defining 4 features with 15 actions that help or would help the country’s sustainable development in the nexus of water, energy, and food: 

  1. Strategic Orientation
  2. Digitalization of the Economy
  3. Cooperation and Networking
  4. Knowledge and SMEs

The survey demonstrated that it is fundamental to develop economic growth programs which reflect the nexus of water, energy, food and environment for sustainable development. To bring to life the country’s commitment, Jordan’s Royal Hashemite Court (RHC(has taken the initiative to develop an Economic Modernization Vision (EMV) in a participatory manner with a diverse range of stakeholders which summarizes the country’s status and future direction for growth. Later in this article we will share some special focus areas.  

1. Strategic Orientation

The Economic Policy Council of Jordan has worked on a  JORDAN ECONOMIC GROWTH PLAN 2018 - 2022 to recapture the growth momentum and realize Jordan’s development potential.   The JEGP is comprised of economic, fiscal and sectoral strategies and reforms, that outline the vision and policies pertaining to key sector. It further identifies the required policy interventions, public projects and private investments that must be undertaken to realize these sectoral visions. A successful implementation of the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility Program (EFF) in Jordan, along with the JEGP, will put Jordan on a sustainable growth trajectory and ensure its economic resilience in the face of regional turmoil. “A successful implementation by the Government of Jordan of JEGP will double the economic growth of Jordan over the coming five years, at the minimum, in spite of ongoing regional turbulence.” Some of the main focus areas are on improving strategic government infrastructure projects in agriculture, energy, water, health and transportation.

As highlighted by the World Bank, some of the key challenges facing the transportation sector include: (i) poor coverage and low frequencies of public transportation services; (ii) lack of the integration of services and fares leading to long commuting times and high transport costs; (iii) low quality of services that tend to be unreliable, perceived as unsafe, especially by women; and (iv) lack of universal accessibility to services and opportunities. Furthermore, the Jordanian public transportation system is fragmented at both the operational and institutional levels. In addition, poor public transport makes it more difficult for women and young people without cars to access education and employment opportunities. The estimated cost to Jordan of transport-related inefficiencies was about US$3 billion a year, or at least 6% of GDP, without counting its impact on women’s participation in the labour force. Investments in public transport are enablers to enhancing the sector.   “Reforming public transport is essential for green growth and inclusion”.  To this end,Jordan has developed a TRANSPORT SECTOR Green Growth National Action Plan (GG-NAPs_ 2021-2025 which can be downloaded at this link https://www.sustainability.gov/pdfs/ggi-jordan-transport-sector.pdf among 5 other sector GG-NAPs developed by the Ministry of Environment in collaboration with sectoral partners and key stakeholders (including: water, energy, agriculture, tourism, and waste).

His Majesty King Abdullah II, in a letter on January 30, 2022 addressed the Jordanian people on his 60th birthday, and highlighted the aspirations for Jordan’s future, within a comprehensive national vision that spans governments and engages all: click here to read Jordan’s Economic Modernisation Vision. Below is an image which captures the key economic growth drivers, which are seen as strategic focus to ensure the country’s sustainable development and competitiveness, and create a better quality of life for its citizens.

The economic growth pillars have been developed based on the following guidelines:

And the country identified the following  priority sectors where Jordan can focus in order to achieve its targets for economic growth by 2033: namely, investment attraction (USD 41bn)  and job creation (1 million jobs):

As evidenced also in the table above, food security in Jordan is a priority. To confirm this commitment, the government launched in 2021 the National Food Security Strategy (2021-2030). 

In early 2022, Jordan also launched its new National Plan for Sustainable Agriculture (2022-2025).

Concerning health, on page 63 of the EMV, several initiatives will be taken to promote a better healthcare system, namely:

  • Define and adopt national healthcare quality measurement, data monitoring and benchmarks. 
  • Launch a framework for the sector’s governance reform and financing schemes. 
  • Deploy and achieve Universal Health Coverage and health security specifically streamlining coverage funds. 
  • Improve primary care family health model. 
  • Develop best-in-class,fit-for-purpose competent health workforce and set actionable and implementable goals. 
  • Design and deploy health/medical tourism development program. 
  • Launch healthcare system financing program addressing efficiency and effectiveness scenarios. 
  • Launch digital transformation of the healthcare system, beyond electronic medical records, including setting up a national Health Information System and improving access through technology. 
  • Launch integrated health manufacturing scheme and support local manufacturing. 
  • Develop sub-segment plans, cascaded from national sector strategy and developed alongside concerned line ministries, to focus on the development of key sector components.

Building on these commitments in agriculture, health and transportation, the country is investing in energy efficiency and clean energy. According to the report, the energy sector is largely dependent on imports of natural gas, with fast-growing renewable energy adoption contributing to 26% of local electricity generation (this has gone up to 29% in 2022).  The challenges in the energy sector include the lagging regulatory framework that hinder growth, a single-buyer model, distorted tariff structure hindering the competitiveness of the economy, high dependence of the treasury on fuel taxation hindering Jordan’s competitiveness, mismatch between generation and demand of electricity, the foreseen entry of expensive capacity from shale generation, legacy debt that resulted from the disruption of Egyptian natural gas supply, and the slow progress vis-à-vis the expansion of Jordan Petroleum Refining Company.  In the Vision for Jordan the following initiatives are proposed:

  • Develop an energy transition roadmap (shift to renewable and alternative options, optimize power plants, and enhance interconnectivity with the region). 
  • Devise new energy regulations and policies that are fit for the future, and design incentives for cost reduction. 
  • Bolster Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), investment promotion and project development (funding / financing for energy projects). 
  • Launch exploration and develop feasibility studies for reserves (oil and gas, shale gas), which will also contribute to building a developed investment ecosystem (PPPs). 
  • Adopt technologies and solutions for reduced emissions, decarbonization and energy efficiency. 
  • Enhance inter-sector coordination (between the relevant sectors) and demand management/planning, and move from net-metering to net-billing.
  • Evaluate and implement energy cost reduction measures (reduce losses, energy transition incentives, and refinance the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) legacy debt with concessional financing). 
  • Restructure the tariff to incentivize the promising productive sectors. 
  • Upgrade energy infrastructure (smart power grid and meters, storage technologies, time of use tariff, capacity building, pipelines for transport and distribution).
  • Enact legislation that enables the use of hydrogen and attracts investments in this field.

In conclusion of this first strategic orientation feature, the country has a Vision for its sustainable development, which highlights a will to be less dependent on foreign resources, to invest in renewable energy, public transportation, smart use of electricity, and sustainable management of water resources as well as desalinisation of seawater. Furthermore, there is a focus on investing in education and employability - particularly among women and youth- thus also investing in a secure, dependable and qualified human resource base.

2. Digitalization of the Economy

Surely an area where Jordan is investing, as with most other countries, is in digitalization. This is fundamental for the integration of technology in the most prominent economic sectors, especially agriculture, water and energy.

Below a recap of the country’s distribution of initiatives according to its growth drivers and economic sectors, where digitalization is one of the key underlying factors to improve efficiency and effectiveness. One of the proposed initiatives involves the creation of a WEFE Nexus council to provide data-driven policy support for WEFE policies and strategies.

3. Cooperation and Networking

As a third feature, Jordan promotes the need to continuously  improve the ecosystem for cooperation and networking. 

The relationships between sectors in the Aqaba governorate, for example, are effective and include a range of stakeholders: municipalities, department of agriculture, Aqaba Special Economic Zone and local farmers.

Jordan has, as most countries, supported the establishment of incubators for startups. 

Some examples are; 

  1. Oasis500: http://www.oasis500.com/ 
  2. AHLI FINTECH: https://ahlifintech.com/ 
  3. StartLabz: https://www.startlabz.com/
  4. Relatively Fund; https://relativelyfund.com/
  5. AB Accelerator: https://www.abaccelerator.co/ 

Throughout the region, public and private sector players are coming together to create development opportunities around solving WEFE challenges.

4. Knowledge and SMEs

Throughout Jordan, there is a pool of distinguished experts to support Research projects in the WEFE field. 

One project which deserves attention is through Stanford university , FUSE (Food-water-energy for Urban Sustainable Environments) is a transdisciplinary, 3-year research project (2018-2021) involving the Food-Water-Energy Nexus (FWE) in Jordan with a focus on Amman. The project develops a long-term systems model that can be used to identify viable paths to sustainability. It brings together scientists, engineers, economists, and stakeholder engagement experts from Stanford University in California, USA, IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) in Luxemburg, Austria, UFZ (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) in Leipzig, Germany, and ÖFSE (Austrian Foundation for Development Research) in Vienna, Austria. The project is a not-for-profit research effort and is part of the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative of JPI Urban Europe and the Belmont Forum. Each of the national teams is supported individually by its own national science funding agency.

Besides some research projects, some intergovernmental agencies such as IFAD are supporting the kingdom’s development. In 2022, IFAD started offering via the JRF (Jordan River Foundation) grants to 175 Micro Entrepreneurs under “Small-Ruminants Investment and Graduating Households in Transition” project, implemented by JRF in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture. The project aims to eradicate poverty by providing sustainable livelihood support via income-generating projects for Jordanian host communities and Syrian refugees.

In conclusion, the country has a deep vision for its development which encompasses the WEFE nexus. 

Another successful example of theWEF nexus in Jordan, included in Jordan’s national strategy 2025 to strengthen water, food, and energy security is a colossal water desalination project in Aqaba for agriculture and other projects for water purification for drinking. “Jordan's mega National Conveyor project aims to provide an additional 300 MCM of desalination water for drinking water, thereby reducing the pressure on unsustainable extraction of groundwater aquifers, thereby allowing them to recharge to support domestic and agricultural uses.” Jordanian expert told to the NEX-LABS interviewer.

In addition, other investments packages were made in AlGoor-area- Jordan food basket- to supply enough food to the community in addition to other innovative solutions applied in  Jordan “There are also alternatives to some challenges such as water scarcity, such as hydroponics, which works to grow crops that require less water, as fodder crops were produced in this way, where fodder is grown with water to support the food sector of the animal sector. We have been working on this research for ten years,” another expert told to the NEX-LABS interviewer.

Download the NEX-LABS Best Practices Booklet here

Article contributor: Eng. Shada El-Sharif - Founder & Senior Advisor / SustainMENA

For further research on Jordan, please consult:

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