Take 3: hard talk at the world economic forum

I just came back from the Dead Sea, where I attended a closed, high-level meeting on paving Jordan's water future. Lovely. Now I can look for answers to many unanswered questions that I have gathered throughout the past few days - the farmer, the environmentalist, the young water professional, they all had unanswered questions too, which I put forward on the discussion table.

The meeting was held with the patronage of Prince Faisal Bin al Hussain, which was a good thing, in the sense that he was willing to listen, to answer and to discuss things openly, albeit in a closed meeting.

Following some presentations, the invited participants were divided into four discussion groups - water demand, water supply, water institutions and water politics - I happily ended up sitting on the later, with top level executives at USAID, Pepsi Co, Qatar Foundation, and the former President of Rotary International.

Questions that I raised were well received, I thought. As I brought up the environmentalist's dire wish to have integration of the work of all Jordanian authorities dealing with water - something along the lines of a regulatory body overarching the water, energy, environment and agriculture ministries. I also brought up the need for regional integration - where you could produce food in Sudan, desalinated water in Saudi Arabia, etc, capitalising on what has already been established before trying to find near impossible ways for self-sufficiency.

My examples and questions were then discussed at the meeting at large. To which the Prince answered: we cannot opt for regional integration when we do not develop reliable data on, for example, how much does agriculture contribute to our GDP (meaning that we don't know how much do we need to export - and that the market is free for products to compete without any regulation).  On the need for integration within the Jordanian governement structures, he says there are attempts by the Royals to keep the water agenda on top, but there is a need for capacity building on the top managerial level - admitting what other participants already agreed on - the middle management is more equipped with information than top management along Jordanian governance structures.

He then highlighted an issue that 2-3 other interviewees in my documentary deemed very important: mentality - how people approach the water issue on all levels.

Finally, I got to interview many of the participants at the closed meeting, and I was happy to turn away and head back to Amman. One thing that frustrated me was the inability to record scenery shots, because everytime I put the camera up, someone would come and tell me its not allowed to film around here (yes, the level of security paranoia around this event is extreme - a trip to the dead sea usually takes 30 min - took me half day to fix the permits, park at parking places, shuttle myself to the meeting on two different closed-zone shuttles (although the security personnel were all quite helpful, the vulgar dispaly of military power was too much machismo.)