Dead Sea Environmental Crisis: Why the Dead Sea Is Shrinking

Overview

The Dead Sea is losing water faster than any comparable body on Earth. Over the past 50 years, its surface has dropped approximately 45 meters, and the rate of decline continues to accelerate. As of 2025, the Dead Sea surface sits approximately 440 meters below sea level. The surface area has contracted by roughly one third since the 1960s, from approximately 950 square kilometers to an estimated 620 to 670 square kilometers.

For visitors to the Dead Sea, particularly on the Jordanian eastern shore, this crisis is visible. Shorelines that hotel brochures once pictured are now dry. Roads have been rerouted. Sinkholes have swallowed sections of agricultural land. The Dead Sea remains a destination of extraordinary geological and therapeutic significance, but understanding its environmental trajectory is part of experiencing it honestly.

Why Is the Dead Sea Shrinking?

Water Diversion from the Jordan River
The Dead Sea is a terminal lake, meaning it has no outflow. Water enters primarily through the Jordan River and through smaller streams from surrounding mountains, and it leaves only through evaporation. For millennia, inflow and evaporation maintained an equilibrium.

Beginning in the 1960s, large scale water infrastructure projects disrupted that balance. Israel’s National Water Carrier (completed 1964) diverted water from the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River’s primary source, for agricultural irrigation and drinking water. Jordan and Syria implemented similar diversions on the Yarmouk River and other tributaries. Today, the Jordan River delivers approximately 100 million cubic meters per year to the Dead Sea, compared to a historical flow of 1.2 to 1.3 billion cubic meters.

Industrial Extraction
Potash and mineral extraction operations on both the Israeli and Jordanian sides of the Dead Sea pump large volumes of brine into evaporation ponds. These operations, which produce potash, bromine, magnesium, and other industrial minerals, accelerate water loss beyond what natural evaporation alone would cause. The shallow southern basin of the Dead Sea has been almost entirely converted into industrial evaporation ponds. Combined Israeli and Jordanian industrial operations account for a significant share of annual water depletion. (SOURCE NEEDED: Specific depletion volume in cubic meters pending verified citation.)

Climate Factors
Rising temperatures in the Jordan Rift Valley increase evaporation rates. The Dead Sea basin already experiences some of the highest temperatures in the region, with summer air temperatures regularly exceeding 40 degrees Celsius and occasionally reaching 50 degrees Celsius. As temperatures rise, the rate of water loss from the surface increases, compounding the effects of reduced inflow.

Sinkholes Along the Dead Sea Shore

As the Dead Sea recedes, freshwater from underground aquifers flows toward the lower water table. This freshwater dissolves subterranean salt deposits that were previously stable beneath the sea floor. When enough salt dissolves, the ground above collapses without warning.

Sinkholes have damaged sections of Highway 90 along the Dead Sea’s western bank, forced the permanent closure of public beaches including the flagship Ein Gedi beach on the Israeli shore (closed since 2015), and destroyed palm groves and agricultural land.

On the Jordanian eastern shore, sinkhole activity has been less widespread but remains a concern, particularly as the water level continues to drop and previously submerged salt layers become exposed.

The Red Sea to Dead Sea Conduit: A Stalled Solution

First proposed in the late 1960s and studied extensively by the World Bank in the 2000s, the Red Sea to Dead Sea Water Conveyance was envisioned as a pipeline that would pump seawater from the Gulf of Aqaba, run it through desalination plants to produce drinking water for Jordan and Israel, and discharge the concentrated brine into the Dead Sea to slow or reverse its decline.

In December 2013, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement for a scaled back first phase: a pipeline producing 80 to 100 million cubic meters of desalinated water per year, with approximately 100 million cubic meters of brine delivered to the Dead Sea. The estimated cost for the initial phase was approximately 400 million U.S. dollars.

In June 2021, Jordan abandoned the project, citing lack of interest from Israel. No replacement project of comparable scale is currently under construction or in active planning.

What Is Being Done Now?

EcoPeace Middle East, a trilateral environmental organization with Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli staff, advocates for restoring the Jordan River as the primary strategy for stabilizing the Dead Sea. The organization’s approach includes reducing water diversions, improving water efficiency in agriculture, and pursuing a UNESCO World Heritage designation for the Dead Sea.

Jordan has also invested in national water efficiency programs, including the Disi aquifer pipeline (operational since 2013, delivering 100 million cubic meters per year) and household water conservation initiatives. These measures address Jordan’s domestic water crisis but do not directly restore inflow to the Dead Sea.

What This Means for Visitors

The Dead Sea remains accessible and open to visitors. Resort areas on both the Israeli and Jordanian shores continue to operate, and the therapeutic and buoyancy experiences that define a Dead Sea visit are not diminished by the water level decline. The water’s mineral composition remains concentrated, and in fact, salinity increases as volume decreases.

Visitors to the Jordanian shore will notice that some facilities have adapted to the changing shoreline. Beach access paths are longer than they once were. Some properties use shuttles to transport guests from hotel buildings to the water’s edge. These are visible reminders that the Dead Sea is a landscape in transition, one that has existed for roughly 3 million years but faces the consequences of 60 years of intensive regional water use.