The Dead Sea is drying up, with severe negative consequences on the ecosystem, industry and wildlife in the area.

The Red-Dead Conveyance project is designed to move Red Sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba through a pipeline/canal conveyance approximately 180 kilometers to the Dead Sea. Since the Dead Sea is some 410 meters below sea level and the Gulf of Aqaba is at sea level, water dropping through that 410 meters of elevation can be used to generate hydropower, and the power can be used to desalinate a portion of the Red Sea water.

The project as currently envisioned would generate 850 million cubic meters of desalinated water a year for use by Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. In addition, a portion of the Red Sea water would flow directly into the Dead Sea, so that the level of the Dead Sea, which has been dropping almost 1 meter per year for the last thirty years or so, could be controlled.

Proponents of the project argue that this project would reverse the negative environmental impacts produced by the continual lowering of the level of the Dead Sea.

The scale of the Red-Dead project is large, to say the least. If the envisioned desalination capacity were realized, the resulting desalination facility would be 5-6 times larger than the world's largest desalination facility currently in operation.

There are many crucial questions about the project that remain unanswered, such as:

1) will the introduction of Red Sea water into the Dead Sea have a major negative impact on the chemistry of the Dead Sea water?

2) while introducing Red Sea water into the Dead Sea to control the level of the Dead Sea may alleviate some environment problems, will such introduction cause other negative environmental impacts?

3) what will be the environmental effects at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, where the Red Sea water will be siphoned into the project?