In what used to be a busy Israeli campsite, the road ends with a jagged scar of tarmac, disappearing into a 20ft crater. Cracks tear the earth and new holes appear underfoot without warning, dragging an abandoned hotel into the crumbling soil.

Only a minute’s walk from the fast-receding coastline of the Dead Sea is the starkest evidence of what environmentalists have feared for years. Decades of a policy to drain water from the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River to turn the deserts green have inflicted a heavy cost — the shrinking of the Dead Sea, and the alarming appearance of fissures and sinkholes on its shores.

Faced with an ecological disaster and driven by an insatiable thirst for water in the Middle East, officials from Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and the World Bank will gather beside the lowest-lying body of water on Earth tomorrow to launch a feasibility study aimed at saving the rapidly disappearing biblical waters.

The officials hope that the two-year feasibility study and environmental and social assessment will recommend a multibillion-dollar project to link the Dead Sea with the Red Sea, which lies 200km (125 miles) to the south, using a pipeline or canal to suck 1,900 million cubic metres (2.1 million cubic yards) of water annually from the Gulf of Aqaba.

However, many people — including environmentalists and Israeli scientists living in the worst-affected areas — say that it is a costly extravaganza that fails to address the root cause and could ruin the very sea that they are trying to save.

Eli Raz, an Israeli geologist, said that pumping lighter seawater into the Dead Sea could kill its delicate micro- organisms and harm its appeal for tourists, who float in its mineral-rich waters.

Running from Eilat and Aqaba to the Plain of Sodom, the “Red-Dead” conduit would include a desalination facility to provide 850 million cubic metres of water a year, and an electricity plant to generate 550 megawatts.

The proposal also envisages a shared cross-border airport and industrial area and artificial lakes in the Wadi Araba to promote tourism.

The project is backed by Israel, which hopes to seal its decade-old peace with Jordan, a country with an urgent need for desalinated water.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, who is charged with developing the Negev and Galilee regions, envisages the money being raised privately. “The project of the canal, or the Peace Conduit . . . is vital for the preservation of the Dead Sea, but just as much for peace and prosperity in this area,” he said. “In the Middle East we have used too much diplomacy and strategy, and too little economy.”

Thafer Alem, the Jordanian Water and Irrigation Minister, is equally enthusiastic. “The Dead Sea is an international possession whose diminishing will be a loss not only for Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel but for the whole world,” he said.

Yet at Ein Gedi, a kibbutz that lives off the 1.25 million visitors drawn annually by the health spas, mud treatments and holiday beaches at the Dead Sea, the local council says that the organisers have not heeded warnings from its own experts that the project is too little and too expensive.

Dov Litvinoff, the Mayor of Tamar regional council, walks cautiously through the now-abandoned campsite, pointing to an 80ft sinkhole in the earth caused, his experts believe, by the erosion of salt layers underground as the Dead Sea recedes.

He warns that any “Red-Dead” channel from the south must be supplemented from the north by using cheaper desalination projects on the Mediterranean to restore the flow of the Jordan River. It has become a trickle of sewage and saltwater because every drop of fresh water has been diverted from its source at the Sea of Galilee.

“The problem is man-made. Every day we see we are facing a geological catastrophe,” said Mr Litvinoff. “The ‘Red-Dead’ will change the Dead Sea. Restoring the water through the Jordan is the natural way.”

Politics, inevitably, rears its head. One Palestinian official said that although the Palestinian Authority was not adequately represented at the outset of the project, it was now. It had been reassured by a condition that the channel could proceed only with the consent of all parties, and that no agreement would prejudice Palestinian rights in final negotiations with Israel.

However, the principal concerns of the critics are ecological. “We see the politics of a ribbon ceremony, driven by the economic interests of Israeli and Jordanian construction companies, as the major reasons for this project,” said Gidon Bromberg, of Friends of the Earth Middle East.

“But the drying up of the Dead Sea is due to the demise of the River Jordan. This project is looking at a quick technological solution and refuses to address the root cause of the problem.”

Channelling

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