The stark, barren shores of the Dead Sea are dotted with ruins of people’s attempts to create paradises. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it, the Dead Sea — one of the world’s saltiest lakes — vaguely resembled a dumbbell. It had two basins, a deep northern one and a shallow southern one. But by the mid-1980s, the southern basin had dried up, leaving a vast expanse of salt flats. The luxury hotels and spas to its north created an artificial pond to provide vacationers with a beach. The northern basin is also shrinking.

The problem is that the Jordan River, the Dead Sea’s principal tributary, is a trickle once it reaches the sea because Israel, Jordan and Syria siphon off 95 per cent of the water for drinking and for irrigation. In April, the World Bank asked for bids to study a bold, high-tech solution — a 110-mile-long canal that would channel water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The project would have additional benefits — the water cascading from sea level at the tip of the Red Sea to minus 1,400 feet at the Dead Sea would create hydroelectricity.

Unfortunately, like many bold, high-tech solutions, it would likely have unintended consequences. The Red Sea’s water, less salty and with a chemical composition quite different from that of the Dead Sea, would float on top, creating an environment inhospitable to the Dead Sea’s native biota. The reaction between the two kinds of water would most likely cause the precipitation of gypsum, turning the blue sea white, and the release of large quantities of hydrogen sulfide from the lower level. Hydrogen sulfide is rotten-egg gas, not what you want to sniff if you are vacationing at a beachside hotel.

The canal itself has been routed through a seismically active region, which means an earthquake could crack it and send saltwater flowing into the surrounding lands.

A low-tech alternative solution is to restore the original system and allow fresh water to flow from the Jordan into the Dead Sea. The only way to replenish the water of the Jordan is to radically change the consumption habits of the millions of people, who now drink that water and consume the crops that it irrigates. It means switching to less thirsty crops and creating a system of water salvage and reuse.

Unfortunately, their governments are too preoccupied with the rising tide of fundamentalist Islam, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the muck of Iraq and Iran’s nuclear dawn to make such an investment of effort and resources. The Red Sea-Dead Sea canal is much easier politically. So the Dead Sea may rise again, but it will be a ghost of its former self.