Tony, I want to ask you some more questions about
global challenges and continue that line of questioning.
What do you see in terms,
on the technology side?
Do you see surprises coming in terms that are going to help us,
in terms of new technologies to deal with the world of increasing water scarcity?
Well, it's been a very interesting 30-40 years of one's career,
in that there's so many technological advances have been made.
I remember in the early 90s,
being very excited because at that stage,
Israel, which is a country which keeps
good records and therefore you can track what has happened,
had been through a crisis in '85,
droughts and they had to change the governments and
they had to change the water commissioner,
because someone had to be blamed.
And so they decided to bring water use down.
They use their government powers to regulate and limit water to farmers,
as well as to households.
And it was going well,
and it got down by '92 to pretty well,
where it was needed, that was,
to be at the 1961 levels,
because this had happened.
So that was good. And the gods sent massive rainfall,
all the water that had been over used since 1967,
on the West Bank aquifers was put back in, in three weeks.
So every water scientist in Israel, Jordan,
and Palestine, in that moment when
all the water that had been over used was just put back.
It was life changing.
Scientifically, emotionally.
And so, they then,
instead of keeping going and doing a bit more,
the reservoirs were full and what's the point of having full reservoirs
if you need them to be half full to be filled up by the next season of rain.
So they drifted back up.
And at that point,
what they did put in was recycling.
And I remember talking to a friend who was writing a book about it, and saying,
Israel is the ideal laboratory to experiment,
to see how much water you can recycle,
from that which goes into.
You're talking about recycling municipal wastewater or agricultural return flows.
Urban water, municipal water.
And you can see, well,
potentially it could be 90%.
But it's been a fascinating experience to watch it going like this.
But now, it's nearly 80%,
and it will be 90%.
It's been an extraordinary experience to observe that happen,
to see the institutional regulatory,
things that had to be put in place,
as well as reorganizing and centralizing, and so on.
So, that shows an experiment which every country
that has a few big cities can in fact recover 80-90% of that water.
So there's no technological barrier?
No.
It can be done.
Having the right mix of city and urban, and rural and so on is,
as it happens the surging population in Israel,
was one and a quarter million in 1947,
it's now eight billion,
seven and a half, eight billion.
It's going to be 13 billion.
It's extraordinary thing.
They got keep doing it.
They've got to do more of it, because,
and that clearly shows that once you've got the water into the cycle,
you're not going to be consuming,
so the amount consumed is only sort of now 15%,
because the rest keeps coming back through.
So that's very, very important thing to know.
It doesn't mean that a nation can become food self-sufficient it just can be.
It makes it much more certain that urban water can be supplied,
once you put in the right technology.
So, when they got to 2000,
they found that they had backend trouble again because they had gone back up,
and the economists in the Ministry of Finance wanted,
no, no we're not going to have desal.
No, it's a waste of money.
We've got to economize and squeeze a bit harder.
And everyone in 1998 at the meeting said, yes, that's right.
All the engineers, yeah, okay.
We've got 10 years, perhaps 20 before,
but then, the drought hits the next year as well.
And so, they changed the water minister and the prime minister,
they found it possible to send out the bids.
For the desal, for the desal plan.
Yes, the invitation to bid for desal.
And then, came the number, 56 cents which was eye watering.
56 cents per cubic meter for desal?
Yeah. Which if you ask people in the room,
how much you pay for water? They don't know.
But it's at least,
$2 and in this country,
it's about to get rid of it,
to get the water treated as well,
as provided, costs about,
well now it costs about 4 or $5 per cubic meter,
which you can imagine companies can make a living out of that.
But so 56 cents.
10% for all the water supply
Lots of extra costs from the gate.
But that's 56 cents,
we couldn't believe it.
So they then have put in place are very ambitious desal plan,
desal program which is producing more water than they need,
but then having said that, if you look over your shoulder,
here comes the population going up,
they will need, looks as though they're going,
they're now aiming for 750 MCMs,
but ultimately, expecting to need twice that much,
and they feel confident about it.
The only unfortunate downside of that is of course it's
being the energy needed to produce that desal is not sustainable.
So the dream, if you were to ask me what is the thing that we would really like to see?
It is sustainable green energy, producing desal water.
At that point, some people are talking about 25 cents a cubic meter,
you know from North America that farmers are prepared to pay that.
A few.
A few, yeah.
Very efficient California farmers.
Most of them don't, but, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, those two technologies,
the past 15-16 years,
they've been shown to be feasible,
and one of them isn't good for the environment,
but if people work on that,
that would be very good, yeah.