Droughts in the US help maintain inflation 1:27
Editor's Note:
Seth M. Siegel is the author of "Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World" and "Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink."
He is currently the Director of Sustainability for N-Drip, a company that has developed a water-saving technology for agricultural use.
The opinions expressed in this comment belong exclusively to its author.
(CNN) --
Scorching temperatures and reports of water shortages grab headlines as drought caused by climate change creates long-term problems for farmers and communities in the United States and around the world.
Without an adequate supply of water, farmers are forced to plant less to conserve the water they will need to get through another year of prolonged drought.
The consequences will be rising food prices here, but also social instability in countries important to the United States.
As frightening and insurmountable as the challenge of chronic and growing water scarcity may seem, there are solutions at hand that can save us from the crisis.
A small country situated in one of the world's driest regions is among those that have developed policies and techniques to supply water to both cities and farms.
That country is Israel.
And now that drought is becoming the new normal, policymakers would benefit from looking at what Israel has done and starting the process of creating their own water-resistant societies less dependent on rains that may never return.
Although Israel obtains almost all of its water for domestic use from desalination plants along the Mediterranean Sea coast, and much of its water for agriculture by purifying and reusing the nation's sewage, Israel refuses to rely on a single strategy or technology to address your water needs.
This “all of the above” approach builds resilience through this intentional redundancy, but it also opens the door to innovation and risk-taking that has often resulted in world-changing breakthroughs.
Israel became a nation in May 1948, but decades earlier, while under British Mandate control, Zionist leaders began to prioritize excellence in water management, along with defense and immigration policy.
In most countries, the (unromantic) issues of water infrastructure and technology are in the hands of mid-level officials and lower-ranking cabinet members.
But to read the diaries of Israel's founders is to see the daily, almost obsessive interest in getting water policy right.
For example, long before desalination picked up in Israel, the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, often wrote about the prospect of "desalinating the sea" to "make the desert bloom."
Not everything Israel does is relevant everywhere.
Because of its small size, about the size of New Jersey, it can do things more easily than large water-poor countries.
Also, having a long coastline and most of its population within reach of the country's desalination facilities offers opportunities not available everywhere.
The water is scarce.
Why should markets pay attention?
But some of what Israel does can be done by everyone, at least in theory.
First of all, Israel charges the real price for water (although the cost is subsidized for those on welfare; everyone else pays full price).
By using market forces, consumers, farmers, and industry are always looking for ways to conserve water, or to use technology that leads to the most efficient use of water possible.
In most parts of the world, water is heavily subsidized, leading to huge water waste due to overuse.
For example, since it is cheaper at market price to fix leaking pipes than to waste water, Israel has an extraordinarily low leak factor of between 7 and 8%.
Even in the United States there are communities with pipes that lose up to 50% of the water that circulates through them.
Israel's water success is also linked to the decision to put the country's water management in the hands of apolitical technocrats.
Their job is to get the highest quality water to as many people as possible.
Price is a factor, but not the only one.
By comparison, in some US cities, mayors know that their constituents may view a water rate hike as a de facto tax increase.
The result is the elimination of water tariffs, and with it the inability to modernize facilities with the best equipment and programs, and the difficulty in attracting and retaining highly qualified engineers.
Israel also differs from much of the world in its approach to agriculture.
Decades ago, the government discouraged flood irrigation, which soaks the soil by flooding fields with water, ending the practice.
However, worldwide, 85% of irrigated fields use flood irrigation, a practice that dates back to the time of ancient Egypt and the flooding of the Nile River basin.
Although this wasteful and unsustainable method is thought to be used only in less developed countries, here in the United States we flood irrigate millions of acres in California, Texas, and even the parched Southwest.
Farmers have little incentive to switch to water-saving technology because they can continue to use water as abundant and inexhaustible as the sun or the air.
In Arizona, for example, 89% of the irrigation used is by flooding, and in the rapidly depleting Colorado River basin states, up to 2.5 million acres continue to waste trillions of gallons a year by flooding. fields.
Dry rivers, deserted soccer fields, uncovered shipwrecks and other shocking images of the drought in the northern hemisphere
Israeli technology could help rescue the American Southwest.
Low-cost, gravity-fed drip irrigation, developed by an Israeli scientist, has already been deployed on thousands of acres in Arizona and elsewhere.
(I work with the company of this scientist).
The technology saves half the water previously needed for flood-irrigated fields, while improving yields and reducing the need for water-polluting fertilizers.
This new approach is similar to the better-known form of drip irrigation invented in Israel more than 60 years ago.
But this system uses gravity as a power source, eliminating the use and expense of external energy.
It has been said that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water.
That may be so, but it's cheaper and smarter for every region and country with water problems to transform the way they use it.
That has to start with changing the way we think about water.
And in that, all countries, rich or poor, large or small, landlocked or with a long coastline, can learn from what Israel has done.
water scarcityIsrael
