Realising sustainability

At a recent panel discussion amongst water industry leaders, I noticed that the word sustainability was being used quite liberally. On further questioning, I came to realise that it was all about financial sustainability of the companies themselves!

Living in waste?

The World Water Assessment Programme has just confirmed what everyone knew. Human-generated water pollution is rising all over the world and is seriously threatening human and ecosystem health.

The debates drag on

At the recent World Water Forum in Istanbul, it was good to hear some new topics being discussed such as the energy-water linkage, the need for water-related data and the impact of the financial crisis on the water sector.

But one set of debates that never seem to go away are the ‘Is water a human right?’ debate which leads to the ‘Shouldn’t water be free?’ debate which opens the floodgates for “Should water be managed by the public or private sector?” debate.

The Politics of Water at Davos

Discussing water at the World Economic Forum in Davos where the world’s political and business leaders gather is quite a recent phenomenon. “Water has moved up the global and Davos agenda,” declared Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Insititute while speaking at a session titled ‘The Politics of Water’.

Plagued by Plastic

As our group admired Acosol’s odour-free wastewater treatment in Benalmadena, Spain, a delegate from India exclaimed, “But there are so many plastic bags clogging the screens. I didn’t imagine Europe having this problem too!” The plant manager ruefully revealed that plastic bags were indeed a regular nuisance.

Gallons of water for some coffee?

When a friend informed me last month that the well-known Starbucks Coffee chain was wasting millions of gallons of water a day, it came as a big shock. Surely, the coffee chain which claims to embrace green principles by requesting customers to bring their own tumblers instead of consuming paper cups could not commit such a gaffe, I thought. Besides, drinking water does not come cheap in countries such as Singapore and Australia, I reasoned. How naïve I was.

One river – many custodians

At Vienna, where the World Water Congress was held last month, I finally got the chance to see the most “international river basin” in the world – The Danube River Basin shared by 19 countries.

Twinning – a strategy that needs nurturing

For a long time now, it has been realised that to improve the water and sanitation services in the Asian region, twinning is an important strategy.

There are some water utilities in Asia that are performing very well in the midst of thousands that are not. If some way could be found for the better-performing utilities to mentor the poorly-performing ones, then the performance of the entire region could be invigorated.

Will Singapore be the world’s hydro-hub?

As the first Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) drew to a close on June 27 this year, it was clear that the country’s efforts to position itself as the hydro-hub of the world were paying off. Singapore has always been a favourite stop for water practitioners around the region, who come to marvel at the desalination and water reuse facilities. With SIWW slated to take place every year, this trend is only going to gain further impetus.

Where are the managers?

A recent report has highlighted what has been known for a long time – that large quantities of food are being wasted in processing, transport, supermarkets and in people’s kitchens. More than enough food is being produced to feed the entire world – the bottleneck lies in distribution. “Farmers have to supply food to take care of both our necessary consumption and our wasteful habits,” says the report produced by SIWI, FAO and IWMI.

Since agriculture takes up most of the available water in the world, waste of food also implies that enormous amounts of water are being wasted. “The magnitude of food and water losses is large enough that we must pay close attention,” warns the report. The losses are taking place at a time when 1.2 billion people, most of them in Asia, do not have enough water to meet all their needs.

The connections that bind

“The poor people living near the coast in Bangladesh hardly consume any resources. They do not have a polluting car or even any gadget. They live in small shelters. Yet, they are the ones who are suffering the most because of rise in sea levels caused by global warming,” reflected Dr Atiq Rahman from Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies at a recent UN summit in Singapore.

Urgent need for Asia-wide water quality monitoring

 We have heard about civil society movements for human rights, women’s rights and a plethora of other rights. We have heard about public protests against privatisation of water, building of dams, rise in prices and oppressive political regimes. But, have we ever heard of citizens coming together in large groups to measure and collect data?

Could we have the figures for leaking sewers, please?

Today, the concept of non-revenue water or NRW has become well-established for judging the efficiency of water utilities. The difference between water which is supplied to the network and the water which is billed denotes a loss of revenue that has come to be called NRW. Experts rightly declare that it is a misleading term and IWA has urged the use of Infrastructure Leakage Index or ILI to describe the efficiency of the real loss management of water utilities.

While ILI might need some time to take root, we do have the NRW percentages for countries around the world, for whatever they are worth. Thus, there is Malaysia with 41%, India with 40%, France with 27% (yes, the home of Veolia and Suez), Spain with 25%, UK with 23%, China with 22%, US with 11%, Germany with 8% and the only redeeming figure for Asia – Singapore with 5%.

Water for energy and energy for water

The inter-linkages between energy and water have always been known. For generating energy on a large scale as in thermal power plants, large amounts of water are required. In steam turbine plants, the dynamic pressure generated by expanding steam is used to turn the blades of a turbine. Once water has gone through this cycle, it is cooled and condensed back to water and then reheated to drive the turbines again.