Published: 9 March 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Gidon Bromberg, a Melbourne native and the Israeli co-director of EcoPeace Middle East, a cross border environmental organisation, said Israel has managed to solve its chronic water shortage through desalination beginning in 2005.
No less than 70% of the country’s drinking water originates in five desalination plants along the Mediterranean Sea. Israel leads the developed world in recycling sewage for agriculture, with 87% of its sewage used for this purpose. Spain is a distant second, with 26%.
“Water is no longer a finite resource,” Bromberg said. “You can replace natural water with manufactured water through desalination at very reasonable prices. Water issues, which are classified as one of the five core issues of the peace process, are the most solvable issues. They’re the low-hanging fruit of the peace process and can be resolved first.”
This is a subject Bromberg will be discussing on his forthcoming visit to Australia this month. He will deliver public lectures around the themes of water security and environmental peace-making in the Middle -East (see details below). He will also be speaking at the NSW Parliament.
The impact of water shortage is very topical in Israel right now, as it is in Australia. Paradoxically, following 15 years of drought, water levels in the Sea of Galilee are at a record low, as are Israel’s underground aquifers. Israel is now planning to pump desalinated water from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, and from there down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea.
Under the directive of Energy Minster Yuval Steinitz, Israel is now willing to sell the Palestinians as much water as they are willing to buy but has not yet guaranteed the Palestinians a fair share of natural water as part of a final resolution to the conflict.
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“We’re saying we can go much further. We can solve the water aspect of the conflict completely without Israel losing anything,” Bromberg said. “People view the peace process with an ‘all or nothing’ approach,’ that all issues must be solved at the same time as part of an ultimate deal. We say water is being held hostage and people’s lives are being endangered on an issue that’s completely solvable.”
EcoPeace is putting its money where its mouth is as far as cross-border resource sharing is concerned. The organisation – which maintains identically staffed offices in Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Amman -- has recently raised US$500,000 for the establishment of a photovoltaic powerplant in sun-drenched Jordan.
According to Bromberg, in return for the solar energy produced in Jordan, Israel can supply clean drinking water to the Hashemite Kingdom. It’s what EcoPeace calls the “water-energy nexus.”
Bromberg sees the private sector stepping in to fund projects, alongside governments. Desalination in Israel and solar energy in Jordan are currently run by the private sector.
“The region can no longer depend on the charity of donor states. We need to find development solutions that are economically viable,” Bromberg said. “By harnessing the sun and the sea, the region could become a model for the rest of the world.”
Like Israel and its neighbors, Australia features a semi-arid climate and has mixed good and bad examples of water management, Bromberg said. EcoPeace has expressed interest in learning from Australia’s experience in managing the Murray Darling basin, but “we need to wait and see whether that experience is worth being duplicated given different corruption allegations that have emerged in the last year,” he added.
Israel is “way ahead” of Australia in waste water treatment and its use in agriculture, Bromberg noted. But he says Israel lags behind Australia with regards to the use of energy, given that Sydney’s desalination plant is powered by solar energy, and he believes this is the model that Israel should adopt.
Sewage treatment remains a priority for the Gaza Strip, where raw sewage released into the Mediterranean recently interfered with the membranes at the nearby Israeli desalination plant in Ashkelon. EcoPeace was instrumental in opening a new waste-water treatment plant for Gaza last March.
“The water and sanitation crisis in Gaza must be solved with urgency,” Bromberg said. “A pandemic disease could break out in Gaza. It’s a ticking time bomb.”
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GIDON BROMBERG SPEAKING DATES
March 13: Climate Change, Water Security and National Security for Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Free public lecture at Melbourne University, 5.30pm-7pm
March 21: Environmental peacemaking in the Middle East, Lowy Institute, Sydney 12.30pm-1.45pm
March 21: The Middle-East Water Crisis: Challenges and opportunities; 3.30pm-5pm, NSW Parliament House (event sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Uniting Church)
Photo: Gidon Bromberg (International Water Association)
