Japanese technology conglomerates such as Mitsubushi, Toray, Kutuba, and Asahsi dominate many of the most advanced water treatment processes and therefore would merit further study. Among wastewater treatment suppliers, Madrid, Spain, also has a striking concentration of firms , and like Israel, Singapore, and Australia, Spain also recently embarked on major water market reforms . French and British Multinationals such as Veolia and United Water dominate the global privatized municipal urban water delivery services market , a curiosity that would also invite further inquiry.Two locations, Israel and Singapore, consistently top the water industry literature as having the most technologically developed industries, a fact which was further verified through several of my industry interviews. The Netherlands is home to the world’s largest and most important water services engineering firms, as well as hundreds of technology companies and several globally prominent research centers . In comparison, Australia has a much smaller impact on the water technology industry. It is also more than a region being a large country, the only one to encompass an entire continent, although 85% of the population lives in the temperate south eastern coastal region. I chose to include it for three principle reasons. First, Australia shares many similarities with Southern California. Both are largely arid climates. Both share Anglo Saxon legal and business traditions, as well as strong industrial histories based on natural resource extraction, and both are now heavily urbanized. Like southern California, Australia has recently witnessed major growth in water technological innovation—through industrial investment in water reuse technologies ,ebb flow table infrastructural investment in desalination and reuse plants and huge growth in domestic water technology patent production . In 1994, Australia began a series of major reforms to its water industry, removing water subsidies and separating regulating utilities from service delivery firms.
Since that time, the country has witnessed an increase in water productivity of more than 50 percent. In contrast to southern California, however, Australia has also embraced an economic growth strategy centered on the exportation of goods and services. Finally, I also felt it important to explore domestic centers of water technology. Milwaukee, Wisconsin has embarked on a strategy to become a global center of water technologies led primarily by the private sector. In 2008, the US Federal government targeted the Tri-State region around Cincinnati for the development of a water innovation system focused on water cleanliness. During the course of my research, I discovered that California’s own San Joaquin Valley has actively pursued a water technology investment cluster strategy targeting water flow technologies and I would be remiss if I did not include a discussion of the efforts to build this water technology innovation system into an economic growth engine. I found that many of the irrigation firms active in San Joaquin Valley are also active in Southern California. It is important to point out that the following summaries are only a cursory exploration of the water technology innovation systems active in each of the case studies. They are not meant to be comprehensive, but simple summaries of the key components and economic strategies of the respective water innovation systems. renowned in irrigation, water treatment, and flow control technologies. The country currently boasts over 70 emerging water technology start up firms . The water sector generates over $1.1B in xports, but is targeted to generate more growth in the future . The Israeli government also has a strong history of strategic economic development, targeting research and development and setting out business incubation. Since 1994, Israel also has had an active economic clustering program known as MAGNET—the Hebrew acronym for Generic Pre-Competitive Technologies and R&D . Today the country has 41 active economic clusters, including a water technology cluster centered in Ashekelon . The occasion of Minister Ben Eliezer’s speech was the unveiling of a new national government initiative, Novel Efficient Water Technologies program, or simply “NEWTech” . NEWtech is designed to increase coordination between government agencies, academic institutions and private firms in order to increase water technology innovation and exportation.
The program calls for the water technology industry to become a main growth engine of the Israeli economy . This is laid out explicitly in the government mandate “New Governmental Decision Number 157: Development of Water Technology in Israel” which calls on the country to recognize “the latent potential that water technology could have on the Israeli economy; and on the importance and centrality that government and private companies have in this market, in Israel and in the exporting industry.” The declaration continues by calling for the government to “examine the methods and the means that different governmental offices can use to support the development of water technology, from the R&D stage to the manufacturing and exporting stages impacting irrigation practices around the world” . Israeli water economy boosters like to point to the biblical story of Moses drawing water from the rock to show the historical importance of water to Israel , and it certainly has been important to the modern state. The early Zionists that left central Europe for the arid British protectorate came to build a community of Jewish agriculture communes, Kibbutzim . In Palestine, traditionally water was considered a right for all residents ; however, in contrast to central Europe, the region did not have abundant water supplies. Furthermore, native residents were often fearful of the new Zionists and hostilities occasionally broke out. During the post World War II British decolonization period, this enmity escalated into a full-scale regional war when the State of Israel was declared in 1948. The young state prevailed and then expanded again after another regional war in 1967. Today, the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian dispute continues to define the Middle East, leaving Jewish Israel largely isolated among its Muslim neighbors. Unable to cooperate with neighbors to secure additional water supplies, Israel has had to rely entirely on its own territory for sufficient water for agriculture, a fact that likely contributes to Israel’s ongoing military occupation of the internationally recognized Syrian territory of the Golan Heights—the source of the country’s largest river, the Jordan—and continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories,hydroponic grow table where large groundwater aquifers exist . Additionally, Israel is blockaded from importing oil from Muslim producers, which has put a significant damper on the country’s energy capabilities and likely unleashed a frantic search for alternatives.
In 1937, over a decade before the country itself was formed, the settlers formed the predecessor to today’s state water company, Mekorot Water Company, in order to manage water supplies. Today Mekorot provides Israel with 90% of its drinking water and 80% of total water . In the 1950’s the country passed a series of water management laws requiring: metering , drainage and flood control , permits for it’s use —all of which consolidated the public’s ownership of water and the government’s role in management . In the 1970’s, Israel embraced water demand management as a technique to further promote efficient use of water, and to promote the use of water and energy saving technologies. Appropriate pricing regimes were implemented to discourage waste. Having central government control over water and water infrastructure made this an easy policy to implement. At the same time, the country’s water research institutions continued technological invention, improving drip irrigation, advancing techniques such as reverse osmosis, and improving filtration methods critical to desalination and water reuse . In 1997 Israel built the world’s first Reverse Osmosis plant that was designed to treat both seawater and discharged brine, which it received from an adjacent desalination facility at Elilat . In 2001 Israel sought international help in order to scale up and build the world’s largest RO desalination plant. The country contracted with VID, a special purpose joint-venture company made up of two Israeli firms, IDE Technologies and DanknerEllern Infrastructure, and French water services multinational Veolia , previously Vivendi, to design, build, and operate the Ashkelon desalination plant . IDE Technologies is itself a partnership of Israel Chemicals and the Delek Group. After 25 years the plant will be transferred to Israel. In addition to the required facilities for seawater pumping, brine removal, water treatment, and membrane desalination units, the complex project required laboratory buildings for ongoing testing purposes. Today, Ashkelon generates nearly 6% of Israel’s water supply, most importantly its utilization of advanced RO technologies and economies of scale have given it the cheapest water in the world. It is one of several plants that have been planned for the coast . The international partnership with Veolia further embeds Israeli firms into the advanced water technology scientific and business networks, enhancing knowledge creation and diffusion and increasing market opportunities. In addition to Veolia, Israel has business relationships with global water technology firms Siemens, GE, ABB, Dow Chemicals, and Jain Irrigation Systems. Israel also has formed strategic partnerships with public water entities throughout the world with governments and municipalities in China, Singapore, Beijing, Madrid, Melbourne, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and several others . They are also in close contact with California entities such as the LADWP and the OCWD . Outside of exceptional infrastructural projects like the Ashkelon plant, the state water firm Mekorot owns the majority of the water infrastructure, over 3,000 water works that encompass all phases of the water process, most notably wastewater management . Throughout much of its history, Mekorot partnered with The Tahal Group, an engineering services firm, to build the water infrastructure. Today The Tahal Group is an international firm headquartered in the Netherlands. Prior to the mid 1990‘s when it was privatized, Tahal was an Israeli military contracting and engineering firm specializing in infrastructure . This type of partnership between the state, military, and private firms is common in Israel . It continues today with Mekorot often partnering with local firms to build infrastructure and test technologies. Many of these firms have either been spun off from the military or are closely involved with military projects. The close collaboration between the state, the military, and technology firms, has long been a central feature of the Israeli technology economy. Dan Senor and Saul Singer recently wrote the best seller book Start-up Nation that attempts to explain how Israel has thrived in the high technology economy . They argue that the entrepreneurial culture of market savvy independent thinkers bound by close connections wrought through shared military service, and honed by the military’s appetite for advanced research technology, has created the conditions for the explosion in high technology companies. Israel has over 70 companies listed on the US NASDEQ market—the most of any non US country . Additionally Israeli scientists have been at the forefront of a long list of technological innovations, such as CT scanners, advanced Intel microprocessors, AOL’s instant messenger, zip compression technology, the aforementioned drip irrigation, and many more . Israel also greatly benefits from the vast knowledge and international connections of the global Jewish network, most notably in the United States where Jews are well represented in science, business, academics, law, media, technology, and professional fields. Israel is central to Jewish identity and many American Jews make great efforts to ensure its safety and economic vitality through tying the country tightly into our global economic system. The close connection between the military and entrepreneurs has also been deliberately fostered through an economic development strategy of national technical business incubators as well as the creation of a venture capital industry. The government effectively jump started the venture capital industry in the early 1990’s with the creation of Yozma program to invest in high tech ventures . The country also targeted “clean technologies”, such as water technologies and the renewable energy industry. This is partially due to its limited resources, but also due to the oil embargo implemented by oil rich Muslim nations.For example, Kinrot Ventures was founded in 1993 as part of the Israeli Incubator Program as the world’s first clean tech water technology incubator . Today Kinrot Ventures is one of the most important water venture capital firms in the world. Kinrot targets emerging companies with potentially disruptive water technologies, with a specific focus on advances in purifying, filtering, desalination, transporting, and storing water.