Chris Tobias recently wrote about waste to energy in Singapore, illustrating the city’s exemplary response to fly ash left over from the incineration process. I just read an interesting French book on water, and one of the most interesting parts of the book was about Singapore.
Written by Erik Orsenna, a member of the prestigious Académie française, L’Avenir de l’eau (Water’s future) enables us to travel all around the world (albeit reading) and gathers facts and figures on how water issues differ from country to country.
Perfectly located between East and West Asia, Singapore is an important local hub for 4,000 international companies. The city’s geostrategic importance led to an important population boom, with the number of inhabitants climbing from 1.5 million at the time of independence in 1965 to more than 4.5 million today.
Despite receiving a lot of rainwater (there are 2,415 mm of precipitations per year, compared to roughly 500 mm for San Francisco and 1,200 mm for New York City), the city lacks water.
The precious liquid comes from four main sources: rain, water treatment, desalination and imports from Malaysia.