The issue of water and environmental technologies is gaining an increasingly central place in the world’s consciousness and economy. About 2 billion people around the world either lack access to sufficient quantities of water, or are supplied with water unfit for drinking. This shortage is going to worsen in the near future due to the rise of world’s population and to the redistribution of water recourses among the world’s regions, which in turn stems from the global warming.
This global warming phenomenon, which the leading experts attribute to the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from burning fossil fuels for energy generation, presents a multifaceted hazard to the mankind. Its consequences include water shortages in certain regions combined with floods and other natural disasters in other parts of the world; glacier melting in polar areas fraught with catastrophic flooding across many countries and the loss of vast habitable territories; widespread famine and lack of basic supplies - and other calamities, some of them predictable and others still beyond our cognition.
Industrial and vehicular air pollution results in heavy health problems both around the world and in our small Israel. Regions susceptible to air pollution owe many unnecessary deaths to this cause.
The growing environmental awareness has resulted in an impressive boost in the development of new technologies for alleviating ecological problems, particularly for water purification and treatment, and in the corresponding increase of these technologies’ worldwide implementation and marketing. The Kyoto Protocol on diminishing the greenhouse gases emission has set up an emission trading market, with a current volume of $22 billion and rapidly growing up.
The world water market stands today at approximately $504 billion, while other environmental technologies account for a further $200 billion.
Non-polluting alternative energy sources have become one of the world’s hottest issues. Such sources include solar radiation; wind; biomass; urban and rural waste; using agricultural production for making such liquid fuels as bio-ethanol and bio-diesel; geothermal sources. In the future this list might be augmented with the energy of sea tides and other natural phenomena, and all together they are poised to replace our traditional oil and coal fuel.
WATEC 2007, to be held in Israel from October 30 - November 1, 2007, is intended to display such technologies, emphasizing those developed in Israel, and to allow anyone interested to learn more about innovation, creativity and experience in solving environmental problems, in rich and poor countries alike.
The WATEC gathering is our country’s premiere event for reinforcing the position of Israel as the "Silicon Valley" of the global water and environmental technologies market, a part of a national initiative approved by a comprehensive governmental decision in order to accelerate development of new water technologies. The initiative includes: directing and strengthening the academy, deepening the integration with capital, integration with international strategic bodies, encouraging the international activity of the Israeli water industry, mostly by the annual WATEC exhibitions and conferences.
The land of Israel is coping with water deficient and environmental control challenges. As the saying goes: "Necessity is the mother of invention." Since Israel’s early days, the country's water sector has been forced to provide its citizenry with advanced solutions. Situated in one of the world's most arid regions, it was Israel that pioneered and lead the concepts of national water management, drip irrigation, recycling and purifying wastewater, water desalination and in the field of alternative energy- geothermal power technologies.
Based on Israel accumulated experience and the following unique advantages, Israel is poised to play a major role in supplying the world with cutting-edge water and environmental solutions:
- Israel as a beta site - The Israeli climate zones represent more than 50% of the climatic types in the world, thus Israel can become a beta-site for development of new water and environmental technologies needed in many similar areas in the world.
- The spirit of the Israeli technological entrepreneurship - The technological achievements of Israel are well-known, and Israel is considered one of the world’s leading high-tech regions. There are more venture deals done and more venture dollars invested in Israeli companies than most U.S. states and most other countries of the world. For example: since 2002, over 200 Israeli technology companies were sold to global firms.
- Variety of proven water and environmental solutions - Israel has already implemented water technologies in order to produce 25% of its water consumption and in 5 years from now it will produce 40% of it.
- Supportive National Eco-System in order to promote the water and environmental technology industries - Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, is unique with respect to the broad scope of its multiple activities, uses its 3,000 installations as test-bedding for new water technologies. In the last two years, more than 200 new water and environmental technologies (most of them developed in the academy and in the national program of technological incubators) used this unique mechanism. Furthermore, the established collaborations between leading multinational water and industrial companies and Mekorot, enable access for new technologies to the global market.
Israel believes that based on its relative advantages, it can follow on its successes in communications, software, life sciences and advanced materials, and flourish in the areas of advanced water and environmental solutions.
The WATEC exhibition will create a global market place for state-of-the-art technologies relevant to the Israeli and international environmental industries in such fields as water, reduction of environmental nuisances, alternative energy etc.
Why Israel?
Based on its accumulated experience, Israel is poised to play a major role in supplying the world with cutting-edge water and environmental solutions.