Water covers 71 percent of Earth’s surface — and industrial-scale desalination has operated successfully around the world for many years. Desalination costs are still high, and not everyone lives near a seacoast — so getting the water where it’s needed, when it’s needed, can be prohibitively expensive. Policymakers, farmers, business leaders, and ordinary people around the world face difficult choices and tradeoffs in meeting their basic needs for water.
In parched but wealthy regions, such as around the Persian Gulf, desalination is already the solution of choice: Saudi Arabia gets half its potable water that way, and in Dubai the figure is 90 percent, according to Leon Awerbuch, president of Leading Edge Technologies, who spoke on the first of four panels at the summit. But in less affluent regions, that may not be a viable solution.
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In parched but wealthy regions, such as around the Persian Gulf, desalination is already the solution of choice: Saudi Arabia gets half its potable water that way, and in Dubai the figure is 90 percent, according to Leon Awerbuch, president of Leading Edge Technologies, who spoke on the first of four panels at the summit. But in less affluent regions, that may not be a viable solution.
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