气候变化催生新加坡水源管理生意

    新加坡滨海堤坝(Marina Barrage)由一系列盘踞在拦海大坝之上的巨型钢闸组成。每道闸门有100多英尺宽，15英尺深。暴雨来袭时，巨大的液压升降机开启闸门，排出过量雨水。此外还有7台水泵（每一台都能在1分钟内排干一个奥运会游泳池）协助排水。这不是一道典型的通海闸门，它的目的并不是保护港口和城市免受大海风暴的侵袭。闸门里面的水才是主要关注的对象：它是淡水，不是海水。它是可饮用的。

    滨海堤坝是新加坡最大的水库之一，据称约占这个城邦岛国总面积的六分之一——新加坡约250平方英里，相当于纽约5个行政区的五分之三那么大，或者说只比芝加哥大一点点。它距离市中心的许多旅游景点仅一箭之遥。新加坡的总人口约540万，是世界上人口密度第二高的国家。滨海堤坝堪称水利工程史上的一大壮举，而且是非常醒目的壮举。在通海闸门旁边，一栋安放泵舱的建筑物内是一个讲述新加坡水故事的博物馆，它同时也担任着宣传新加坡水处理技术的作用。新加坡公用事业局(PUB)在一份题为“作为全球水务中枢的新加坡”的报告中指出，2006年至2012年，这种捕获、净化、监控和转移水的知识为该国带来了价值逾70亿美元的国际合约。随着气候的持续变化，“水务中枢”的生意只会越做越大。

    “在最干燥的亚热带地区，气候变化预计将显著降低可再生地表水和地下水资源，”政府间气候变化专门委员会(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)在上周早些时候发布的一份报道指出。“这种情况将加剧农业、生态系统、居民点、工业和能源生产对水资源的争夺。”

    于科学家而言，气候变化是一个活生生的现实，对于投资者来说也日益如此。许多国家对气候变化的反应极其迟缓，但站在这一领域前沿的国家并不是只有新加坡一个。荷兰与水相伴相生，并由此成为阻挡不断上升的海平面的全球专家。荷兰阿卡迪斯公司(Arcadis)已经在世界各地修建了多个海堤，甚至提议建造一个横跨纽约港、长6,000英尺（约合1828米）的模块化结构，工程的造价预计高达65亿美元。毫不奇怪的是，新加坡和荷兰建立了一家合资企业——新加坡代尔夫特水联盟（Singapore Delft Water Alliance)，以协助解决水资源问题，主要是水基础设施的研发工作。以色列早就学会了缺水的生活，而且已经把海水淡化技术出口到了几乎每一个能够负担得起的贫水国家，其中就包括新加坡。（欧洲国家甚至使用这种技术来造雪，以减缓阿尔卑斯山冰川的融化速度。）请注意这样一个趋势：淡水或许正变得稀缺，而且会越来越稀少，但只有那些财大气粗的国家才有能力应用捕获和转移淡水的技术。

    “水向高处流，流向有钱的地方，”马克•赖斯纳在自己讲述美国西南部发展历程的史诗级著作《卡迪拉克沙漠》(Cadillac Desert)一书中这样写道。一些旨在把水转移到有钱地区的计划乍一看似乎很荒唐。比如，特里•斯普拉格发明了一种巨大的聚酯袋，先给它装满淡水，然后通过海洋拖走。（他称之为“斯普拉格袋”，难道还有什么其他的好名字吗？）但斯普拉格的逻辑是合理的。“我只是想解决问题，”他在接受《意外之财：蓬勃发展的全球变暖生意》(Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming)一书作者，记者麦肯齐•芬克采访时这样说道。“世界上有足够多的水，只是所处的地方不对。”

    供职于新加坡公用事业局的乔治•马达范对这个问题的理解非常透彻。在滨海堤坝旁，他给我讲述了一番新加坡岌岌可危的用水现状。这座城市的相当一部分用水都是从马来西亚进口，经管道运送而来的。尽管相关的购水协议在2011年到期后，又被再次延长到了2061年，但我遇到的每一位新加坡人都感受到了水资源的稀缺，同时也敏锐地意识到一个令人不安的事实：他们的用水来自一个时常不太友好的邻国。有一位商人对我说：“要是新加坡哪一天爆发战争，原因几乎只有一种：用水问题。”其他用水基本上都来自集水区，也就是像滨海堤坝这样的水库。新加坡拥有17座水库；值得注意的是，这些水库占据这片陆地三分之二的表面。更引人注目的是，近三分之一的集水区是在过去几年建造的。马达范说，新加坡打算把每一条溪流，每一条小河都转化为集水区。到2060年，90%的新加坡土地表层都将具备捕获淡水的能力。

    Singapore's Marina Barrage is a series of gargantuan steel gates atop a dam that holds back the sea. Each gate is more than 100 feet wide and 15 feet deep. During torrential rains, huge hydraulic lifts open the gates and excess water pours out. Seven pumps, each able to drain an Olympic swimming pool in a minute, assist in draining the marina waters. This is not a typical sea gate, meant to protect a harbor and city from seaborne storm surge. The water inside the gate is the primary concern: It's fresh -- as in, not saltwater. It's drinkable.

    The Marina reservoir is among Singapore's largest, boasting a surface area one-sixth the size of the entire island which, at about 250 square miles, is three-fifths the size of New York's five boroughs or just a touch larger than Chicago. It is only a stone's throw from many of the downtown tourist attractions of the city-state, which is the second-most densely populated nation in the world (its population: about 5.4 million). The Barrage is a feat of hydraulic engineering, and a highly visible one. Next to the sea gates, inside the building that houses the pumps tanks, is a museum that tells the story of Singapore's water, which also acts as an advertisement for Singaporean know-how, water-wise. Such knowledge -- of capturing, purifying, monitoring, and moving water -- brought in more than $7 billion in international contracts to Singapore between 2006 and 2012, according to the national water agency PUB (in a report called "Singapore as global hydrohub"). As the climate changes, the "hydrohub" business will only increase.

    "Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry subtropical regions," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported earlier this week. "This will exacerbate competition for water among agriculture, ecosystems, settlements, industry, and energy production."

    Climate change is a reality for both scientists and, increasingly, investors. Entire nations are the slowest to adapt, but Singapore isn't alone at the front of the pack. The Netherlands lives with water, and as a result has become the global expert in holding back the rising sea. The Dutch firm Arcadis has built seawalls the world over, even proposed a 6,000-foot modular structure across New York Harbor, for a cost of $6.5 billion. It should come as no surprise that Singapore and the Netherlands have a partnership -- the Singapore Delft Water Alliance -- to aid research and development in water issues, mainly infrastructure. Israel has learned to live without water, and its desalination technology is exported to nearly every water-poor nation that can afford it, Singapore included. (It is even applied to make snow, to help slow the retreating glaciers in Europe's Alps.) Notice a trend: Freshwater may be becoming scarce and growing scarcer, but the technology to capture and move it is readily available to the deep-pocketed.

    "Water flows uphill to money," Marc Reisner wrote in his epic book about the development of the southwestern U.S., Cadillac Desert. Some of the schemes to move water to money seem, at first, absurd. Take Terry Spragg, who invented an enormous polyester bag to be filled with freshwater and then towed through oceans. (He calls it -- what else? -- The Spragg Bag.) Yet Spragg's logic is sound. "I'm just trying to solve a problem," he told journalist McKenzie Funk in the book Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming. "There's enough water in the world, just not in the right places."

    George Madhavan understands this issue acutely. Madhavan works for the PUB, and described the precarious nature of Singaporean water while we stood next to the Barrage. Much of the city-state's water is imported and arrives through pipes from Malaysia. It's an agreement that expired in 2011 and was renewed again until 2061, but every Singaporean I met felt the water scarcity and were acutely aware of the troubling fact that their water came from an often unfriendly neighbor. One businessmen I spoke with told me that "war in Singapore would almost only come about because of water." Nearly all the rest comes from the catchment area, which means reservoirs like the Marina. Singapore has 17 reservoirs; remarkably, they make up two-thirds of all the land surface on this engineered land. Even more remarkably, nearly a third of this catchment area was constructed in just the last few years. Every major river that flows into every major estuary is dammed and turned into catchment. The goal, said Madhavan, is to turn every stream, every rivulet into catchment, too. By 2060, he said, 90% of Singapore's surface area will capture freshwater.