气候变化催生新加坡水源管理生意

    新加坡剩下的15%到20%用水来自两个海水淡化厂和所谓的“新生水”（NEWater，新加坡公用事业局给再生水取的新名称），其实也就是污水资源化。“我们禁止使用‘污水’这个词’，”马达范开玩笑说。“但说真的，我们已经不用这个词了。”新生水已经存在了11年，绝非新加坡独有。（用来过滤细菌的薄膜是在加利福尼亚州开发的。）制造新生水的过程依赖于逆向渗透，世界上有许多国家都采用这种技术回收废水。但新生水的规模，以及围绕它展开的公共宣传各不一样。新加坡不仅用心打造新生水品牌，甚至还设计了一个可爱的水滴吉祥物，政府希望这个名为“活力水”(Water Wally)的卡通形象能够让孩子们对污水（不对，应该叫废水）再利用理念产生兴趣。再生水的用途非常广泛，从工厂到空调，再到瓶装水，是的，它可以饮用。我尝过，味道跟大多数水没有什么区别，因为它不包括任何矿物质。尽管平淡无奇，但肯定可以饮用。马达范告诉我，新生水能够满足新加坡30%的用水需求。政府的目标依然是，在2060年之前把这个比例至少提高至50%。

    他说，原因很简单。“水是至关重要的安全问题。”一旦你建立了一个机构全权处理整个水回路（从水源到自来水，再循环反复），“你的整个思维模式就会发生变化。”新加坡公用事业局监管的最令人印象深刻、隐秘程度最令人叫绝的工程之一是深层隧道排污系统(Deep Tunnel Sewerage System)。这条造价34亿美元的“废水高速公路”位于地平面近20英里160英尺之下。“我们非常擅长设计城市解决方案，”马达范说。次日，在新加坡工商联合总会(Singapore Business Federation)举办的一个会议上，他再次表达了这种观点。我在会议期间得知，新加坡公用事业局正在帮助里约热内卢加强给水系统，后者正在紧锣密鼓地筹备即将于今年夏天举办的世界杯足球赛和2016年奥运会。

    当我们在博物馆漫步时，我一直思考着滨海堤坝的比例模型。一看到这些非常深，非常大，非常昂贵的污水管道的一个剖面，我就立刻想起了澳大利亚墨累达令流域的大干旱，这一流域随后很有可能爆发破坏性更大的洪涝灾害。如同新加坡、荷兰、美国西南部、孟加拉国，或者干脆说如同世界上大多数其他地区一样，澳大利亚恐怕要面对用水方面的不确定性（如果不是现在，那也是很快就会发生的事情）。在澳大利亚，用水已经成为一个至关重要、但前景不容乐观的问题。

    大干旱在墨累达令流域促成了一个水市场，背后的思维是，如此稀缺的资源将流向利用价值最高的行业。澳大利亚的葡萄酒产量还算不错，但小麦产量大幅下降，仅相当于正常产量的59%，大米产量猛跌至正常产量的1%，进而引发了一场全球粮食危机和席卷几十个国家的抗议浪潮。自由市场解决方案逐渐瓦解，因为如同空气一样，水是一种维系生命的资源，而不仅仅是推动经济增长的要素。几周后，我看到美国垦务局前局长、南内华达州水务管理局顾问罗伯特•约翰逊说过的一段话：“人们几乎总是可以找到水来满足需求。水跟其他推动经济增长的必需品，比如木材和电，有什么不一样呢？水不是经济发展的限制因素。”

    对这种观点的合理反应，就是新加坡已经如此清楚的一个事实：木材是可再生的，某些形式的电力资源也是如此，但水不是，永远也不可能是。这个孤独星球目前拥有的水量与最初完全一样多。我们可以转移水，处理水，但对于这样一种充当生命之先决条件的物质来说，这样做成本太大了。我们要么开始像新加坡那样，把水视为一种在国家安全中占据中心地位的重要资源，认为每一滴水都值得监控；要么坐等市场发挥作用，最终聘请新加坡帮助我们修复水系统、提高水利用效率。

    游览结束后，马达范引领我走下宽阔的楼梯，来到滨海堤坝的人口处，那里停泊着一排闪闪发光的黑色奔驰轿车。“那是缅甸水务部长的车队，”他说。“他是来这里取经的。”（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    The remain 15% to 20% of the country's water comes from two desalination plants and what the PUB calls NEWater -- a rebranded term for reclaimed water. That is, water from sewage. "We've banned the word, 'sewage,'" Madhavan joked. "No, but really, we don't use that word anymore." NEWater has been around for 11 years and is in no way unique to Singapore. (Its membranes that filter out microbes were developed in California.) Its process relies on reverse osmosis, which is used to reclaim wastewater throughout the world. The scale of NEWater, and the public outreach around it, though, is different. There's the branding, and even an adorable water droplet character named Water Wally, to get kids excited about the idea of sewage -- sorry, wastewater -- turned useful again. And the reclaimed water goes everywhere from factories to air conditioners to, yes, bottles, where it can be drunk. I tried some, and it taste more like nothing than most water, because it doesn't have any minerals. Unexciting, but certainly drinkable. The NEWater, Madhavan told me, could meet 30% of Singapore's water needs, if it came to that. The goal, again, by 2060, is to bring that number up to at least 50%.

    The reason was simple, he said. "Water is security." And when you have one authority handle the entire water loop, from source to tap and back again, "your whole mindset changes." One of the most impressive, and impressively hidden, projects the PUB oversees are the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System, a $3.4 billion "used water superhighway" nearly 20 miles and 160 feet beneath the island. "We are good at urban solutions," Madhavan said, and his words were repeated the next day at a meeting with the Singapore Business Federation, where I learned the PUB is working with Rio de Janeiro to bolster its water systems in preparation for the World Cup this summer, and then the Olympics, in 2016.

    As we wandered the museum, and I pondered scale models of the Barrage, I saw a cutaway of those very deep, very large, very expensive sewer pipes, and thought of Australia and the Murray-Darling drought, which was followed by possibly even more devastating floods. Australia -- like Singapore, like the Netherlands, or Israel, or the American Southwest, or Bangladesh, or, honestly, most of the rest of the world -- if not now, then soon lives with a certain uncertainty regarding water, where it has become vital and not promised.

    In Murray-Darling, the drought led to the creation of a water market, the thinking being that so scarce a resource would flow to the highest-value industries. Australia's wine did just fine, while wheat production fell to just 59% of what had been normal, and rice collapsed to just 1% of normal, prompting a global food crisis and protests in dozens of countries. Free-market solutions begin to collapse under the weight of water, which, like air, is a resource required for life, not just economic growth. Weeks later, I encountered this quote from Robert Johnson, a former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and a water consultant for the Southern Nevada Water Authority: "You can almost always find water to meet needs. Why is water any different than other necessities for growth, like lumber, like electricity? Water is not the limiting factor in economic development."

    To which the reasonable response is what Singapore is already so aware of: Lumber is renewable, so are certain forms of power for electricity, but water is not and never will be. We are stuck with exactly as much water on this lonely planet as we started out with. We can move it around and process it, but that's costly for a substance that's a prerequisite for life as we know it. Either we begin to think of water more like Singapore, as a vital resource central to our national security, and worth monitoring every drop; or we wait, and let the market do its work, and eventually pay Singapore to help fix our systems and make them more efficient.

    As we finished the tour Madhavan led me down a wide staircase to the Barrage entrance, where there was a row of parked, gleaming black Mercedes-Benz sedans. "It's the Minister of Water from Myanmar," he said, "Here to learn about how our water works."