Reuters’ Eveline Danubrata describes Singaporean companies’ scramble to help address China’s severe water shortages:
Singapore is a hub for water technology because of its own concerns about water security. With few domestic freshwater resources of its own, the city-state has been trying to reduce its reliance on imports from neighboring Malaysia, where politicians have in the past threatened to turn off the taps.
[…] “Singapore should be one of the world’s dominant players in water. It should be the Silicon Valley of water,” said Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros and owns shares of Singapore’s biggest listed water treatment company, Hyflux Ltd.
[…] China’s environment ministry said 43 percent of the locations it was monitoring in 2011 contained water not fit even for human contact.
[…] “There are going to be huge fortunes made in China on water because China has a staggering water problem and they know it. They are spending a lot of money to solve it,” said Rogers. [Source]
Reuters’ David Stanway reported in February on Beijing’s allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars towards securing the country’s water supply, a goal which might nevertheless prove unattainable. Read more on China’s water crisis via CDT.
