Add Nature's needs to water week talks
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Jul 9, 2010 - ST Forum
Add Nature's needs to water week talks
THE theme of this year's Singapore International Water Week focused on clean, affordable water to ensure sustainable cities.
Yet, while clean and affordable water is vital for sustainable cities, it is not enough. Such cities, as one speaker suggested, need holistic governance.
The meeting's discourse reflected ecological modernisation, the view that technology can fix environmental problems. We need clean and affordable water, so we use technology. That is, as long as technological innovation continues, we can supply cities with reliable drinking water.
When drinking water is supplied, 'value' is added through treating raw water with chemicals to remove bacteria and sediment. When wastewater is released back into the natural system, it is treated to levels that do not pollute the environment. Why does water have 'value' added to it when supplied to consumers, but is treated to only non-polluting standards when returned to the natural environment?
New technology is encouraged to maximise what we get out of nature, but hardly an equal enthusiasm exists for maximising the quality of what we return to it. Our attitude towards nature, in this sense, is exploitative.
Ecological modernisation has been criticised for over-emphasising technology's potential for solving environmental problems to the neglect of other aspects like design and governance.
It encourages, for example, the continued settlement of water-scarce regions because it pervades the belief that water can be piped across distances.
Currently, technology's goals also seem self-serving. Unless the water week meeting recognises the importance of non-technological factors, the gathering risks being a boilerplate forum.
Lau Ying Shan (Miss)
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green is about making money too.
