AFP UK

Volunteers and firefighters worked round-the-clock on Tuesday, often without masks or helmets, in a desperate bid to stop a violent blaze from reaching a town on Greece’s Evia island, one of hundreds of fires that have raged through the country.

Nearly 900 firefighters, reinforced overnight with fresh arrivals from abroad, were deployed on the country’s second largest island as major towns and resorts remained under threat from a fire that has been burning for eight days.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologised to the nation, saying more than 580 fires had broken out in recent days around the country, exposing Greece to a “natural fury without precedent”.

Unprecedented weather disasters bulked up by climate change have swept the world this summer, with a landmark UN assessment published Monday warning the world is warming even faster than forecasted.

Hundreds of homes have been lost in Evia, greater Athens, the Peloponnese and other parts of Greece in wildfires that have been raging almost without pause since late July, as the region suffers through an intense heatwave.

The fires have claimed three lives in Greece, while blazes in neighbouring Turkey have killed eight. Several people have been injured, some critically.

– ‘Where to go?’ –

On Tuesday, much of the attention was focused on keeping the fire out of Evia’s northern hub of Istiaia, which has 7,000 residents who had yet to evacuate.

Firefighters and volunteers had been engaged overnight in “hand-to-hand combat, fighting heart and soul” to erect fire breaks outside villages neighbouring Istiaia, Mayor Yiannis Kontzias said.

Often wearing just a t-shirt, the locals battled the flames on several fronts, one of which raged out of control.

The Evia force includes hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. They were reinforced on Tuesday with units from Cyprus, Slovakia and Poland, the civil protection authority said.

The rugged island is popular with holidaymakers and many Greeks have summer homes in Evia. Some 3,000 people were evacuated by sea this past week as the flames neared.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of Asiminio, a coastal village near Istiaia also threatened by flames, on Tuesday.

“Where do you want us to go?,” a woman in her sixties shouted, refusing to leave as helicopters flew ahead.

On the streets of the village, dozens of residents pointed angrily at a Slovakian firefighting truck. “Look, they’re doing all the work. Where are ours? We beg them to come and no one comes,” said Dimitri.

In the village of Avgaria, many locals have turned out to help the professionals. 

“If we don’t come, who will?” asked Yiannis, a burly youth in his 20s. “My aunt’s house burnt down, that of my grandfather almost did too.”

The fire has also wrought havoc on the island’s agricultural economy that included resin, olives, figs and honey, leaving many local producers despondent.

Istiaia Mayor Kontzias said “mistakes were made and we need to draw lessons from this”. 

“The Greek state must never forget what happened in northern Evia,” he added. “Helicopters helped a lot and if we had done that since the beginning, we would have avoided all this destruction.”

He was echoing a complaint widely uttered about the lack of air support not just on Evia but throughout Greece.

Many mayors around the country have complained of a serious lack of aerial support in fighting the fires, despite the government’s assurances of having set aside ample resources earlier this year.

– ‘Dagger to the heart’ –

“Every lost home is a tragedy, a dagger to the heart,” Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias said Tuesday, his voice breaking. 

In a televised address on Monday, Mitsotakis apologised “for any shortcomings” in the state response.

“We may have done what was humanly possible, but in many cases it was not enough.”

“Because of the unprecedented heatwave and prolonged drought, (the fires) are hard to extinguish,” he said.

The PM has pledged hundreds of millions of euros in additional funds for civil protection, reforestation and flood prevention. 

He is chairing a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to finalise support measures, and will address the press on Thursday.

There was still concern Tuesday about three separate fires in the Peloponnese peninsula, where villages were still without electricity and water, according to local officials.

More than 400 firefighters were active in that area, including reinforcements from the Czech Republic and Britain.

EU states and other countries have so far contributed 21 aircraft, 250 vehicles and more than 1,200 firefighters, some of whom were expected between Tuesday and Friday, the civil protection authority said.

From flash floods to forest fires, drought to “sea snot”, Turkey is bearing the brunt of increasingly frequent disasters blamed on climate change, putting pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to act.

Wildfires that have killed eight people since late July across southern coastal regions, ravaging forests and turning villages to ash, followed the growth of a slimy mucus in the Sea of Marmara that destroyed marine life.

Deadly floods in the northeast followed an arid spell that dried up dams, endangering water supplies. Sinkholes caused by water mismanagement are encroaching on farmers’ homes.

Experts warn the vast, geographically diverse country risks fighting rolling disasters if it does not forcefully confront climate change, which is warming sea temperatures in regions such as the Mediterranean.

A landmark UN report this week warned that global warming is occurring far faster than forecast.

The issue is turning increasingly political, with polls showing it registering highly with up to seven million members of Generation Z who will be able to vote in the next election, slated for 2023.

Experts and environmentally-conscious politicians put ratifying the 2015 Paris Agreement adopted by 196 countries on top of Turkey’s to-do list.

Turkey is one of only six nations, including Iraq and Libya, yet to formally approve the accord.

“This is the first step. We must become a part of the global fight against climate change,” said Greens of Turkey Party spokeswoman Emine Ozkan. 

“There is no time to lose.”

–  ‘No comprehensive policy’ –

Climate Action Tracker, a think tank that evaluates national emissions reduction plans, said Turkey’s effort towards the accord’s goals was “critically insufficient”.

Ankara argues the agreement unfairly classes Turkey as “developed” rather than “developing”, which would give it access to funding.

But experts say Turkey is making the mistake of failing to see critical issues such as food security and intensifying drought as linked.

“I don’t see Turkey having any comprehensive and holistic climate change policy that addresses everything in an interconnected way,” said water and climate policy researcher Gokce Sencan.

“You cannot separate food security issues from energy security issues, and food prices from the issue of drought.”

Fossil fuels made up 83 percent of Turkey’s energy supply in 2019.

The International Energy Agency this year praised Ankara’s efforts to diversify its energy mix, with “impressive” renewable energy growth.

But environmentalists raise concern over Turkey’s reliance on polluting coal, since Ankara has plans to expand domestic coal power capacity despite targeting a greenhouse gas emissions cut of up to 21 percent by 2030.

– Drought the ‘biggest risk’ –

Turkey last month registered its highest temperature since 1961 at 49.1 degrees Celsius (120.4 Fahrenheit) in the southeastern town of Cizre.

Experts say drought will remain a critical problem with far-reaching effects not only on food production but also Turkey’s relations with its neighbours, which are fighting for water rights.

Dam levels and farmers’ production have suffered from below average precipitation since 2019.

“Drought is the biggest risk that we’re facing right now,” Sencan said.

Levent Kurnaz, director of Bogazici University’s centre for climate change and policy studies, said the issue was directly related to food and agriculture.

“If you cannot feed yourselves then you’re in big trouble,” Kurnaz said.

Erdogan heeded the calls and organised a water council meeting in March, but specialists say the government is not taking the issue seriously enough.

“The government supposedly acknowledges climate change but it does not take the initiative to look at the real problems that cause it,” said Ozkan, whose party has not been formally registered despite applying last year.

Kurnaz pointed to water’s wider impact in the region since Turkey sits on top of two legendary rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow to Syria and Iraq.

“If we don’t have enough water, they will not have enough water and that’s a problem in international relations,” Kurnaz told AFP.

Sencan said the key is to build water resilience because climate change will see the amount of precipitation in the eastern Mediterranean region fall.

Public concern for the environment is growing, with a November 2020 study showing 70 percent of Turks worried about the issue.

For Kurnaz, no single country is prepared for the climate crisis, with both central and local authorities “underestimating” the issue.

“If you don’t learn and something larger happens then you will once again be unprepared,” Kurnaz said.

Backed by a huge multinational force, Greek firefighters on Tuesday struggled for an eighth day to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have caused massive damage, prompting an apology from the prime minister.

Nearly 900 firefighters, reinforced overnight with fresh arrivals from abroad, were deployed on the country’s second largest island as major towns and resorts remained under threat.

Most of the attention was focused on keeping the fire out of the island’s northern hub of Istiaia, which has several thousand residents.

Istiaia Mayor Yiannis Kontzias on Tuesday told public television ERT that he was “optimistic” the fire can be prevented reaching his town, now a focal point of southern European fires that have underscored global alarm about climate change.

Unprecedented weather disasters bulked up by climate change have swept the world this summer, with a landmark UN assessment published Monday warning the world is warming even faster than forecasted.

Hundreds of homes have been lost in Evia, greater Athens, the Peloponnese and other parts of Greece in wildfires that have been raging almost without pause since late July, as the region suffers through an intense heatwave.

The fires have claimed three lives in Greece, while blazes in neighbouring Turkey have killed eight.

– ‘Hand-to-hand combat’ –

Firefighters and volunteers had been engaged overnight in “hand-to-hand combat, fighting heart and soul” to erect fire breaks outside villages neighbouring Istiaia, Kontzias said.

The Evia force includes hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. They were reinforced on Tuesday with units from Cyprus, Slovakia and Poland, the civil protection authority said.

The island is popular with holidaymakers and many Greeks have summer homes in Evia. Some 3,000 people were evacuated by sea this past week as the flames neared.

In the village of Avgaria, many locals have turned out to help the professionals. 

“If we don’t come, who will?” asked Yiannis, a burly youth in his 20s. “My aunt’s house burned down, that of my grandfather almost did too.”

The fire has also wrought havoc on the island’s agricultural economy that included resin, olives, figs and honey, leaving many local producers despondent.

“The first major heatwave exposed the state’s nakedness,” main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras told reporters on Tuesday.

Istiaia Mayor Kontzias said “mistakes were made and we need to draw lessons from this”. 

“The Greek state must never forget what happened in northern Evia,” he added. “Helicopters helped a lot and if we had done that since the beginning, we would have avoided all this destruction.”

He was echoing a complaint widely uttered about the lack of air support not just on Evia but throughout Greece.

Many mayors around the country have complained of a serious lack of aerial support in fighting the fires, despite the government’s assurances of having set aside ample resources earlier this year.

– PM apologises –

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologised to the nation and vowed to punish those responsible.

“I apologise for any shortcomings” in the state response, Mitsotakis said in a televised address on Monday.

“We may have done what was humanly possible, but in many cases it was not enough.”

Mitsotakis said more than 580 fires had broken out in recent days around the country, exposing Greece to a “natural fury without precedent”.

“Because of the unprecedented heatwave and prolonged drought, (the fires) are hard to extinguish.”

The PM has pledged hundreds of millions of euros in additional funds for civil protection, reforestation and flood prevention. 

He is chairing a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to finalise support measures, and will address the press on Thursday.

There was still concern Tuesday about three separate fires in the Peloponnese peninsula, where villages were still without electricity and water, according to local officials.

More than 400 firefighters were active in that area, including reinforcements from the Czech Republic and Britain.

In the foothills of Mount Parnitha north of Athens, local mayor Spyros Vrettos told ERT that at least 80 homes have been completely destroyed, while some 1,500 electricity pillars in the area will also need to be replaced.

EU states and other countries have so far contributed 21 aircraft, 250 vehicles and more than 1,200 firefighters, some of whom were expected between Tuesday and Friday, the civil protection authority said.

A draft United Nations assessment seen exclusively by AFP has warned the Mediterranean is a “climate change hotspot”.

Would you take a swig of water from your faucet if it originally came from the sewer?

Treating wastewater to put it back into public use can help against water crises around the world, according to the United Nations, though the practice has to overcome the “yuck” factor among the public.

Wastewater that has been through a treatment plant is typically discharged into rivers.

But there is a push to tap recycled water — also known as water “reuse” — in order to ease pressure on sources of freshwater threatened by growing populations, pollution and climate change.

“Water reuse for sure will just increase and increase worldwide, because there’s no other option,” Richard Connor, editor-in-chief of the United Nations World Water Development Report published by UNESCO, told AFP.

Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, has been a pioneer, transforming wastewater into potable water since the 1960s, while Singapore has also developed a much-vaunted recycling system.

A potable water project is in the works in western France.

Turning recycled water — also known as reclaimed water — into something you can drink is not the main purpose of the technology.

In Mediterranean countries as well as Texas and Mexico, reclaimed water is used for irrigation in agriculture, which consumes two-thirds of freshwater abstractions around the world.

Reclaimed water can also be used for industries, to clean streets or cool power stations.

– ‘Untapped resource’ –

There are two ways to turn wastewater into potable water. 

It can be treated and then blended with freshwater in a surface reservoir or groundwater aquifer before undergoing additional treatment and being distributed.

But the other, rarer method does not use such environmental buffers, as wastewater is purified and then sent directly to a drinking water distribution system.

“Water ‘reuse’ is definitely part of the solution. It’s a way to increase our supply,” Connor said.

“If you can reuse the water several times, then you don’t have to extract it from the source,” Connor said.

Recycling wastewater is less expensive and uses up less energy than desalinating sea water, which is considered another solution against water scarcity.

“It’s better to jump on the train now,” Connor said.

“The longer you wait, the more expensive it’s going to be, and the more difficult it’s going to be. It’s better to start right away.”

– Astronaut drink –

The western French department of Vendee is joining the fray, announcing plans last month to turn wastewater into potable water by 2024.

The water will go though several stages of filtration and disinfection before being discharged into a reservoir.

“Everyone now understands that we must be frugal with groundwater,” said Nicolas Garnier of Amorce, an association of cities.

In the past two years, 90 percent of communities in France have had to restrict water use due to droughts, Garnier said.

Europe represents a small percentage of the global recycled water market, according to Water Reuse Europe, a non-profit association.

It is five times more expensive to treat wastewater than water from a river or a lake because it is much dirtier, Connor said.

More than 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is dumped in the environment without treatment, especially in poor countries, according to a 2017 UN report that called wastewater the “untapped resource”.

“We have to find ways, especially in developing countries that don’t have the funds, to pay to treat water,” he said.

One way to reduce costs would be to take sludge from the treated water to obtain biogas or extract nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which can be converted into fertiliser.

But the “yuck factor is not just for drinking water”, Connor said, even though the food people consumer has been safely grown thanks to reused water.

Connor points out that astronauts on the International Space Station drink water that was recovered from the crew’s sweat and urine.

“No astronaut has ever gotten sick from the reuse of water,” he said.

A key town will likely be spared from a week-long inferno consuming so much of the Greek island of Evia partly because water-bombing helicopters have finally fully entered the battle, the local mayor said.

Istiaia Mayor Yiannis Kontzias told public television ERT that he was “optimistic” the fire can be prevented reaching his town of several thousand people, now a focal point of southern European fires that have underscored global alarm about climate change.

“We have managed to control this front because we doused it both from the land and air” on Monday, Kontzias said from the nearby village of Kamatriades.

He later added that this particular front was under control — but others nearby remained active.

“Helicopters helped a lot and if we had done that since the beginning, we would have avoided all this destruction,” the mayor said.

He was echoing a complaint widely uttered about the lack of air support not just on Evia but throughout Greece as hundreds of fires broke out during an intense heat wave in the last two weeks.

– PM Mitsotakis apologises –

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday apologised to the nation and vowed to punish those responsible.

“I apologise for any shortcomings” in the state response, Mitsotakis said in a televised address.

“We may have done what was humanly possible, but in many cases it was not enough,” he said.

Firefighters and islanders alike have battled the flames for the last week on Evia, a rugged and forested island just 200 kilometres northeast of Athens.

The fire jumped a fire break created late Monday in Avgaria, a village close to Istiaia, the ANA press agency said. But the village did not suffer major damage.

Other fire breaks were established in the villages of villages de Kamaria and Kastaniotissa, ANA reported.

The fire department late on Monday said that over 650 firefighters were still deployed in Evia, including forces from Ukraine, Romania and Serbia.

Hundreds of homes have been lost in Evia, greater Athens, the Peloponnese and other parts of Greece in wildfires that have been raging almost without pause since late July.

There was still concern Tuesday about three separate fires in the Peloponnese peninsula, where villages were still without electricity and water according to local officials.

Over 400 firefighters were active in the area, including reinforcements from the Czech Republic and Britain.

In the foothills of Mount Parnitha, local mayor Spyros Vrettos told state TV ERT that at least 80 homes have been completely destroyed, while some 1,500 electricity pylons in the area will also need to be replaced.

EU states and other countries have so far contributed 21 aircraft, 250 vehicles and over 1,200 firefighters, some of whom were expected between Tuesday and Friday, the civil protection authority said.

Dozens of small island states most vulnerable to the effects of climate change have called on the world to save “our very future” after a landmark UN report said accelerating global warming and rising sea levels threaten their existence.

The call to action comes after the climate report warned that catastrophic global warming is occurring far more quickly than previously forecast, an assessment met with horror and hopefulness by world leaders and green groups.

“We have to turn this around,” Diann Black-Layne, lead climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda, said in a statement late Monday.

“The stark fact is that if we keep warming to 1.5C we are still facing half a metre of sea level rise. But if we stop warming from reaching 2C, we can avoid a long term three metres of sea level rise. That is our very future, right there.”

The group comprises 39 states including Cuba, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives, the world’s lowest-lying country.

It said the report confirmed that governments around the world must take critical action to cap warming to the 1.5C temperature goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published on Monday, said the world is on course to reach that level around 2030, a decade earlier than predicted just three years ago.

That level of global warming will have devastating impacts on humanity, including more extreme weather events such as fires, typhoons, droughts and floods.

In its first major scientific assessment since 2014, the IPCC said by mid-century, the 1.5C threshold will have been breached across the board, by a tenth of a degree along the most ambitious pathway, and by nearly a full degree at the opposite extreme.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are “choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk” and said countries must “combine forces” to avert catastrophe.

Many world leaders reacted to the report by calling for immediate action to curtail the rise of the world’s temperature.

But Australia’s conservative prime minister rejected growing calls on Tuesday to adopt more ambitious emissions targets, while China insisted it was implementing its climate commitments and signalled no new policies despite the report’s findings.

A massive Chinese-financed dam in Cambodia has “washed away the livelihoods” of tens of thousands of villagers while falling short of promised energy production, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

The 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam in the kingdom’s northeast has sparked controversy since long before its December 2018 launch.

Fisheries experts had warned that damming the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers — two major tributaries of the resource-rich Mekong river — would threaten fish stocks crucial to millions living along the Mekong’s flood plains.

Tens of thousands of villagers living upstream and downstream have suffered steep losses to their incomes, HRW said in Tuesday’s report, citing interviews conducted over two years with some 60 people from various communities.

“The Lower Sesan 2 dam washed away the livelihoods of Indigenous and ethnic minority communities who previously lived communally and mostly self-sufficiently from fishing, forest-gathering, and agriculture,” John Sifton, Human Rights Watch’s Asia advocacy director and the report’s author, said Tuesday. 

“Cambodian authorities need to urgently revisit this project’s compensation, resettlement, and livelihood-restoration methods.”

“There’s no doubt at all that (the dam) contributed significantly to the larger problems the Mekong is facing right now,” said Mekong energy and water expert Brian Eyler, while adding that more research was needed on the exact losses.

The government had pushed ahead with the project — which involved resettling about 5,000 people — in hopes of producing about one-sixth of Cambodia’s annual electricity needs as promised by China Huaneng Group, the builder.

But production levels are “likely far lower, amounting to only a third of those levels”, the report said.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan defended the dam, saying it provided “the most positive impacts” and that the resettled villagers have new homes, farmland and electric power. 

“The allegations are not reasonable, they don’t look at Cambodian experiences… and the new location is better than the old place,” Phay Siphan said, adding that the government would continue to monitor the impacts on surrounding villages. 

The dam, which cost a reported $780 million to build, is part of China’s Belt and Road initiative, a mammoth $1 trillion-dollar infrastructure vision for maritime, rail and road projects across Asia, Africa and Europe.

The scheme, a symbol of Beijing’s efforts to extend economic influence around the world, has been widely criticised for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt.

China insisted Tuesday it was implementing its climate commitments, while signalling no new policies following a UN report warning much more urgent action was needed to fight global warming.

Many world leaders responded to Monday’s report, which said climate change was occurring faster than estimated, by calling for decisive and immediate moves to curtail fossil fuels.

When asked for a response to the report, China’s foreign ministry emphasised the government’s current policies and commitments.

“China has insisted on prioritising sustainable, green and low-carbon development,” a spokesperson told AFP in a statement.

The Chinese government has set a target of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and becoming carbon neutral by 2060.

The statement referenced the carbon neutrality target, and said the global community should have full confidence in China’s climate actions.

China has been criticised for pushing ahead with opening dozens of new coal power plants to ensure economic growth.

The statement said President Xi Jinping intended to “strictly control” the growth of coal power plants.

But it pointed to a continued increase in the next few years, saying that coal consumption would start to gradually reduce from 2026.

The report, from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that global warming would reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels around 2030.  

That level of global warming will have devastating impacts on humanity, including more extreme weather events such as fires, typhoons, droughts and floods.

Australia’s conservative prime minister rejected growing calls Tuesday to adopt more ambitious emissions targets, insisting the country was doing enough to tackle climate change.

Hours after a landmark UN climate report warned catastrophic global warming is occurring far more quickly than previously forecast, Prime Minister Scott Morrison signalled he would not adopt a net-zero target.

“Australia is doing its part,” Morrison said. “I won’t be signing a blank cheque on behalf of Australians to targets without plans.”

Australia is at the forefront of the global climate crisis, as one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters and the victim of multiple climate-worsened disasters.

In recent years, the country has suffered intense droughts, the largest bushfires in its recorded history, floods and coastal erosion among other disasters.

But ahead of a major climate summit later this year, Morrison has rejected calls — including from allies such as the United States — to adopt a formal target for reducing or offsetting carbon emissions.

Australia has suggested it will achieve net-zero carbon emissions “as soon as possible”, and preferably by 2050, but has not made any commitments to do so.

Instead, Morrison sought to deflect focus onto developing countries and the need for new technology, which he said was key to solving the crisis.

“We need to take a different approach. We need to focus on the technological breakthroughs that are necessary to change the world, and how we operate,” Morrison said.

Many politicians within Morrison’s conservative coalition with close ties to the coal industry have denied climate change is happening or sought to play down the risks.

Senator Matthew Canavan described the latest UN climate report as “fear porn” and said the panel that drafted it was always warning “the sky is falling in, and it never does”.

The prime minister once brought a lump of coal onto the floor of parliament, urging people not to be scared of it. 

His Liberal party and Australia’s opposition Labor party both support continued coal mining, despite global investment in the sector drying up and importers shifting to cleaner fuels.

Australia has one of the highest rates of emissions per capita in the rich world and is among the world’s largest exporters of coal and natural gas.

It faces mounting political and economic pressure to act.

Both the United States and the European Union are moving toward imposing carbon import tariffs that could effectively sanction Australia and other countries shirking measures to tackle climate change.

One of the UN panel’s authors, Mark Howden of Australian National University, said the Pacific region would be one of the worst affected by projected warming.

“If we don’t start to reduce our emissions significantly before 2050, the world is extremely likely to exceed two degrees Celsius of warming during the 21st century,” he said.

“Global temperature rises will have serious impacts across the Pacific region. This includes dramatic and devastating sea level rise.”

Giant pumps whir deep underground at a plant in Singapore that helps transform sewage into water so clean it is fit for human consumption while reducing ocean pollution.

The tiny island nation has little in the way of natural water sources and has long had to rely principally on supplies from neighbouring Malaysia.

To boost self-sufficiency, the government has developed an advanced system for treating sewage involving a network of tunnels and high-tech plants.

Recycled wastewater can now meet 40 percent of Singapore’s water demand — a figure that is expected to rise to 55 percent by 2060, according to the country’s water agency.

While most is used for industrial purposes, some of it is added to drinking water supplies in reservoirs in the city-state of 5.7 million people.

And the system helps reduce maritime pollution, as only a small amount of the treated water is discharged into the sea.

This is a contrast to most other countries — 80 percent of the world’s wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to UN estimates.

“Singapore lacks natural resources and it is limited in space, which is why we are always looking for ways to explore water sources and stretch our water supply,” Low Pei Chin, chief engineer of the Public Utilities Board’s water reclamation department, told AFP.

One key strategy is to “collect every drop” and “reuse endlessly”, she added.

This is in addition to the city-state’s other main approaches to securing water supplies — importing it, using reservoirs and desalinating seawater.

At the heart of the recycling system is the high-tech Changi Water Reclamation Plant on the city’s eastern coast.

Parts of the facility in land-scarce Singapore are underground — some as deep as 25 stories — and it is fed by wastewater that flows through a massive, 48-kilometre (30-mile) tunnel, linked to sewers.

The site houses a maze of steel pipes, tubes, tanks, filtration systems and other machinery, and can treat up to 900 million litres (237 million US gallons) of wastewater a day — enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 24 hours for a year.

In one building, a network of ventilators have been installed to keep the air smelling fresh, although a putrid whiff still hangs in the air.

– ‘Limited amount of water’ –

Sewage that arrives at the plant undergoes an initial filtering process before powerful pumps send it flowing to facilities above ground for further treatment.

There, the treated water is further cleansed, with impurities like bacteria and viruses removed through advanced filtration processes, and disinfected with ultraviolet rays.

The end product, dubbed “NEWater”, is mainly used in microchip manufacturing plants — which are ubiquitous in the city-state and require high-quality water — and for cooling systems in buildings. 

But it also helps boost drinking water supplies. During the dry season, it is sent to top up several man-made reservoirs and, following further treatment, flows to people’s taps.

Singapore is expanding its recycling system. 

It will add an extra underground tunnel and a major water reclamation plant to serve the western half of the island, which should be completed by 2025.

Singapore will have spent Sg$10 billion (US$7.4 billion) on upgrading its water treatment infrastructure by the time the expansion is finished. 

One impetus to seek greater self-sufficiency are the city-state’s historically fractious relations with key water source, Malaysia.

The neighbours have had stormy ties since Malaysia ejected Singapore from a short-lived union in 1965, and they have in the past had rows over water supplies.

Stefan Wuertz, a professor of environmental engineering at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, stressed the importance for other countries to treat wastewater more effectively, warning of serious long-term impacts otherwise.

“There is a limited amount of water on the planet,” he told AFP.

“If we were to keep polluting the freshwater, at some stage we would reach the point where… treatment becomes extremely expensive.”