In April, Israel was a Country Partner for the India Water Week in New Delhi. We know how Israel has developed technology to create water from air, transforming sea water to drinking water, using the same drop of water twice. Please talk us through this phenomenal breakthrough pioneered by your scientists…

The India Water Week concluded with an impressive ceremony. But more than the ceremony we were impressed with the words spoken by the leadership of India. I was very impressed to hear what President of India said, by what the Water Resources Minister had to say, and what the Minister of Railways said. The Indian President congratulated the technologists and scientists of the Israeli Government for their achievement in the field of water, and their perennial quest to use water in a more efficient way. Our country does not enjoy plentiful of water resources, suffers from poor amount of annual rainfall, lacks underground water resources that many other countries have. When we got our independence, just like in other fields, out of necessity our country had to begin things from scratch. We had to raise a new health system, a modern education system, what we’d call our main development goals. But in a micro place called Israel, we were able to stay focused, and achieve our goals. We did so out of necessity. Our scientists took it as a priority to overcome our water scarcity, and pioneered many technological feats including in the treatment of water, its reuse, recycling, desalination, management. My generation was brought up with the dire need to save water. Every morning on radio we were reminded not to waste water at any cost. There was a lot of public awareness on using water sparingly and thoughtfully. It was a combination of science, policy and discipline that helped us overcome our shortage. But then, few years ago, a national water crisis hit us once more----it was the culmination of an ongoing crisis with several drought years taking their toll. All of a sudden, we had to fall back once again on technologies we had invented ourselves. These days, Israel is not suffering from any water scarcity. We have applied our technology to reuse, desalinate and recycle water. We use every drop thoughtfully and pioneered the concept of more crop per drop.