In many huge cities such as Mexico City, Bangkok and Jakarta, land is sinking as more groundwater is withdrawn to serve the water needs of growing populations than can't be replenished by rainfall. Competition is heating up between countries, between different users within an area, and between man and nature. The Wealth A drive through Israel and the West Bank reveals two very different scenarios of our relationship with water in the coming half century. In Israel, you can see evidence of man's ingenuity with living in a brutally parched landscape. Rows of orange trees and vegetable plants are irrigated with recycled wastewater from the cities.
Seawater irrigates varieties of cotton and tomato plants that thrive on salty water.
Most impressive, Israeli officials, while proud of their country's success at realizing the Zionist dream of making the desert bloom, recognize that it's unsustainable in the long run. They reportedly plan to transfer more than a third of agriculture's freshwater to cities, using income from the growing industrial sector to import more of the nation's food. But 50 miles away in the West Bank, a different picture emerges. Many Palestinians lack running water, so they have to buy their water from trucks or capture in cisterns the little rainwater that falls. Although they are sitting on top of the West Bank aquifer, which supplies 25 percent of Israel's water, they are forbidden by Israeli authorities to drill wells to tap the aquifer.