Israel: A Miracle Hatched by Science and Technology

From Tel Aviv the middle-west city in Israel to the north along the beautiful Mediterranean coast till Haifa the north port city is the “Silicon Valley” corridor of unique “future disposition”.

Foreign policy experts Dan Senor and Saul Singer said in the book Start-up Nation that Israeli is the “cultivator of high-tech” and the book also reveals the secrets of the country’s economic miracle: besides patriotism, sense of mission and disaster awareness, the natural curiosity and freedom of Israeli and Jew make Israel a country with high degree of creativity and entrepreneurship in spite of only 8 million of population , scarce natural resources and the turbulent Middle East environment.

In order to deeply understand the ecological miracle that hatched on this land, the reporter went into the Israel embassy and listened to the description from Matan Vilnai, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel to China, about the way of sustainable development motivated by science and technology innovation in Israel.

Historical sites and cities at the east cost of Mediterranean

Israel is close to the Mediterranean at west and desert at east, and the geographical environment of significant difference brings outstanding biodiversity to the country. It is said that there are 2867 kinds of plants and 380 nature protection zones in Israel. Rich natural scenes, mysterious religious and historical sites and modern metropolis show the unique inclusiveness of this land.

Mr. Ambassador said, "When talking about Israel with Chinese, they first think of ‘the Dead Sea’."

The lakeshore of Dead Sea is the lowest point of exposed land on earth with the altitude of -393 meters and is called as "the belly button of the world". It is also the deepest salt water lake in the world. It is because the water contains a lot of minerals that Dead Sea attracts millions of people around the world to come here for having a vocation and recuperation every year and enjoying the wonderful experience of floating on the surface of the sea. But in recent years, Dead Sea faces the constant shrinking of water too. It is said that, the Israel lake research geographic association is measuring the change of water level through the little floats at the center of the sea and hopes to find out the exact reason for the declining water level.

The world’s three main religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam all derive from Israel, so there are lots of famous religious and cultural sites, including the world heritages like Old City of Acre, Old City of Jerusalem and Old City of Jaffa. Mr. Ambassador said, "Many Christians like to visit holy lands of religions in Israel. We specially assign people there to maintain order since holy lands of religions need to keep silent and solemn."

When compared with the devout and solemn religious historic sites, modern cities like Tel Aviv show the advanced economy, science and technology and modern culture of Israel at the east coast of Mediterranean. "Tel Aviv is a very young and vibrant city. Chinese people like to go there. We have arranged Chinese breakfast in hotels where accommodating Chinese people. We’d like to welcome tourists, businessmen and students from China to come to Israel and experience a different life," said Mr. Ambassador.

Mr. Ambassador said, in recent years, more and more Chinese tourists travel in Israel and many Chinese businessmen go there to learn science and technology and seek for business opportunities. What’s more, its outstanding educational resources also attract large number of Chinese students to join in summer camps there. From August 16th to 20th this year, Israel will hold a "World Science Conference-Israel". Students from all over the world (from 17 to 21) will interact with winners of Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize and Fields Prize and other famous scientists. Many Chinese students will also learn the entrepreneurship culture and innovative spirit of Israel.

According to the statistics from the embassy, from January to May this year, Israel has received 18600 Chinese visitors, which increased by 38% compared with last year.

The “water of life” for a country in desert

In Middle East, for each country, 90% of the land locates at desert and the annual per capita water resource is lower than the 1,000 steres of water-shortage line. The Negev Desert in Israel is about 12,000 square kilometers that covers half of the country land. Because of the Mediterranean Climate, the country is in a hot and rainless summer for a long time and a very short cool and rainy winter every year. The annual per capita water coverage of Israelis is less than 400 steres.

The shortage of water resource gives birth to the advanced water science and technology and high-efficient water saving capacity. "Israel has faced with the shortage of water resources for a long time. Therefore, we need to disseminate the water from the sea. And the water resource can never be polluted. So we are very cautious of the limited water resource." said Mr. Ambassador.

With the growth of population and improvement of life standard, Israel once faced great pressure on water supply. But in recent years, it has made great progress in this regard. Abraham Tenne, Director of Sea Water Desalination Department in the National Water Bureau said in an interview with Global Times that, "the government has done detailed work in the following aspects, including water saving and improving water utilization efficiency, promoting underwater purifying level and quality, enhancing effluent disposal capability, doing cycling use of water, improving sea water desalination capacity and reducing cost."

Besides, the water-saving irrigation technique is also widely used in agriculture production as well as in the world.

In 1962, an Israeli farmer found the crops growing better at the leak place of water pipe when watering the crops. The permeation of water into soil at the same spot is good for reducing evaporation, efficient irrigation and controlling the use of water, fertilizer and pesticide. It was largely supported by government promptly. By 50 years’ development, the drip irrigation technology has realized perfect combination of water, fertilizer and irrigation facilities and 90% of agriculture has achieved the integrated technology of water and fertilizer.

According to Mr. Ambassador, Israel is trying to bring its modern agricultural technology to China. "We have set up many cooperative projects with China in modern agricultural technology and we will take the modern agriculture drip irrigation technique to five provinces in northwest China, including Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Gansu and Shanxi. We also carry out cooperation in modern agriculture and advanced technology in Tianjin, Shandong and Jiangsu. The main focus of China-Israel cooperation is science and technology, especially in agricultural part.

Science and technology innovation drives sustainable development

In 2006, when most of the investors flinched at the turmoil Middle East, famous investor Buffett did the investment of the largest amount of money in his life C purchased Israeli Iscar Metalworking Company. It gave him considerable return and made more people pay attention to this country with huge potential.

Pragmatic spirit and idealism both exist in Israeli. Just like what Start-up Nation said, it is because of the worship of questioning and freedom that the country bursts out strong creativity in spite of the only 8 million populations, scarce natural resources and the turmoil Middle East environment. Israel creates ecological miracle in desert through sustainable development motivated by science and technology innovation.

"Innovation is a way of life for Israeli" said Mr. Ambassador, "they are asking questions all the time, no matter you are a government leader, a principle in school, a parent or a teacher. In Israel, everybody has the spirit of skepticism and likes to think".

Creativity, as the national spirit, is in the vein of Israeli and this "natural" life style drives the science and technology creation of the whole nation that the "country of science and technology innovation" moves towards to the front row of sustainable development.

"Israelis are not afraid of failure. You tried and you failed. Then you try another one." said Mr. Ambassador, "Many of the inventions in Israel result from our life of necessity."

Except solving water shortage problem by science and technology, for a long time, Israel has paid attention to the research and development of solar photovoltaic technology. Almost every family use solar water heater. Israel has also invented a series of devices using solar energy, including solar energy distilling apparatus that can extract and purify polluted water and salty water into drinking water, water purifying device, solar energy and tulip environmental protection electric generator, efficient theft-proof solar energy photovoltaic electric generator device and WIFI solar energy tree that can do battery charging.

The outstanding science and technology creative ability profits from its superior education resources. Many business leaders including Bill Gates, the originator of Microsoft, all praised the high-quality education of Israel and its important devotion to economic and social development. According to Mr. Ambassador, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other famous universities have complete ecological and high-tech research centers. They also set up research centers in Peking University and Tsinghua University to carry out cooperation in science and technology innovation.

Mr. Ambassador said, in recent years, the cooperation between Israel and China in science and technology development has improved a lot. "China’s modernization has obtained great achievements, but it caused many environmental problems with the fast economic development. But now China has taken many measures to reduce pollution when developing economy. I believe China can find a way to balance economic development and environmental protection. Israel will support and help China’s sustainable development with our science and technology advantage."

IESM: You started your environmental career early in 1980s. Can you share with us your experience? What about the status of ecological development in Israel back at that time?

Pro.Tal: I moved to Israel on my 20th birthday. My father was an environmental scientist. At the time I thought there were big environmental challenges. So I decided I wanted to get involved [in environmental issues. Originally I went to law school, and I worked for the attorney general. I called it the "Bathtub": a lawyer has an environmental case. He fills the bathtub with all the information he needs to know the case. And then the cases are decided guilty or not guilty, whatever, he pulls up the plug and let all the information fills up again. You need to comprehend. So I did the PHD at Harvard. I studied environmental science. And for a seven years or a decade I was working for NGOs. We have very liberal courts. We can go to court. We can suit this polluter. We can suit the government for not doing enough. That’s what I did for a long time.

In Israel (in 1980s), every time when I talked about the environment and people would say: "This is a luxury, we cannot afford that. We have to survive. We have wars. To build the economy, we don’t have time or resources to deal with the environmental challenges. " Eventually, it became too serious because people were getting sick. And the air quality was getting worse. Rivers were polluted, and people were destroying the animals, the nature, and the biodiversity. People said to themselves: "Wait a second, I am fighting to die for my homeland, and I’m destroying it?" So there was a shift and I was lucky to be part of that wave. So I started my organization. At that time, it was one environmental NGO. It was very large. Now we have maybe 130 or 140 environmental NGOs. We have so many environmental groups because people are all passionate. Before that there’s no ministry of environment. An important stage happened in 1989. So they start working towards that. The civil society became more aggressive.

There’s a theory called Kuznets Curve. It suggests that society can only start dealing with the environment after they have reached a certain level of prosperity. Israel in original years was not a free market. About 1980 they opened things up, and the economy skyrocketed. Israel has very successful high-tech industry. The whole generation is very smart, young, and with entrepreneurship. We have all these interesting inventions like USB and the best GPS. It helps exports. And it’s not polluting. We used to have big textile industry. That was a polluting industry. But it is now gone. The manufacturing industry is getting smaller. Our advantage is human capitals--thinking clearly and creatively.

IESM: What measures has Israel taken to deal with water shortage? How does technology help save water in Israel?

Pro.Tal: There was a time when, all of a sudden, water demand was lower than the past years. It was because the government said "You can’t water your lawns in the day times. You cannot wash your car." And the city governments went to the Supreme Court and said: "this is unfair, all the water you gave to farmers, and we don’t get water." Supreme Court then threw it out. The water authorities said: "what can we do?"-- Call the public: you need to save water because the lake is going dry. We have a super model called Bar Refaeli. She made a water saving campaign. So every man in Israel said: "Well, Bar Refaeli says save water. I won’t take a shower for a month." So we are doing all kinds of things.

The modern agriculture is a good example. We have agriculture technology and irrigation technology. These are achievements we’re starting to see now.

At the 5th anniversary of the foundation of the country, Israelis were asked "what was the number one invention of the country and they almost all said "drip irrigation". "Drip irrigation" is very useful. The trouble is that only 1% percent of Africa is using this. I think everybody should use it. It’s a very simple invention and now it is upgraded that it can be run by computer. Farmers can sit back. You use much less water and you can get much more crops. It should go to places like Africa. We have a special family irrigation instead of using computers and electricity. Now they make special low-tech for Africa. .

Israeli has another invention―desalination equipment. It takes water from the sea, cleans the water and lets the water go to a membrane. Then salt comes out and the water comes through. The equipment is along the coastline. Most of the water people drink comes from the sea. That’s because the desalination price comes down, so today we can make a thousand liters of water for 50 cents (about 3 RMB). We used to bring the water from the north. Now we just take it from the sea, and send it to the desert.

We just signed an agreement with Jordan. Israel will help Jordan build a desalination plant. Jordan will sell half the water to Israel in the South. We will give them the water from our sea in the north. That’s an example of water cooperation.

Actually many of our rivers are still filled with pollutants. And now Palestinians are also discharging pollutants. It flows down the mountain into our streams. So we realize we cannot solve the problems by ourselves. We need regional cooperation.

IESM: Is Israel facing other ecological challenges except for the shortage of natural resources?

Pro.Tal: We have all the immigrants coming to Israel. There were one million in 1950, two million in 1960s and three million in 1970. Last year 7 thousand came to Israel. And then up to 8 million people today, so the country was growing very fast.

China made a very important environmental policy back in 1980s, that is, the one-child policy. And in Israel we need to have one-child policy now, I think. But I will do in a different way, maybe by giving economic incentives for people in small families. There’s a famous saying: One environmental problem that is easier to solve with fewer people and is hard to solve with more people. Take climate change as an example, China is doing amazing things like improving energy efficiency and using solar energy, and yet emissions of greenhouse gas are still high because population is still going up.

But population is not a popular topic to talk about in Israel because our people had a traumatic time in WWII, and we are just finishing to a place. So you start talking about stabilizing population, people would think our nation is still trying to restore its former size, so that makes it much more difficult. So if we want 15 million people but not 30 million people, we must start now to slow down. That’s my big challenge in life, very big challenge. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is three children per family in Israel. That’s the average. In some religious groups, TFR is six and half, seven. We have ten children per family in 1960, the highest in the world. But now they are down to close to 3.

IESM: How is Israel taking advantage of the considerable sunlight available for solar energy?

Pro.Tal: In 1974, somebody, a hero, in the Ministry of Interior in Israel and I don’t know who when I was a little boy then. And he cites, make a rule--nobody can build a building unless we put passive solar heating on the roof. This is a law. Israel became number one in the world to make passive solar water heating. We saved 3% electricity. But since that time, we have nothing in terms of public policy. We export all the solar facilities in Spain and California. But where’re they in Israel? We have only 2% solar energy.

When Israel was very young, in 1949-1950, people had no money. They got five eggs a week. And what did the former Prime Minister Ben-Gurion say? "People need to go out and plant trees. We must leave a better country for the next generation." Ben-Gurion is like a milestone for our country. Like George Washington, he is the founder. If he were the Prime Minister, Israel would be a carbon neutral nation. Israel has the resources. Tomorrow we could be 100% solar. So it’s a question of vision.

As a Jewish state, we’d like to be the light of the nations. We want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Israel still needs to do more for its sustainable development. But compared to our neighbors we are doing great.

IESM: Israel enjoys excellent educational resources. What about ecological education in Israel?

Pro.Tal: I’ll tell you a story for example. One day I was washing dishes in my house. My daughter was at the age of seven at that time. And she said: "Dad, what are you doing?" I said: "I am washing dishes." She said: "You don’t understand. They told us in school. You cannot wash your dishes with water running in the sink because it’ll waste the water. You have to put the water in a bowl and then you did the plates and it will save water." I said this was the happiest day in my life. My daughter gets the idea from the school education. She learned something important. She’s caring about it. They try to teach them that we live in a spaceship that is limited with resources, that we need to share, and we have to use them as little as possible. The future generation is very important.

I did studies about environmental literacy five years ago with my graduate students. There’re two different areas of environmental education. Former education―that takes place in the classroom. And it integrated environmental knowledge into the courses. The informal education takes place out of the classroom. We have something in Israel called "youth movements". It’s like scouts. After school, kids go and they are outside by themselves. My daughter is 15, and she is in charge of children who are eight and nine. They go hiking and they do activities and they learn about identity, and they learn who they are and they try to improve society. This is very much powerful environmental message. In the summer for three weeks, the high school kids go camping outside. They are living close to the land, getting out of the city and getting away from the shopping mall and the consumer culture. That’s really important. But it is sad because children in many countries are now losing the connection with the natural world.

For example, in United States, the children there never go outdoors. Because, on the one hand, there’s television with 150 stations on the cable, and then they have the Internet. And most of parents are terrified about personal security like being kidnapped. They are suffocating them. The little boys in particular are not designed to sit inside the living room and watch TV. They supposed to run outside, and scrape their knees, and fight. So in United States today, they sell more drugs they give for hyperactivity than antibiotics. Study found, children living in crime areas and boys in never left the city they came back transformed after sending them hiking in the mountains for two weeks. So we have to remember how important the nature is. Nature is not just gave the service in terms of cleaning the air, cleaning the water… but for our spirit. We cannot live without the nature and the creatures.

We need to teach our children what is really important. And that’s the relationship with other people, and the relationship with the earth. Consumption is like a drug, you always need more and more. It never ends.

Like my daughters, they are outdoors. They grow up that way. Not just because of me. It’s because of the society. And another big thing, when they turn eighteen, everybody goes to the army. You have to use guns and run up and down the hills, use tanks and bombard. This happens outside. So you’ll see all the stars at night. Kids now don’t see stars! Who will be the next Shakespeare if they cannot see the stars for inspiration? Who will be the next Confucius to come up new philosophy? Or Gamov would have not been able to see the modern universe. This is the tragedy of our age. We need nature. I think we do a better job in this in Israel than most countries do, but still not good enough.

IESM: What about the recent development of some global ecological challenges such as the climate change? How do people in Israel understand these common challenges we are facing?

Pro.Tal: I recommend you a book. It won a Pulitzer Prize this year. It’s called the Six Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert. I like her book so much. This is a book about why our nature’s disappearing that is very discouraging. There were five big extinctions in history. The most recent one was the distinction of dinosaurs. Now we are facing a sixth extinction. And one of the reasons is the climate change. During the sixth max extinction, thousands and thousands of species are disappearing. Many people may not know about this.

Today the ocean is 30% higher acidity than it was in 1880. CO2 goes up in the atmosphere. It is absorbed by the ocean. And CO2 will double by 2050. At that time, ocean acidity will go up 150%. It will kill one quarter of everything in the ocean. So there won’t be fish. This is what’s happening.

There is no reason to destroy the planet for short term economic returns. We need to redefine economic progress. And not only defined by the GNP will be higher or lower. Why do I care a big GNP if I can’t breathe the air? We have to rethink about what we want and our priority.

There’re two different opposing views in Israel. One is we are so small, doesn’t really matter what we do. The other one is that, we must be an example even though we are small. We have so many Nobel Prize winners. If we can use that advantage of human capital, then we can make a contribution. But we are all in this together.

IESM: Are there any other lessons we can learn from Israel regarding its experience in sustainable development?

Pro.Tal: I always think of the slogan: "Think globally and act locally". People always have to realize they are responsible. The pollution profile in Israel has changed. We used to say: "there’s big air pollution from electric plant. There’re chemical pollutants jumping into ocean." Ministry of Environment is regulating, and we see the profile is changed. We see the enemy. It is us. There’re many small polluters, like cars can cause air pollution. So getting on a bicycle, or taking the subway. That is a big part of the solution. Who is the biggest polluter of the water today, it’s the farmers.

So it’s an individual thing. Everybody has to think about their own ecological footprint. How to make it smaller and to make room for the next generation? And then I think it comes down to values. So we try to teach people what needs to be done. And we need to do more. I pray to see the day when we make peace and instead of making a war against the neighbors or defending neighbors, we’ll make the war to save the environment. I hope to see the day to come.