2003 Australia-Israel Hawke Lecture
Water Wise: Learning from the Israeli Experience
with Dr Alon Tal, international environmental and water policy expert
Thursday 30 October 2003
Summary
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Israel's experience with water management is characterized by remarkable
successes and abysmal failures.
A nation that leads the world in irrigation techniques and desalination has
also salinized aquifers and severely contaminated its streams and rivers.
Because of its modest dimensions, the country has had to address water
scarcity issues for some time that only now find their way to the Australian
agenda. Given the competing claims for water with its neighbours, and since
water issues have always held geopolitical dimensions – this adds another
dimension to Water issues. Dr Tal’s talk will review some of the major
lessons learned during Israel's intense 55 years of hydrological history,
from the perspective of politics, policy and technology and the universal
lessons the experience holds for reaching a more environmentally sustainable
future.
Dr
Alon Tal
Alon Tal has undergraduate degrees in Political Science and economics
From the University of North Carolina and a Law Degree from the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. He completed his Masters and doctorate in
environmental policy and science at the Harvard School of Public Health
where his dissertation research evaluated efforts to reduce agricultural
sources of water pollution.
Dr Tal's career has been a balance between academia and public interest
groups, with faculty appointments at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities and
for nine years an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University.
He was also the founding director of the Israel Union for Environmental
Defense, a public interest law group and is presently chairman of Life and
Environment, an umbrella group for eighty environmental organizations in
Israel. In 1996, Dr. Tal founded the Arava Institute for Environmental
Studies, a graduate studies center in which Israeli, Jordanian and
Palestinian students join environmentalists from around the world in an
advanced interdisciplinary research program.
He has served as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and Israel's Ministry of Environment.
His present research focuses on water policy and legislation where he
recently chaired an inter-ministerial commission that proposed several
amendments to Israel’s water law.
Dr Tal was also recently appointed to the board of Directors of the Keren
Kayemeth Le’Israel – The Jewish National Fund – an organisation that was
founded in 1901 and that is today one of the most influential and important
environmental organisations in Israel.
Dr Tal’s most recent book, “Pollution in a Promised Land, an Environmental
History of Israel” was published by the University of California Press last
year.
Alon is currently on sabbatical in New Zealand where he is writing a book on
the great environmental speechs of the world. He retains his other positions
as member of the KKL Board; Director of the Arava Institute; Chairman of the
umbrella organisation of environmental organisations etc.