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Bridge over troubled
waters
By Tony Sitathan
With
Malaysia threatening to not honor an agreement to increase
its water supply to Singapore after 2061, the tiny
island state that relies on more than half of its daily
water supply from Malaysia has finally decided to rely
on alternative sources of water for both industrial use
and personal consumption. Singapore consumes as much as
1.2 million cubic meters of water daily.
Water
has become the latest political hotbed of contention
between Malaysia and Singapore. Despite all their
differences, both countries share similar cultural roots
and history, but over time they have turned out to be
keen adversaries and sparring partners. The water-rights
issue certainly tests their mettle.
While
Malaysia has an ongoing agreement, signed in 1961, to
supply Singapore with water until 2011, and a second
agreement is due to be signed extending water provision
a further 50 years, Malaysia has decided to raise its
prices by offering a new water supply proposal that is
calculated on future market prices. The country rejected
an offer from Singapore to charge at least 20 times the
current prices it charges.
Under the current
long-term deal, the state of Johore in Malaysia sells
water to Singapore at 3 Malaysian sen per 1,000 Imperial
gallons (about 1.75 US cents per 10,000 liters).
Singapore treats the water and supplies it back to
Malaysia at 50 sen per 100 gallons (about 29 cents per
1,000 liters). According to Johore, Malaysia has water
treatment plants capable of treating raw water;
therefore, there is no necessity for Singapore to play a
role in selling treated water back to Johore. It's an
argument that can be well understood by Singapore, since
it stands to gain from the water transaction.
"However, what is a sore point of contention for
Singapore has been repeated attempts by Malaysia to bind
its water agreement with several differing issues that
stretch from land reclamation, airspace violation,
construction of immigration facilities, withheld pension
savings [and also] the development of railway land,"
maintains Joseph Lee, a lawyer in private practice in
Singapore.
The plan by Malaysia to raise water
prices, although rational, seems strung together like
dominoes, linking one issue to the other. The Singapore
government has therefore agreed to look upon the
water-rights issue as an entire package affecting a host
of other variables as well. But treating the issue as a
package will mean any delays in any one of the areas of
discussion will lead to a delay in discussion of the
water-rights issue.
There is no understating the
importance of water. Global consumption of water is
doubling every 20 years; this is more than twice the
rate of human population growth. According to a report
from the US National Intelligence Council, a group that
reports to the Central Intelligence Agency, water will
become the main resource-scarcity problem by 2015. The
report maintains that the instability created by water
shortages would impact not only the United States, but
the world as well.
Singapore, which supplies
less than a quarter of its internal requirement of
water, depends on external supplies for its survival.
Although Singapore is in a position to wait for a
consensus on the Malaysian side, the present political
climate in Malaysia may not be conducive to finding a
speedy solution.
Countless meetings have already
taken place. So far there has been little concrete
progress despite intervention by the Senior Minister Lee
Kuan Yew, who helped to structure the 2011 and the 2061
water deals. Singapore has asked for more than its
allocated quota (350 million gallons, or about 1.59
billion liters, per day) after 2061, based on its
increased water consumption pattern in the future. But
Malaysia refuses to budge and prefers to deal with the
rest of the outstanding issues with Singapore before
agreeing to increase its water supply.
Malaysia
uses the water-rights issue as a bargaining chip to
coerce Singapore in its ongoing dialogue sessions, as
well as to influence its outcome. Singapore has found
that hard to swallow. S Jayakumar, the minister of
foreign affairs, summed it up in an open letter to
parliament: "There was a general feeling that anything
short of accepting and abiding by the Malaysian concerns
was deemed to be insensitivity on our part towards our
neighbors. In essence, we were asked to accept a
zero-sum fait accompli" that cannot be changed,
he said.
He also pointed out what Mahathir
Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, said earlier:
"We can skin a cat in many ways. To skin Singapore,
there is not just one method." Despite such remarks
bordering on confrontational policies, S Jayakumar said
that Singapore remains keen on being Malaysia's close
working partner. "We seek a cooperative relationship
based on mutual benefit and mutual respect. Not one
based on emotion or historical baggage," he said.
Singapore considers water strategic to its
growth, and by not having a firm agreement in place
concerning the commodity, it will put itself in danger
of being open to political hijacking. "Depending on
another country, no matter how close, for something as
essential as water exposes the country to strategic
risk. And the higher the dependency, the higher the risk
level," said Michael Jennings, the principal director of
Axiom Economic Consulting based in Hong Kong.
According to Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister
of Singapore, the wisest option would be to explore a
different approach to water supply. "I do not want our
relations with Malaysia to be always strained by this
issue. It is not healthy for our two countries to be
always locked in dispute. It is unwise to allow this one
issue to sour bilateral relations at all levels and on
all fronts," he said.
In order to do this,
Singapore is taking steps to increase its own long-term
water self-sufficiency while reducing its reliance on
Malaysia.
One of the arrangements, completed as
early as 1991, involved Singapore and Indonesia entering
into a formal agreement to pursue a joint water project
in Indonesia's Riau province. Singapore will be
permitted to import up to 4.5 million cubic meters of
water daily for one century; there are plans to draw
water from Indonesia as early as 2005, through undersea
pipelines.
Besides looking at Indonesia, the
Public Utilities Board (PUB), the water governing body
in Singapore, has a plan to build desalination plants to
convert sea water to drinkable water. The first
desalination plant will be completed in 2003 at the cost
US$570 million. It will provide 136 million liters of
water a day. However, one drawback is the high expense
of desalinated water, five to eight times as much as
treated water.
Another strategy is to treat
wastewater. By using something called membrane
technology, wastewater is transformed into drinking
water. Called NEWater, it meets international
drinking-water standards. It was also found to be
suitable for use by industries which require pure water,
especially for wafer fabrication and semiconductor
production. There are currently two reclamation plants
being built and each plant produces close to 23 million
liters of water per day.
So can Singapore
survive even if Malaysia decides to go against the grain
and terminate its existing water contracts with
Singapore?
According to a report from the
Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, founded by
the Nanyang Technological University, even a premature
termination of the Malaysian water links will not
jeopardize Singapore's survivability, nor will it be
sufficient to trigger war between the two countries. It
offered two basic scenarios.
If a water cutoff
happens after 2010, when the construction of its planned
desalination and recycling plants is completed,
Singapore will have a comfortable volume of reserves to
sustain its water needs independently. If a water cutoff
occurs before 2010, the reserves in Singapore's
reservoirs, the existing water-catchment network and
wastewater-recycling plants, and water from
international market including the implementation of
water rationing, should be able to sustain its water
needs indefinitely.
According to the PUB, 30
million gallons (136 million liters) of desalination
water per day will be ready for supply by 2005 while
industrial water, NEWater and desalination water could
account for as much as 25 percent of Singapore's water
supply by 2010.
But all these intense efforts by
Singapore to be self-sufficient in its water supply and
its current poor relations with Malaysia could well be
water under the bridge once Abdullah Badawi, next in
line to be prime minister of Malaysia, takes the helm.
He might decide that the best interests of Malaysia will
be better served by using water as an expensive export
commodity instead of a bargaining chip.
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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