Underscoring the importance Israel has always placed on its water sector is its prioritization over other key infrastructure sectors.
By 2014, the same year California declared a state of emergency while reckoning with its region’s worst drought in 1,200 years, Israel became a water-surplus nation, able to export water to neighboring Jordan and Palestinian territories.
“I think in order to solve the crisis, the people of the world need to work together, and a country like Israel needs to be brought into that discussion more and more because of Israel’s vast experience,” Micah Smith, director of “Sustainable Nation,” a new Israeli documentary that follows three Israelis who are bringing sustainable water solutions to an increasingly thirsty planet using solutions developed in Israel, said in an interview.
“South Africa is the negative example in all this,” Smith said, referencing the country’s refusals to accept Israeli aid in the face of its water crisis.
“It’s tragic to see that people are putting lives at risk rather than bringing people together to solve the world’s water problems,” Smith said.
Smith said he made “Sustainable Nation” to tell Israel’s water story, one that people the world over can learn from.
Sivan Yaari, CEO of Innovation: Africa, an Israeli NGO, is one of them.
Her organization has brought solar-powered water pumps to hundreds of rural African villages.
Of her work, Yaari says in the film, “it’s still so small compared to the need.” Eli Cohen, also profiled in the film, is a prolific aquatic farmer trying to bring his revolutionary natural filtration methods to India.
The movie is also a way to show places like California that culture can be shifted as well.” “Sustainable Nation” will have a private screening in Los Angeles on Nov. 12.