Dan Zaslavsky
Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

The predicament of the arid zone is its dry and hot air. The question that we have to put before ourselves is not how to import resoroes mto the arid zone but rather:

"How to turn the predicament of the arid zone, the hot and dry air into its asset?" We have been trying to do just that in the Technion, Isreal's Institute of Technology, starting in late 1982. The two major outcomes are:

1. We can use the hot and dry air to produos electricity by a technology called "Energy Towers" or "Aero-Hydro-Electric Power Station".

2. It has been demonstrated that in association with the "Energy Towers", it is possible to desalinate sea water using Reverse Osmosis at a cost nearly half of today's cost.

The principle of producing electricity is to build a tall and large diameter vertical shaft. Water is to be sprayed at the top opening; part of the water is evaporated and cools the air. The oooled air is heavier and it falls down andoarnes out at opemngs at the shaft's bottom. On-route, the air moves turbines that pooduce electricity. This relatively simple principle was worked out after many years and a tremendous amount of work to perfect the technology was done. Thus, the projected costs of electricity are competitive with electricity prices from conventional power stations with coal, and even with natural gas.

The fact that the energy is of clean renewable souroe adds considerable strategic and economic advantages. There are some 12 different added benefits that will make the technology quite competitive economically.

The potential in Israel is to produce all its electricity and all its water and more at competitive costs. The world potential is tens of times more than the world consumption.

The above is one example for providing a solution that could change the prernises. There have been other such break-through., such as: increasing the crop yield per cubic meter by a factor of 4.5; another one was the pulse irrgation which turns sandy and rocky soils into highly fertile soils.

Resolving conflicts on water in arid lands will not oome from abstract-economic models that suggests redistribution of the resources. It will come only in two ways:

1. Better management;
2. Addition of water in a sustainable manner.