Countries conserve water in remarkably different ways, shaped by their geography, climate, and how desperate the need has become. Desert nations turn seawater into drinking water. Tropical city-states recycle every drop of sewage. Fog-draped coastal mountains yield fresh water from the air itself. Here’s how specific countries tackle water scarcity with techniques suited to their unique challenges.
Israel: Drip Irrigation and Wastewater Recycling
Israel recycles 86% of its sewage, and that treated wastewater now supplies half of the country’s irrigation water. No other nation comes close to that reuse rate. The strategy lets Israel maintain productive agriculture in a region that receives little rainfall, effectively doubling the useful life of every liter that enters the system.
The other half of Israel’s approach is drip irrigation, a technology the country pioneered and adopted widely. Rather than flooding fields or spraying water into the air where much of it evaporates, drip systems deliver small, precise amounts directly to plant roots through networks of tubes and emitters. The combination of recycled water and drip delivery has driven a 1,600% increase in the value of produce grown by Israeli farmers over the past 65 years, turning arid land into one of the world’s most water-efficient agricultural sectors.
Singapore: Four National Taps
Singapore has almost no natural freshwater, so the city-state engineered a diversified supply called the “Four National Taps”: imported water from Malaysia, captured stormwater, desalinated seawater, and NEWater, which is the country’s brand name for highly treated recycled wastewater.
NEWater is the centerpiece. Singapore’s recycling plants can produce 760,000 cubic meters per day, covering nearly 40% of the country’s total water demand. Most of that recycled water goes to industrial users like semiconductor factories and power plants, preserving the cleaner potable supply for household taps. Stormwater capture is equally ambitious: two-thirds of Singapore’s land area functions as a water catchment, channeling rain through a network of drains, canals, and reservoirs that feed the drinking supply.
Saudi Arabia: Large-Scale Desalination
Desalination provides about 70% of Saudi Arabia’s domestic drinking water, making it the world’s largest producer of desalinated water. The country operates dozens of plants along its Red Sea and Persian Gulf coasts that remove salt from seawater using reverse osmosis membranes or thermal distillation. This infrastructure is essential in a nation where surface freshwater is virtually nonexistent and underground aquifers are being drawn down faster than they recharge.
The process is energy-intensive, and the Saudi government has identified desalination as one of six key sectors where it aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Newer reverse osmosis plants use significantly less energy than the older thermal methods, and some facilities are beginning to pair with solar power to offset their carbon footprint.
Namibia: Drinking Water From Sewage
Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, has been converting sewage directly into drinking water since 1968, making it the first city in the world to do so at scale. The approach is called direct potable reuse: treated wastewater goes straight into the drinking supply within 24 hours, with no intermediate step like pumping it into a reservoir first.
The New Goreangab Wastewater Reclamation Plant, which replaced the original facility in 2002, runs incoming sewage through a multi-barrier treatment sequence. Each stage targets different contaminants. Ozonation breaks down organic compounds and kills pathogens. Activated carbon absorption removes chemicals that cause taste and odor problems. Membrane filtration catches anything that slipped through earlier steps. The system is designed so that at least two, and often three or more, independent removal processes stand between raw sewage and the tap. For a landlocked, arid city with few alternatives, this technology has been a lifeline for decades.
Australia: Per-Person Water Targets
Melbourne’s approach to conservation leans heavily on changing household behavior. The city runs a program called Target 150, which asks residents to keep their daily water use at or below 150 liters per person. That’s roughly 40 gallons, enough for a short shower, a load of laundry, cooking, and drinking, but not much room for watering a large lawn or filling a pool.
Residents can check their progress by looking at the daily water use figure printed on their water bill. In the 2021-22 period, Melbourne’s average residential use was 164 liters per person per day, slightly above the target and up from 159 liters the year before. The program sits alongside mandatory water restrictions that kick in during drought, including limits on garden watering days, bans on hosing driveways, and requirements for trigger nozzles on hoses. Australia also invested heavily in desalination plants and recycled water infrastructure during the Millennium Drought of 2001-2009, giving cities backup supplies when rainfall fails.
China: Sponge Cities
China launched its Sponge City program to tackle a paradox common in rapidly urbanized areas: cities that flood during rainstorms but face water shortages the rest of the year. Conventional concrete and asphalt send rainwater rushing into storm drains and out to sea. Sponge City design does the opposite, absorbing rainfall where it lands so it can be stored, filtered, and reused.
The program combines three layered systems. At the surface level, low-impact development features like permeable pavements, bioretention cells (essentially landscaped depressions that filter runoff through soil and gravel), and rain gardens slow water down and let it soak into the ground. Below that, a conventional pipeline drainage system handles normal flow. A third system manages excessive stormwater during heavy events, routing overflow into multifunctional ponds and wetlands rather than letting it cause flooding. One project in Jiangmen used a gravel contact oxidation system to clean polluted runoff while also reducing the amount of excavation needed during construction. Dozens of Chinese cities are now piloting or expanding these designs.
Chile and Morocco: Fog Harvesting
In the coastal deserts of Chile and the mountains of Morocco, communities pull drinking water directly from fog. Large mesh panels, typically made of polyethylene netting stretched between posts on ridgelines, intercept fog droplets carried by wind. The water condenses on the mesh, drips into a gutter, and flows by gravity into storage tanks.
Yields vary enormously depending on altitude, proximity to the coast, and season. In Chile’s Atacama Desert, measurements at the town of El Tofo averaged 3.3 liters per square meter of mesh per day over a seven-year study, peaking at 5.2 liters in spring and summer and dropping to 1 liter in winter. Coastal sites near Iquique at 850 meters elevation averaged 8.5 liters per square meter daily. Inland and lower-altitude sites produced far less, sometimes under half a liter. A single large fog collector with 40 to 90 square meters of mesh can supply enough water for a small household, making this a practical solution for remote villages that have no access to piped water or wells.
India: Mandatory Rainwater Harvesting
India has taken a regulatory approach, with multiple states and cities legally requiring rainwater harvesting systems on buildings. Delhi mandates rooftop rainwater harvesting for any building with a footprint of 100 square meters or more. Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, implemented similar laws after a severe water crisis and saw groundwater levels measurably recover within a few years. Municipal building codes across many Indian states now require all new and existing buildings to include harvesting infrastructure.
A typical rooftop system collects rain from the building’s roof, filters out debris, and directs the water either into a storage tank for direct use or into a recharge pit that feeds it back into the underground aquifer. The systems are relatively low-cost and low-tech, which makes them feasible even for smaller residential buildings. In a country where monsoon rains deliver most of the year’s water in just a few months, capturing that rainfall before it runs off is one of the most effective ways to stretch the supply through dry seasons.
The Netherlands: Making Room for Rivers
The Netherlands, famous for holding back water with dikes, reversed course with its Room for the River program. Instead of building dikes higher, the government implemented over 30 site-specific projects that gave rivers more space to spread out during high flows. Techniques include setting dikes further back from riverbanks, lowering floodplains by excavating soil, reconnecting old side channels, and removing bank defenses that had narrowed river corridors.
The result is increased flood conveyance capacity without taller barriers. But the program also serves conservation goals. Wider floodplains create wetland habitats that store water during wet periods and release it slowly, improving both biodiversity and water availability during drier months. These restored areas also help filter pollutants, improving the quality of water that eventually enters the supply system.
United States: Paying Residents to Remove Lawns
In the arid American Southwest, cities are paying homeowners to rip out water-hungry grass and replace it with desert-adapted landscaping, a practice called xeriscaping. Mesa, Arizona, offers residents up to $4,200 to convert their lawns. The rebate scales with the amount of grass removed: $2,000 for 500 to 999 square feet, $3,000 for 1,000 to 1,499 square feet, and $4,000 for 1,500 square feet or more. Homeowners who plant qualifying shade trees can earn an extra $100 to $200 on top of that.
Similar programs run across the region. Las Vegas has paid out hundreds of millions in turf removal rebates over the past two decades, and California’s water agencies have offered comparable incentives during drought years. The logic is straightforward: outdoor irrigation accounts for roughly half of residential water use in these climates, and a xeriscaped yard with gravel, native plants, and drip irrigation uses a fraction of what a traditional lawn requires. The upfront rebate cost pays for itself quickly in reduced demand on strained reservoirs and aquifers.