Pretensions has been a fan of the S'pore Science Centre's series of Science in the Cafe talks ever since a colleague told her about them a year ago. Unfortunately, she can't always fit them in her schedule. However, water has always been a topic of interest to P, since she lives on an island with very little access to fresh water and a continuing cross-strait quarrel with a neighbouring water-supplying nation. :-)

This particular Science in the Cafe talk featured 2 speakers who compared and contrasted the water situation in two very small nation-states, Singapore and Monaco. Discussing the local (Singapore) situation was Dr Liong Shie-Yui from the Tropical Marine Science Institute, while A/P Philippe Gourbesville of the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis spoke about the unique problems faced by the tiny and mountainous Monaco.

The two speakers had come together because of the HydroAsia project,  a 5-nation (Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and China) collaborative project aimed at developing concepts, tools, and good practices for sustainable water management in Asia. It's a very university student-oriented project and hopes to foster a working relationship between the student population at participating universities and institutes, while teaching them about hydrology and hydroengineering. Philippe's visit and the talk was sponsored by the French embassy in Singapore as part of their science and technology collaborative platform, although as Philippe was keen to emphasise, Monaco is NOT part of France.

What both speakers discussed was how to deal with expanding urban populations and how to provide such urban populations with clean and safe water. Both countries are beginning to face the problems of "hyper-urbanisation& quot; ie very high population densities. Monaco eg has the distinction of being the world's most densely populated sovereign nation, with 16,754 people crowded into 1 square km (2005 data). Singapore is just behind Monaco, as the world's third most densely populated nation (6,489 persons per square km).

By 2015, it is predicted that the world will have 516 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants which is going to cause serious logistical problems with transport, water supply and waste disposal.

Shie-Yui spoke about his work on the Marina barrage, which is a dam being built in the south of Singapore at the mouth of the Marina Channel. It will turn what is now Marina Bay into a freshwater lake to increase Singapore's water supply, help prevent flooding (set of pumps and locks to regulate levels) and hopefully be a new site for water sports. As P alluded to in the introductory paragraph,  Singapore has only 4 sources of water, local cachement (ie rainfall and urban runoff into reservoirs), water imported from Malaysia (in an agreement that ends in 2061), recycled or NEWater and desalinated water. Currently 30% of Singapore's water is bought from neighbouring Johore and the Singapore govenment intends to reduce and eventually eliminate this import. The Marina barrage project is obviously intended to help with this as it will form a freshwater lake of about 2 square km containing about 9 million litres of water. The Marina reservoir will eventually connect up to the existing Lower Pierce reservoir with pumps and locks to regulate water flows in the event of sudden tropical storm surges.

The Marina barrage project is intended to be a pilot one, with extensions planned to the other 14 bays around the Singapoe coastline if it is successful. P questioned the speaker about sea-level rise in the event of global warming and it came out that the 15 barrages around the country might eventually be able to keep the island dry in the event of a catastrophic sea-level rise, much as the Netherlands sea-dykes protect it. Singapore's seas have lost quite a bit of their biodiversity due to extensive land-reclamation works around the coast, but some coral reefs remain as do many sea-horse species and these would be threatened by increased urban run-off unless the barrage project(s) succeed, so there is a conservation component to the project as well. 

In contrast, Monaco's coastline is famous for sea grass beds and extensive coral reefs harbouring thousand of Mediterranean species. The tiny nation-state has only 2 square km of usable land but a total of 76 km of ocean. It's famously beautiful rugged hills preclude the building of super-skyscrapers, with a maximum of 15 stories being advisable, in the event of earthquake or landslides. Citizens of Monaco have always been proud of their marine life and marine national parks and have even gone to the extent of building artificial coral reefs to encourage a thriving marine environment. However, due to the rediculous urban density in Monaco, there has always been a huge amount of pressue to extend the city into the sea.

In 2002-2005, Monaco undertook the enormous expense of installing a giant floating pier for luxury cruise liners to dock. It was important that the huge extension to the coastline not impede the coastal current that enables the seeding of corals and the delivery of good quality water to take place, hence it wa secured to the seabed only by a 700-tonne steel stirrup and several sea-anchors. Currently Monaco is holding a competition to build a floating coastal city. Several huge architectural/e ngineering consortia are preparing proposals for the floating city, with a scientific committe and the Prince of Monaco selecting the winning bid (which will be announced by the beginning of next year). The project must solve the existing urban population problems but have zero environmental impact, therefore no urban runoff is allowed ie all water used by the community must somehow be collected. 

Doing some post-talk web research, P found the following image of the Lilypad, a futuristic floating city by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut, that, according to CNN, may be one of the contenders for Monaco's coastline. Talk about Blade-Runner!

P will be tracking these two projects with interest and she hopes that Singapore will take a page from Monaco's book in terms of care for the marine environment!