Kingdom, Japan can work together on water resilience

'And We made from water every living thing.' — Qur'an 21:30 The Qur'an's account of water is both elemental and profound. Water is not described merely as a resource required by life, but as the origin from which every living thing was made. Long before it became a concern of infrastructure, markets or national security, it was understood as a condition of existence itself. That understanding should influence how we govern it. A disruption in water does not remain confined to water. It travels rapidly into health, food, energy, industry and the life of cities. Water may be administered as a sector, but it cannot be secured through sectoral thinking alone. This makes water one of the clearest practical tests of comprehensive resilience. In an earlier article, I proposed comprehensive resilience as a possible new horizon for Saudi–Japanese relations. The concept responds to a defining contradiction of our age. The world has become more interconnected, yet many of the systems connecting it remain vulnerable to shocks they were designed neither to anticipate nor absorb. The technological achievement is notable Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr Comprehensive resilience asks whether our societies retain the capacity to serve essential human purposes when familiar assumptions fail. It joins infrastructure to institutions, technology to human judgment, and preparedness to the ability to learn and adapt. Water gives that larger idea practical form. For Saudi Arabia, water has always been strategic. Scarcity is part of the Kingdom's natural condition, and meeting it has demanded sustained national commitment. Yet the present transformation reaches beyond producing greater volumes of desalinated water. The Kingdom is increasingly connecting water to renewable energy, food security, environmental protection, advanced manufacturing, research, and the development of national capability. This is an important shift. It moves the question from how much water can be produced toward how intelligently the entire water system can be designed. Research at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology offers a compelling example. Conventional desalination for agriculture often removes nearly everything from water, including nutrients that must later be restored. KAUST researchers are exploring more selective approaches: treating water according to the requirements of particular crops, removing what is harmful while retaining what is useful. Among the technologies being studied is fertilizer-driven forward osmosis, in which liquid fertilizer contributes to the treatment process while producing water suited to irrigation. Other work combines nonconventional water sources, wastewater reuse, controlled-environment agriculture and the recovery of value from brine. The significance lies not in any single technology, some of which remain under development. It lies in the joining of questions previously addressed apart. Water treatment becomes connected to crop productivity, energy use, food security, rural development and the circular economy. This is comprehensive resilience beginning to appear not as a theory, but as a different way of organizing innovation. Japan brings another dimension. Its experience has been shaped less by aridity than by repeated exposure to earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and the sudden failure of essential infrastructure. From this has emerged an exacting culture of maintenance, efficiency and restoration. More recently, Japan has begun to challenge an assumption long embedded in modern infrastructure: that resilience depends principally on protecting large centralized networks. After the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake, compact Japanese water-recycling systems were deployed where conventional supplies had been interrupted. These systems could recover more than 98 percent of wastewater on site. A unit capable of being installed by two people in about 15 minutes reduced the water required to provide showers for 100 people from about 5,000 liters to around 100. The technological achievement is notable. The governing idea behind it is more consequential. Digital controls enabled people in evacuation centers and medical facilities to operate the systems without depending constantly on scarce specialists. Resilience was achieved not only by restoring supply from the center, but also by placing a measure of capability close to those who needed it. This suggests a principle with wider application. Large networks will remain indispensable, particularly in major cities. But resilient systems may increasingly combine national scale with distributed capacity: strong central infrastructure supported by smaller units able to preserve essential functions when the wider network is impaired. Among those values must be stewardship Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr For Saudi Arabia, such thinking could inform water provision for remote communities, critical facilities, major gatherings and new urban developments. For Japan, Saudi Arabia offers the scale and demanding conditions through which advanced water technologies can be tested, improved and prepared for wider use. The bilateral foundation already exists. Saudi–Japanese cooperation in water has moved well beyond its earliest stages. The Saudi Water Authority and Shinshu University have agreed to cooperate on reverse-osmosis technologies, energy efficiency, zero-liquid-discharge approaches, advanced membranes, renewable energy applications and the extraction of valuable materials from seawater. Japanese industrial capability is also becoming more deeply rooted in the Kingdom. Toray has supplied reverse-osmosis membranes to major Saudi desalination projects, established a water-treatment technology center in Saudi Arabia to serve the Middle East and Africa, and advanced the integration of membrane fabrication and assembly within the Kingdom. Taken separately, these are significant projects. Seen together, they point toward something larger: the beginnings of a Saudi–Japanese water-resilience ecosystem connecting research, manufacturing, energy, operations, skills and access to regional markets. The opportunity now is to give these elements a coherent strategic purpose. Saudi Arabia and Japan could establish a practical water-resilience program under the wider bilateral partnership. It could begin with a small number of actual systems — urban, industrial, agricultural or remote — and examine how they perform under several disruptions occurring together. What happens when power is restricted, a critical component is unavailable, a digital system is compromised and water quality changes at the same time? Such testing would reveal dependencies that conventional efficiency measures may overlook. It would help identify which components should be manufactured or stocked locally, where distributed capacity is justified, which skills must be present near the point of failure, and how much authority operators require when normal procedures no longer suffice. The result should not be another abstract index. It should be demonstrable capability: systems better able to continue, people better prepared to act, and institutions capable of learning before disruption becomes catastrophe. This is also where technology meets governance. A sophisticated water system is not resilient if its essential knowledge remains elsewhere, if operators cannot respond without distant permission, or if the costs and environmental consequences are transferred to those with the least influence. Technology can expand human agency, but only governance determines whether that agency is widely shared. The same principle applies internationally. Many societies most exposed to water stress possess the least financial and technological capacity to address it. They should not enter a future partnership merely as markets for finished solutions. Their environments, experience and communities must help define the problem, shape the technology and share in the knowledge and economic value created. Saudi Arabia and Japan are particularly well placed to convene such cooperation. The Kingdom brings its own encounter with scarcity, growing technological ambition, and close relationships across the Arab world, Africa and the wider global south. Japan brings scientific depth, industrial discipline, and a tradition of adapting technology patiently to human need. This would be responsible interdependence in practice. Interdependence can be enriching, provided it is governed well: It must distribute capability as well as products, strengthen national agency rather than erode it, and leave partners better able to respond when the shared system is tested. Common interests are necessary if interdependence is to be productive, but they are not enough. Interests may bring nations together; values determine the quality and durability of what they build. They shape whether knowledge is shared or withheld, whether vulnerability is reduced or simply relocated, and whether prosperity enlarges human possibility beyond the strongest parts of the system. Among those values must be stewardship — the understanding that command over resources essential to life carries obligations beyond immediate advantage. There must also be fairness, respect for national agency and a genuine commitment to quality of life. Quality of life is sometimes treated as a benefit to be pursued after economic progress has been secured. The relationship is deeper. Societies that sustain health, dignity, learning and meaningful human participation are themselves more capable of creating enduring prosperity. Quality of life is therefore not only an outcome of development; it is one of its foundations. Water makes this impossible to overlook. When water becomes unreliable, the space available for health, education, work, and hope begins to contract. When it is responsibly governed and resiliently supplied, individuals and communities acquire greater confidence to shape their own futures. Saudi Arabia and Japan cannot offer a complete answer to the global water challenge. They can offer a credible beginning, combining distinct national experiences, joining technological ambition to sound governance, and allowing shared values to give shared interests a more enduring purpose. That would deepen the strategic substance of the Saudi–Japanese relationship. It could also invite wider momentum toward better stewardship and forms of global interdependence that leave every participant more capable. Water is where life begins. It may also be where comprehensive resilience begins to acquire its most practical — and most universally human — meaning. Dr. Ghazi Faisal Binzagr is ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Japan.