Come l’ingegneria integra la sostenibilità idrica nella vita quotidiana in Qatar
La gestione delle risorse idriche in condizioni di aridità e scarse precipitazioni rappresenta una sfida inevitabile. E se la risposta fosse nascosta proprio sotto i nostri piedi?
In collaborazione con Media City
ALTRE INFORMAZIONI : http://it.euronews.com/2025/12/17/come-lingegneria-integra-la-sostenibilita-idrica-nella-vita-quotidiana-in-qatar
00:05In a semi-arid country like Qatar, water costs $2.50 per cubic metre.
00:12Imagine how much it would cost to water all of these.
00:17Luckily, Qatar has found a cheaper and greener solution.
00:22It's found here, deep beneath my feet where few have gone before.
00:26And I've been given special access to uncover how Qatar is creating a sustainable oasis for its green landscape.
00:35I'm Laila Humaira and this is Qatar In Motion.
00:41Water. It's what covers around 70% of the Earth's surface.
00:46Yet how to manage it has been one of mankind's biggest challenges.
00:50So where and how does Qatar get its water supply?
00:54There are a few ways.
00:55The first method is seawater and desalination.
00:59This creates 99% of potable water that's safe for consumption.
01:05Then comes groundwater extraction and treated wastewater.
01:08But it's important to note that these two methods are purely for agricultural and industrial use.
01:15The Gulf state has pumped nearly $30 billion over the last 13 years to reach its National Vision 2030 target of slashing water use in agriculture by 40%.
01:27You may know this place as Katara Cultural Village, home to Qatar's annual Dow Festival, an amphitheater, plenty of restaurants, cafes, art galleries and even hotels.
01:40But dozens of metres below this cultural district is an innovative water treatment facility and I'm getting a special tour of what's called the Katara Project.
01:51Under the green hills and bustling souk of Katara, we enter a whole new world.
01:58A hidden secret that's quietly helping the country turn a page in water sustainability.
02:05Water management is an inevitable challenge.
02:08But that hasn't stopped Katara from finding long-term solutions, like tapping on the 170-year expertise of French utilities company Veolia.
02:19Veolia has collaborated with Katara Project to build the first water reuse facility of its kind in Katara,
02:27the treated sewage effluent, which we call TSE polishing plant, by reusing water for irrigation and as a make-up water for district cooling.
02:39The facility is also a part of Veolia's new, wider, three-year ecological strategy called GreenUp,
02:46which aims to depollute, decarbonize and regenerate the world's natural resources.
02:51This ambitious initiative focuses on delivering solutions that address today's most pressing environmental challenges while building resilience for the future.
03:04The GreenUp strategy tackles multiple dimensions of environmental control,
03:11where water technologies represent one of the three key boosters.
03:17The Middle East region has also been designated as one of Veolia's three accelerated growth geographies.
03:27So what actually goes behind these pipes?
03:30And what's the science and mechanics putting everything in motion?
03:34Nicolas Tournier is the head of operations and performance at Veolia, and he breaks it down for us.
03:40So here we are in a TSE polishing plant.
03:42So the TSE water is arriving here behind this wall, so that's where it's stored before being treated.
03:50And the water goes inside those pipes, so you may not see it, but it goes first through these self-cleaning filters,
03:58and then it will go along the treatment, and then it moves on in these GRP pipes,
04:05and it goes to the UF filtration membranes that we have here.
04:10So inside these vessels are filtration membranes that continue polishing the water.
04:18But there's also another peculiar question.
04:22Why was this plant built underneath Katara Cultural Village?
04:26The plant is located underground to minimize visual impact and reduce noise pollution
04:32in this very important cultural and touristic destination.
04:36The Katara project requirement was that it had to fit inside this basement to help conserve valuable land space.
04:44So we designed a tailored solution that could fit inside the space constraint and power supply requirements.
04:53By using this facility, up to 15,000 cubic metres of water is saved per day.
04:59That's 15 million litres.
05:02To give you an idea, that's approximately six Olympic-sized swimming pools, which is a lot of water.
05:09And instead of using massive amounts of fresh water to sprinkle over gardens and cool districts,
05:14the technology being deployed here means that raw sewage can be turned into reusable but high-quality water.
05:20At the moment, water is being used for the intended purpose of a plant, which is feeding of the cooling towers and irrigation.
05:29So people can enjoy a nice air-conditioned environment in Katara's cafes and retail spaces,
05:37while also enjoying the lush vegetation of Katara's green hills.
05:42So while the general public may not see the plant itself like you are seeing today,
05:48they may enjoy its many benefits while visiting Katara.
05:52Like clockwork, these sprinklers at Katara hills switch on precisely at a certain time,
05:58several times a day, to keep the grass green.
06:01Just by looking at the lush lawn, it's hard to tell that the temperature in Katara can hit nearly 50 degrees Celsius in the summer.
06:08Other than beautifying the landscape, there's also a cost advantage to using this treated water.
06:14By reusing water, this plant allows Katara project to reduce water costs dramatically,
06:21say from nine Katari rial down to one Katari rial per cubic metre,
06:26and reduces the power needed for water production to just 20% of that required for other treatment solutions.
06:35And it's not just the sprinklers.
06:38The water in the fountains, cooling towers, and small canals like these that run all around Katara Cultural Village
06:44are the products of the treated sewage affluent that's been processed beneath the district.
06:51As heritage, creativity, history, and art continue to flood the spaces around Katara Cultural Village,
06:57so will the flow of technology and innovation that's helping to keep it all afloat
07:03and steering Katara towards a greener future.
07:09Elsewhere in Katara, other institutions and individuals are helping to shape the next generation of water scientists.
07:17This is the Education City Ceremonial Court,
07:20a multi-purpose open-air space with intricate designs that exude grandeur and elegance.
07:26But there's also deep meaning in these waters, and wisdom in the study of its cycle.
07:32I'm Raha Hakim Navar.
07:33I'm a hydrologist and also a research professor and senior advisor at Georgetown University.
07:40The focus of my work is around issues of water scarcity and water security,
07:46but also around disasters and how we manage water-related disasters.
07:51I work a lot with satellite remote sensing, so data from space.
07:56There's such a wealth of Earth observations or data coming from anything that's not ground-based.
08:03The work for me is personally the most rewarding thing I could imagine doing.
08:08I'm from a city called Esfahan in central Iran.
08:12We also would experience periods of droughts,
08:16and I think that also made me very fascinated with the times that we had rain.
08:20I loved it.
08:21I loved going outside when it was raining, and I loved collecting the water,
08:24because it wouldn't rain all the time.
08:26Probably that early interest is what got me to get into hydrology.
08:31I wanted to be a part of things that could have real impact.
08:35What I'm really curious about is how we can integrate all this different research
08:40to connect it with decision-making, to connect it with policies,
08:45to connect it with economic decisions.
08:47We're testing new ways of immersive-based teaching of environmental science
08:52to students that are not necessarily studying for an environmental science degree.
08:56Students got to learn about their immediate environment, which is Education City.
09:01Looking at the facility's management of the buildings, how water and energy is managed,
09:06what are some of the challenges, and what are some of the exciting, innovative things
09:09that are being implemented right here, where we live.
09:11Last year, we had students from Georgetown University in Qatar that were competitively selected
09:17to join a course about climate change adaptation in Greece.
09:21I think really having the students spend time in this place-based way
09:27to understand these challenges, to engage with the community,
09:31to engage with the people, the NGOs, the civil organizations
09:34that are doing a lot of the work on the ground.
09:38A lot of the challenges around water are extremely interdisciplinary.
09:43There are students that are learning economics, politics, culture, and arts, and the humanities.
09:47They can serve as those translators between the science, between the technical,
09:53between what may be research, and where decision-making needs to take place.
09:59My quest to learn more about how Qatar will continue to develop its water technology
10:04has led me to the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute at Hamad bin Khalifa University.
10:11As its name suggests, KERI is a leading research, development, and innovation institute.
10:17One of its main focus areas is water security.
10:21And I'm going to meet Dr. Khaled Mahmoud, who heads the water center at KERI.
10:27Speaking in water security in general, we know that Qatar relies majorly on desalination
10:33for drinking water and consumption of water for public.
10:37There are actually this big project for storing drinking water in the mega reservoirs.
10:43And currently, we have over five days kind of water security reserve.
10:49And the target actually to go to seven days storage.
10:52Now, as I mentioned, they are enforcing the utilization of treated wastewater in this application
10:59so that they can relieve the pressure on both, either the desalinated water that's stored
11:05or ground water, which is an issue that Qatar is trying to kind of fix,
11:11where the salinity of the ground water is rising up because of the abstraction,
11:16less rain recently due to climate change, and so on.
11:19So, I see that there is a big future for reusing the treated wastewater
11:24to actually enforce the water security in Qatar.
11:28So, while Veolia's water treatment facility is a hidden secret of Katara Cultural Village,
11:35it's no mystery that it's helping Qatar move towards a more water-secure and sustainable future.
11:42Sometimes, it's worth looking beneath the surface in order to move ahead.
11:46And I certainly gained a new appreciation for this iconic district.
11:51That's all the time we have for now.
11:53Thanks for watching Katara In Motion and see you next time.
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