Towing freshwater icebergs from the Antarctic, building a huge canal to link two seas, catching fog in the desert and half-flush toilets the search for ways to bring water to thirsty parts of the world is becoming increasingly ingenious and frantic.

As demand for fresh water outstrips supply across much of the planet, ideas on how to conserve the precious resource are taxing the minds of planners and inventors alike, yielding ideas from the spectacular to the simple.

While building an artificial mountain chain to encourage rain, towing icebergs or building vast engineering projects to pipe water from tropical wetlands to dry areas are at the more drastic and surreal end of the scale, huge savings can be made with more realistic methods.

In Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, citizens are faced daily with a simple water-saving choice in their homes, offices and pubs press one button for a full toilet flush or the other for a half-flush.

If everybody does the decent thing and uses only half the water in the cistern whenever possible the saving may make the difference between being able to water your garden in the dry season and facing a hosepipe ban.

The system is simple but effective, and the government is searching for similar innovations.

It announced last week that 1,750 community groups would share A$61 million (US$45 million) in funding to undertake water saving projects across the country.

The projects are expected to save around 18 billion litres of water a year "the equivalent of 18,000 Olympic swimming pools," according to Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell.

In a country surrounded by seawater, the large cities of Sydney and Perth have seriously considered desalination plants to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water, but critics say the energy used in the process negates any environmental benefits.

The tiny desert state of Kuwait, with a population of three million, has little choice. It gets more than 90 per cent of its water needs of around 1.6 billion litres daily from seawater desalination through five giant plants.

Australians also baulk at the idea of recycling waste water, finding the notion of drinking water that has been through sewers unpalatable.

Some countries have pressed ahead, however, like Namibia, the driest and most arid nation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In December 2002, the local authority in the capital, Windhoek, commissioned a modern water reclamation plant on the city's northwestern outskirts where waste water is filtered and purified and blended with potable water.

In neighbouring South Africa's Eastern Cape province, locals use an innovative way to draw water capturing fog on giant nets and then transforming it into potable water.

Source: China Daily