Start-up aims to make on-site water treatment more accessible
Australian entrepreneur Rick Parish has launched a new company, Mazavida, that will aim to deliver “rapidly deployable” clean-water infrastructure, water-treatment and desalination systems.
Mr Parish is the founder of Kinetic7 Technologies, an Abu Dhabi-based clean-energy technology company that has developed cooking and heating systems based on producing hydrogen gas on demand, using water, solar power and battery technology.
He has said the launch of Mazavida comes at a time when governments, investors and industry across the world are confronting a worsening water-security crisis. The new company is launching as a joint venture between Kinetic7 and Dallas-based energy company PIF.
On announcing the new company, Mr Paris quoted the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. This academic institution, often referred to as the UN’s think tank on water, has said the world has moved beyond a temporary water crisis and into an era of global “water bankruptcy”, with many river basins, aquifers, wetlands, soils, lakes and glaciers no longer able to return to historic baselines.
UN researchers say around 4 billion people already experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. They add that drought impacts cost more than $300 billion annually, and that 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water.
“Water security is becoming a defining economic, humanitarian and geopolitical risk,” Mr Parish said. “Mazavida has been created to move beyond discussion and deliver engineered systems that can produce potable water quickly, reliably and at scale where conventional infrastructure is too slow, too costly or too vulnerable.”
Its idea is based on containerised systems for treating water on site, including in industrial facilities. Mazavida will also pursue agricultural partnerships designed to provide dependable irrigation water, protect food production and strengthen long-term food and water security.
