Our Relationship With Water Is Political, Says This Water Economist

Giulio Boccaletti, Water economist and author: "The exercise of managing water is ultimately an exercise of power. Somebody needs to build something somewhere in somebody's backyard to control and manage water resources. And so it's inevitably a question of power. And in the question of power, some will benefit and some will lose. The costs will be borne disproportionately by those with the least power. We've seen this even, you know, in the dramatic droughts that have hit the Horn of Africa this summer, 20 million people with essentially no political agency unable to mobilize their communities in the state to transform the landscape in ways that protects them. The same has happened in Pakistan, right? It's the powerless that get hit by this."