Canal and City: Toward a Comprehensive Water Future for Panama

Water infrastructures alone are insufficient when natural patterns change. In 2018, the world watched in shock as Cape Town, South Africa, came close to becoming the first modern city to literally run out of water. Prolonged drought, heavy reliance on a handful of reservoirs, and delayed management decisions brought the population to the brink of the so-called “Day Zero”: the date when taps would run dry.

The 2015 to 2018 drought in Cape Town underscored the vulnerability of urban systems that rely too heavily on a limited number of sources. The rains did not come, the dams emptied, and authorities were forced to impose strict limits of 50 liters per person per day to keep the city supplied.

In 2022, we wrote about the challenges of urban water security in London and Cape Town, showing how major cities, despite their very different contexts, face similar pressures when they depend on limited sources and management approaches that view water mainly through technocratic lenses. Today, those lessons are particularly relevant for Panama, which is now confronting the broader global challenge of climate change.

The Panama Canal and the Metropolitan Area depend almost entirely on two reservoirs: Gatún and Alhajuela. These bodies of water simultaneously sustain the engine of global trade and provide domestic supply for millions of Panamanians. When rainfall is scarce, these uses compete, and the balance between international commerce and local needs becomes increasingly fragile.

The 2023 to 2024 prolonged drought, intensified by El Niño, is a stark reminder. In October 2023, rainfall was 43 percent below average, making it the driest October since the 1950s. The Canal was forced to reduce the number of daily transits, while under such stress, the water supply to residents across Panama City’s metropolitan area, who depend on these same sources, becomes vulnerable

The parallel with Cape Town is clear: a water system under climate pressure, limited sources, and governance that has too often favored technocratic solutions without fully incorporating the social dimension and public perception of how to contribute to solutions for present and future challenges.

South Africa taught us that water cannot be managed solely through more infrastructure. Cape Town avoided collapse not by building new dams overnight, but by mobilizing the population to use less and conserve more of the existing supply. At the same time, institutions changed their narrative, emphasizing that every drop mattered, and supported numerous innovations – from household grey water use to community leak detection efforts, from water education programs showing people how to live well on 50 litres per person per day, to integrated systems planning and modelling. Importantly, recognizing that they too are part of the broader watershed, the commercial agricultural community donated 30% of their government-mandated total bulk water allocation to the greater metropolitan Cape Town area. This total approach to water security remains in place despite the fact that the rains returned and refilled the dams. New laws and regulations are in place, as are new approaches to stormwater management. Citizens are mobilized through local committees. Citizen science is utilized and supported by public and private sector research institutes. What we are proposing is embracing a vision of water completeness that brings together not only quantity, quality, access, governance, and social trust, but also the interlocking forms of water found in our lakes and rivers, in underground aquifers, in our food and used in household, industrial and manufacturing processes.

It is not only about keeping the Canal competitive, but about ensuring that the Canal and its surrounding cities maintain a relationship of excellence with water. This symbiotic, non-exclusive relationship between these two pillars will be vital for building a sustainable future, as defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).

Panama has not yet faced its own ‘Day Zero,’ but the uncertainty brought by climate change is undeniable. Panamanians must adopt a new way of thinking. This means protecting watersheds, reducing leaks, embracing green infrastructure, diversifying water sources, and above all, building trust between authorities and citizens. The challenge is clear: either water continues to be treated as if it were limitless thereby putting every citizen at risk, or it begins to be managed for what it truly is – a resource that varies dramatically across time and place yet constitutes the foundation of Panama’s survival and prosperity. Cape Town’s experience provides important lessons for Panama: we must be ready and prepared if we are to successfully face our water challenges.

Reference 

Morales, I., Swatuk, L. (2022). Challenges for Urban Water Security in London and Cape Town. In: Swatuk, L., Cash, C. (eds) The Political Economy of Urban Water Security under Climate Change . International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08108-8_3

World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford University Press.

Authors 

Ivonne Morales is a Panamanian PhD candidate in Sustainability Management at the University of Waterloo, specializing in urban water security. 

Larry Swatuk is Emeritus Professor in the School of Environment Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo.

This is a draft of an article that appeared in Spanish on 23.10.2025 in La Prensa, Panama: https://www.prensa.com/opinion/canal-y-ciudad-hacia-un-futuro-integral-del-agua/ 

Lessons for Canada from Botswana ... and vice versa

Less than 100 days into his second term as President of the United States, Donald Trump has managed to over-turn decades of long established international relationships, appearing to side with Russian President Putin in his war against Ukraine, to alienate France, Germany and other European Union members by overt support for far-right populist leaders and groups, and to antagonize Panama, Greenland and Canada through imperialist claims akin to “land grabs”. In the case of Canada, Trump continues to suggest that the country would be better off if it joined the U.S. as its “51st state”. He has also suggested that he would take over Canada through economic means and has initiated an aggressive trade war. In particular, he seems intent on forcing Canada-based automotive manufacturing to relocate to the United States. In response, Canadian politicians and the population at large have responded with “their elbows up” — a term that anyone who has tried to keep their place in a queue will understand! 

As a Canadian, currently residing in Canada, but who lived and worked in Botswana for many years, it seems to me that there are important lessons Canadians can learn from Batswana who have long faced significant challenges living next to physically, economically, and militarily more powerful neighbours, ie apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, as well as Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. And Canada has a few lessons from this recent experience to offer Botswana.

Like Botswana’s difficulties with its neighbours, Canada’s problems with the United States are various and long-standing. In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau travelled to Washington to meet with President Richard Nixon and famously stated: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”. 

The challenges originate in part due to the natural environment. Physically, Canada is a lot like Botswana, though the latter is significantly smaller. Both countries’ populations cluster along arable corridors — in Canada this means roughly 90% of the population lives within 160 km of the southern border shared with the United States; in Botswana this means roughly 80% of the population lives within 100 km of the eastern border (Lobatse to Francistown) shared with South Africa and Zimbabwe. The vast majority of both countries (the Kgalagadi Desert in Botswana’s West; Canada’s “frozen North”) is lightly populated, inhabited mainly by Indigenous Peoples living primarily off the land and enduring harsh environments. Both countries are endowed with vast natural resources above and below the Earth’s surface: diamonds, coal, and copper; forests, water and wildlife. Whereas initial settlements, expansion and subsequent population growth were determined by where crops could be grown, livestock raised, and markets accessed, today both countries are predominantly urban. According to the World Bank, in 2023, 73% percent of Botswana’s 2.5 million people reside in urban areas (up from 18% in 1981 and just 3% in 1960). Of Canada’s 40.1 million people, 82% live in urban areas (up from 76% in 1981 and 69% in 1960). Rapid and extensive urbanization creates both challenges and opportunities for economic and social development.

Modern economic development in both countries relied heavily on natural resource extraction and trade — minerals, metals, flora and fauna: dig it up, cut it down, catch it and trade it with your neighbours for the finished goods they produced. Living next to larger, more industrialized neighbours made it difficult for Canada or Botswana to do anything else. These unequal terms of trade (cheap, easily substitutable, raw materials for expensive, necessary finished goods) leave the weaker trading partner highly vulnerable to activities both in the richer partner and in the broader market system. This vulnerability continues to plague most post-colonial countries to this day. Yet, there are those within the raw material producing country who benefit considerably from the persistence of these relations — those who control the trade, governments who extract revenues from participants in this economic activity, and others who benefit from the subsequent economic activity of these dominant actors (those directly employed say in the state or state-run enterprises as well as those indirectly employed through secondary economic activity — from spaza shops, combi drivers and panel beaters to dentists, carpenters and plumbers). Botswana presents an extreme case where the country remains heavily dependent upon revenues from diamond sales — constituting about 85% of all foreign exchange earnings and 25% of GDP — and from the state spending that both drives the economy and derives from diamond revenues. Governments past and present have long championed economic diversification as a central aim of national development planning. Yet, the heavy reliance on one mineral places the country in a highly vulnerable position. Put simply: no diamonds, no forex; no forex, no ability to buy oil; no oil, no economy — everything would grind to a halt. This is why President Duma Boko’s government has made consolidating and deepening the diamond industry a key priority, achieving a series of agreements with De Beers as well as negotiating Botswana’s position as an export certification point for rough diamonds with G7 country collaboration. The former ensures a steady stream of state revenue through diamond sales, while the latter ensures market access for non-Russian mined diamonds. As of early 2024, Russian origin diamonds and Russian diamonds processed in third countries were banned from G7 country jurisdictions. Similar to the Kimberley Process which sought to ensure that “blood diamonds” were banned from world markets, Botswana continues to market its gemstones as products of “ethical production”. 

Canada benefited from its proximity to the United States both as a market for its goods as well as a ready source for foreign direct (e.g. establishing a mill or a mine or a factory) and indirect (e.g. investing capital in Canadian-owned and operated businesses, such as mills or mines or factories) investment. Coinciding with the decolonization of Asia and Africa, the first wave of international development occurred between about 1945 and 1975. The approach was characterized by ‘import substitution industrialization’ and encouraged new states to prohibit imports of finished goods from other countries (often the prior colonial master) while creating the conditions for their own production. The logic turned on getting out from ‘underdevelopment’ — a phenomenon characterized by uneven terms of trade described above, and on the continual outflow of economic wealth (resources and financial capital) to more powerful states. Canada placed heavy tariffs on U.S. producers wishing to sell to Canadians in order to entice them to establish factories and mines and so on in Canada. The primary destination market for these goods remained the United States (where today approximately 92% of Canada’s exports land up). Given the rapid growth of the U.S. consumer market in the post-World War II period, Canada’s wealth of resources and raw materials were attractive inputs for American manufacturers. Branch plants were set up across the U.S. border in Canada and massive amounts of U.S.-based multinational corporate capital also flowed into agriculture, forestry, fisheries and mining. Canadian policy makers have tried on numerous occasions to limit foreign domination of the economy, attempting to impose a ‘Canada first’ approach when considering any new investment. By the early 1980s, however, the world largely abandoned protectionist approaches to national economic development in favour of what came to be known as neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization. Since then Canada has largely been ‘open for business’, taking a regional approach to wealth creation by, first, creating NAFTA — the North American Free Trade Agreement — with its continental neighbours, Mexico and the U.S.A. This agreement was renegotiated under the first Trump administration and is now called USMECA, an agreement, by the way, that Donald Trump today calls unjust though at the time he claimed it was the greatest deal he’d ever made.

Botswana — then Bechuanaland —  flanked by racist neighbours, and having very few resources with which to defend its sovereignty, was held in a kind of amber by its colonial master, Great Britain. At worst coveted by South Africa as a further extension of the apartheid state, and at best, disregarded as little more than a transit corridor between South Africa and Rhodesia, the primary resource upon which Batswana could depend was the diplomacy of the three chiefs. Here is a primary lesson for Canada — when in a hostile neighbourhood, keep a low public profile while quietly and persistently cultivating relations with a more powerful partner, in this case Great Britain. Having so few resources at independence, Seretse Khama’s new government was largely a policy taker, not a policy maker. In terms of a modern economy, a country of perhaps 515,000 people composed primarily of small holder farmers, cattle keepers and hunter-gatherers, had very little purchasing power. GDP per capita at independence was estimated to be USD 70 (today, by comparison, it is approximately USD 7341.00). Import substitution industrialization was never an option from the start, and South Africa continues to be the primary source of most finished goods. Approximately 63% of all imports today come from South Africa. Perhaps as a stroke of luck, diamonds were discovered at Orapa in 1967 — after Botswana became independent — and the first revenues were realized in 1971 following the 1969 creation of the De Beers Botswana Mining Company joint venture. Beginning in 1975, revenues were to be shared 50/50. Hence the emergence of the nation’s dependence on foreign investment (capital, technology, human resources) centred on a single commodity where revenues accrued to a government who directed development for decades to come. Today less than 60% of working age Batswana identify as ‘economically active’, of whom about 30% are unemployed. As people continue to migrate to the cities and towns, the government through its national development plans (now in its 12th iteration), and through entities such as the Botswana Development Corporation, again and again searches for the ways and means of economic diversification. Most recently there has been great emphasis on "entrepreneurship", facilitated in part by opening up the tertiary education landscape to private "universities" and "colleges" of every shape and kind. The message from government is clear -- help yourself, we've tried state-centred development and it can only get us so far given our place in the global capitalist ocean as a very small fish, if even that: plankton perhaps? 

Clearly, manufacturing for export to South Africa is not an option. The most painful example of this policy’s failure came with the collapse of the short-lived Hyundai assembly plant. Here there are two further lessons for Canada that emerge from this sorry tale: despite the existence of regional cooperative agreements such as the SADC trade protocol and SACU, when a more powerful partner decides to play by its own rules, binding agreements fly out the window; and, given the integrated nature of neoliberal capitalist globalization, not putting all of your eggs in one basket, while an important approach to economic development, is much easier said than done.

Shortly after the Hyundai plant closed, I was teaching a post-graduate course at UB entitled ‘development policy in developing countries’. The students were almost exclusively civil servants in search of a higher degree through part-time study. Among other ideas, I asked them to consider how Botswana could join a global value chain by producing, for example, glass for automobiles (rather than just assembling a car whose parts are made elsewhere). This still seems to me to be a logical starting point for large-scale manufacture in a global economy. I also asked them to consider the cost differential of producing something as simple as toothpaste — while the price would never come down to that of imports from Zimbabwe or South Africa, it would still be a ‘Made in Botswana’ product. I was met with blank stares: why pay more for something that you could get cheaper no matter who made it? They held to this position despite my argument about job creation and the circulation of capital within Botswana (rather than sending that money out to another country) — and that was almost 25 years ago. Has anything changed? Here arises another less from Botswana for Canada: consumers are both rational and selfish in their decision-making. Nationalism generally has no place in questions of personal consumption. 

At least not until, that is, your neighbour threatens to make you the ’51st State’ — and this seems to be a lesson for Botswana from Canada. While personal consumers think personally, not nationally, policy makers need to consider ‘the personal’ in the aggregate: what do all of these individual decisions add up to? A country more vulnerable to external shocks, be they political or economic? And as policy makers search for policies on behalf of the collective, they must do the hard work of educating the citizenry about how our individual decisions can make us weaker or they can make us stronger. That’s why we call it the political economy of development: where politics impacts economics and vice versa. In the age of Trump, the irrational political seems to be forcing Canadians to reconsider, both individually and collectively, what rational economic choice can and must look like, particularly if you do not want to be either America’s 51st state or South Africa’s tenth province. 

So, to sum up: dangerous neighbourhoods require careful and thoughtful diplomacy; powerful actors will bend the rules in whatever way suits them best; the global structure of production makes it almost impossible for small players to affect the rules of the game; the tendency to ‘look after yourself’, cultivated over several decades of neoliberal thinking, must give way to thoughts of one’s place in the collective, and how decisions made by one will ultimately affect all. The only way to deal with the neighbourhood bully, is to pull together in common cause. If you do some research on trade between Canada and Botswana you will see that Canada exports diamonds to Botswana. This is simply intra-multinational trade: it’s all De Beers. We ordinary Canadians and Batswana have more in common than you might think. Isn’t it time we put our heads — rather than our eggs — together?

Loss and Damage as Development

Why is ‘loss and damage’ a non-starter at COP27? In my view, it is because ‘loss and damage’ is what ‘development’ is, has been, and perhaps may always be. 

Climate change marks the apex of Western ‘development’. The pathway to climate catastrophe is strewn with an endless number of catastrophic events that derive from the Western model of sovereign, independent states led by elites in fierce competition with each other and in endless negotiation with their subjects later to become citizens. Let us count up some of the ‘loss and damage’:

Within states:

• exploitation of labour/indentured servitude
• domination of ‘out groups’, minorities, women (racism, sexism, etc.)
• land grabbing
• dramatic alteration of landscapes such as wetlands
• environmental degradation
• toxic waste production
• genocide
• violence against women and LGBTQ+

Beyond borders:

• slavery
• genocide
• complete alteration of social relations to satisfy European needs and wants
• complete alteration of natural environments to satisfy European needs and wants

These actions resulted in countless wars, revolutions, civil wars, the creation of fragile and failing states, the creation of built environments unsuited to the natural environment, rapid population growth, migration, forced migration, ecosystem degradation, solid waste pollution, anomic violence, and, of course, a fairly good life for a narrow band of the human population, and extreme wealth for the very few. 

The whole thing holds together through a revolving set of narratives designed to justify the mess created over perhaps 500 years: e.g. the ‘Enlightenment’, the white man’s burden, progress, the Wealth of Nations, creative destruction, and so on. 

Which brings me to my main point: the current world disorder that privileges a few and punishes the many is a consequence of historical processes set in train long ago. The resulting ‘loss and damages’ — including those accruing from a changed climate —  cannot be totalled up. It is human history. In addition, as shown at every global gathering of every type, those who benefit the most are also the most uninterested in anything beyond reforms which ensure their place at the apex of human society: geoengineering and electric vehicles at best, business as usual at worst. As global political economy has become more and more unequal over the last 40 years, the myth of collective effort in support of common good has been replaced by a combination of help yourself (your poverty/predicament is your own fault) and alms for the poor (the rise of ‘big philanthropy’ aka conscience money meant to assuage the guilt of the 1% and stave off social revolution). 

People ‘fit in’ to the facts of life as best they can. We develop and/or latch onto new narratives to explain the benefits and costs of our daily lives, our place in social (dis)order. As John Donne said, ‘No man is an island’: people build alliances and coalitions at a variety of scales, from the neighbourhood to the globe, and mobilize in support of their stories, in pursuit of desired outcomes. Technological creativity, the social application of which often emerges out of military innovation, dramatically alters the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-ecological landscapes, giving rise to new constellations of social forces within, across and among states. The resulting material, institutional and ideational forms of power privilege some and penalize others, reordering the geography of joy and misery along ever evolving value chains of production and consumption. Narratives, models and methods emerge in response to the desire for understanding, prediction and control. There appear to be moments of calm — the ‘long boom’ — as long as one does not widen the view, to take in the whole. 

Is it any wonder that directing the physical, mental and emotional energy of this raucous, riotous, cacophony of human endeavour towards a place like Sharm el-Sheikh results in anything other than weak promises, tepid commitments, agitated finger pointing, smug complacency and crass duplicity? For those at the margins, the question remains: what is to be done? Shape your narrative, find your allies, define your methods, assemble your resources and get stuck in. Others are doing the same. Appeals to ethics will fail, as will attempts to assign blame.

Beyond the 'Freedom Convoy': Time for a Serious Conversation

Social movements are strange beasts. They rise up seemingly spontaneously and often disappear as quickly as they emerged. Across Canada we are witness to just such a movement, the so-called ‘Freedom Convoy’, with the long term fuel for its fire being the pandemic and the short term spark setting the whole thing off being government’s waffling on vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers. Clearly, the world is tired of the pandemic. The direct costs in lives lost and irreparably harmed, of livelihoods shattered and people shaken physically, emotionally and financially to their knees, are undeniable. While the world’s one percent have adapted and often profited, and a broad swath of public and private middle to upper-middle class folks have held steady, hundreds of millions of poor, elderly and immune-compromised people — the vast majority of whom are people of colour, generally located in the Global South and in the poorer neighborhoods of the Global North — have no choice other than to venture out into a virus-infected world to try to eke out a living. While governments tell them to stay home, this is a luxury they do not have.    

There is a great deal of sympathy across not only Canada, but the world, for the Freedom Convoy’s central demand of an end to vaccine mandates. It is no great insight to say that everyone is fed up with the current situation. As with other broad-based, generally-focused social movements like #OccupyWallStreet, so too does the Freedom Convoy suffer from setting forth demands that are too broad across categories that are too diffuse for rapid treatment in public policy. Where #Occupy was concerned, while many of us do not like the effects of neoliberal globalization, calling for an end to it is just not going to happen any time soon. Similarly, calling for not only an end to vaccine mandates but to a wide array of other things such as the overthrow of a democratically-elected government are in the first instance unreasonable and in the second instance a non-starter. It just ain’t gonna happen.

In the parlance of conflict resolution, the Freedom Convoy supporters have taken a position: end all restrictions related to collectively dealing with Covid-19. The confrontational and vituperative approach taken by the so-called ‘leadership’ has forced the government to take a diametrically opposed position, i.e. no we will not. Put differently, this is a mandate/no mandate, science/no science stand-off. What is to be done?

One thing that must not be done is for the government of Canada to present a disunited position in relation to the protests. They must show a united front. Unfortunately, what we have been witness to recently is anything but united, with the Conservative Party seeking to score political points rather than put forward any ‘progressive’ ideas in support of a resolution. A second thing that must not be done is to make this crisis only about the protesters, to demonize them, to label them as a ‘lunatic fringe’. Should the governments (Federal, Municipal, Provincial) successfully put an end to these protests, this does not mean that the issue has somehow been resolved. To the contrary, barring a miraculous end to the pandemic, people motivated to march will march again. 

What must be done is for the Liberal government to engage in a two directional conversation: in one direction, there must be serious consideration given to the implications of a movement temporarily dispersed but a broader issue — endless restrictions on personal freedoms — remaining unresolved. What is the way ahead? As I said earlier, this conversation must be intra-governmental aiming at consensus. In the other direction, the government must engage with the citizenry — all citizens — regarding options for moving forward in light of a shape-shifting virus. The government cannot hide behind ‘the science’ — the issue at hand is as much emotional as it is rational. 

How to do this? Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) counsels getting past the hard positions taken (i.e. no mandate vs mandate) to identify the interests driving people’s actions in support of a particular position. I don’t believe the government is wedded to its vaccine mandate position. What we have seen is a science-based step-wise approach to ‘reopening’. Changing circumstances will lead to changing policy positions. On the Freedom Convoy side, the interests behind the common position are diverse. For most, the interest grows out of people’s needs. The need to make a living and live a life perceived to be worth living. While a significant percentage may have latched on to the movement in pursuit of narrower — and possibly nefarious — interests, it is imperative that the government not paint the movement with this broad brush. People are hurting and want to be heard.

But how to find out what people’s specific interests are? Public engagement is the most obvious way. And by public engagement, I do not mean Justin Trudeau going out to run ‘town halls’. This must be a whole of government approach, a united front, where we meet in public spaces real and virtual to take stock of the personal and collective costs of both the pandemic and public policies taken in the honourable attempt to end the health crisis. Sometimes facilitators are brought in, agreed to by all sides as a stalwart individual or representative of an organization that is widely regarded as capable of having the greater public interest at heart. Bishop Desmond Tutu served this function in post-apartheid South Africa during its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Is there a Canadian equivalent? 
It is unrealistic to think that this will be easily resolved. It is imperative that the government resist the urge to demonize protesters. Arrest them for public mischief, sure, no problem. They were warned. They should know that their actions have repercussions, that their ‘family friendly’ protest harmed the livelihoods of millions. While social movements often simply dissipate, those that survive do so because they find leaders, funds, and get organized. The right to organize is a hallmark of democracy. But it seems to me that we need to get out in front of this. After all, the KKK and the Proud Boys are civil society organizations. 

 Desperate times require desperate measures. In this case, the most desperate measure that is needed is that the leaders of the various parties sitting in the House of Commons, put away their knives and make peace among themselves. It’s the necessary first step to a very serious cross-Canada conversation.

Climate Finance, Water Resources and Effective Action

In response to the announcement that Boris Johnson’s government is committing the UK to more than £3 billion in international climate finance for biodiversity and nature, I was contacted by Voice of Islam Radio UK for some thoughts on the matter. Here is the gist of what I said.

WHAT DOES BIODIVERSITY MEAN AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

The Convention on Biodiversity defines biodiversity as "the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”. In my view, it is Important in the sense that systems that are diverse are more robust in the face of some external shock or stressor. Let’s take food production for example. Nearly 70% of all agricultural land is devoted to 9 crops (wheat, rice, soy, maize, etc); these strains are singular; a single pest can threaten global food security. Is this wise to put so few crops into one food basket? 

According to the Secretariat of the CBD (2000), although species naturally go extinct through evolutionary processes, human activity is believed to be accelerating rate by 50-100 times. Currently 34,000 plants and 5,200 animal species face extinction. The WWF’s global living planet index has declined by 58% between 1970-2012. If you look at a map of ‘biodiversity hotspots’, you will note that basically all coastal environments and proximate marine and terrestrial environments are at risk. This should come as no surprise since more than 60% of all humanity is settled along coastlines. For too long we have used the high-modern notion of the best means to control pollution is dilution, hence dumping waste into our waterways which then make it out to sea. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the most notable human achievements, it seems to me. Some of the drivers of biodiversity loss are:

• Habitat loss and degradation (e.g. draining of wetlands; conversion of forested areas to housing)
• Species overexploitation (e.g. the collapse of the cod fishery)
• Pollution (e.g. plastics in the ocean; farm-runoff of nitrogen creating dead zones in ocean deltas)
• Invasive species and disease (e.g. zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, the expanded range of lyme disease in North America)
• Climate change (e.g. acidification of the oceans and destruction of coral reefs)

If we are more biodiverse, we are more robust and resilient in the face of environmental stresses (e.g. pollution, climate change). How to explain this simply? Think of pure-bred dogs and how their genetic vulnerabilities - e.g. weak hip bones - are transferred and exacerbated across generations. It is the same with humans: we marry and reproduce outside of our immediate families, thereby increasing the genetic complexity in our off spring. 

In my view, most of the problems associated with biodiversity loss can be attributed to high-modern thinking. In other words, it’s a problem of mindset: we have built all of our systems in terms of living apart from and dominating nature, treating the Earth as both an endless source of stuff we want and sink for things we don’t. More than 50 years after the first Earth Day, we are still struggling to see ourselves as part of nature and as a species that should adapt to the environment rather than seek to change it according to our whims. Rather than expand our diets to include a wide variety of staple crops, we prefer to engineer wheat and rice to be able to withstand shocks. New shock? New biogenetic engineering trick. This belief in techno-mastery of the Earth must stop. 

Of course many people benefit from the growth of wheat in an arid environment, so are vested in its success and the success of genetic mutation engineering. Most of us interested in sustainability are very familiar with the dangers associated with privatized seed banks, for instance. What to do? For one, we can try to recover lost culture. Mike Hulme has written about climate as culture. What he means is that cultures have developed around the world over millennia and both their specific characteristics and high degree of robustness reflects adaptations not just to weather but to climate. With the advent of colonialism and imperialism, and the transposition of European temperate zone practices to the tropics, for example, an endless array of problems related to human settlements, agricultural practices, and resource use in general have emerged. The tropical world continues to be treated like a grand Western experiment in Man’s attempt to dominate nature. (‘Man’ is used here deliberately, because such a view is undoubtedly associated with hyper-masculine notions of command and control, of power over things and others.) Adapting to climate variability and change therefore requires a recovery of respect for one’s own culture. Rather than re-engineer wheat to become “wheat”, is it not better to adopt ‘orphan crops’, i.e. those that emerged naturally from tropical, sub-tropical and semi-arid savanna environments? 

Another attempt to rehabilitate nature is to subject it to the language of capitalist economics: ‘Ecosystem services’ seeks to show politicians and private sector actors that the natural world provides a series of services that can be quantified. These services are of four types: regulating, supporting, provisioning, and cultural. Those in support of ecosystem services believe that if we can show how much money we save a government by not draining a wetland, then they will be less likely to do so. Of course this is more easily said than done. Which brings us to the second question.

UK CLIMATE SPENDING: IS THIS A GOOD INITIATIVE?

As noted earlier, the UK government pledged £3Billion for international climate finance for biodiversity and nature. In my view, this is a good initiative, but it must be set in broader context. Together, the rich world has committed to raising £100 Billion/yr in climate finance for poor countries over 2020-25. The UK portion of this is something like £5.6 billion. Holding aside a critique regarding what exactly this money will be used to support, there is the small matter of getting the left foot and the right foot to walk in the same direction. In the past 4 years, the British government provided £21 Billion in supports for UK oil and gas exports through trade promotion and export finance. This alone is >£5 Billion/year. Granted, the government vowed to end these in December 2020, but my point is simple: with one hand we support climate actions; with the other hand we undermine those actions. Which raises the question about what the money will be used for. Some will go to adaptation, such as rehabilitating mangrove forests in coastal areas. Some will go to mitigation, such as support for protecting forests as carbon sinks. 

What we know about Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to lowering carbon emissions, is that the UK has set very positive targets that must be applauded. Under COP 15, it was initially agreed that only a small percentage of these emission reductions could be attributed to actions taken outside of the country (e.g. through support for forest protection in another country such as Ethiopia or Vietnam through programs such as UN REDD and REDD+). The majority must be derived from initiatives taken within the sovereign state’s boundaries. This has changed. It is alright for states to derive whatever percentage of their NDC from international action. This raises two questions. First, will buying forests in Ethiopia have only positive impacts on Ethiopians, or will it lead to uneven impacts? Second, will buying forests in Ethiopia allow the UK to remain on a carbon dependent track (even expanding it through the Cumbria coal mine, for example) while claiming to be ‘carbon neutral’? These are serious issues that require deeper investigation. 

CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABLE WATER MANAGEMENT?

Let’s shift to the so-called world water crisis and its relation to climate change, climate finance and so on. It is important to begin by noting that, in the world’s of the Dutch King Willem-Alexander, ‘the world water crisis is a crisis of governance’. He said this at the opening of the 2000 World Water Forum held at The Hague. His view is important, because he is saying that water problems are neither a unilinear consequence of too little or too much water; nor a consequence of ill management derived from a dearth of capital, Human Resources or technical capacity. Rather, he was saying that water is power. The way we use it today reflects that past and present dominant interests have martialled water to their perceived needs. Just picture Las Vegas or Los Angeles or Phoenix: big tech, big money and political power made the desert bloom. This system of supply is dependent upon a combination of demand (money to pay for big infrastructure) and supply. In the case of the aforementioned cities, this means snow melt from the Rocky Mountains. With climate change creating extreme and often unpredictable events, how much longer can Las Vegas survive? Clearly, we need to think about water differently.

A primary challenge is to see water in its totality, not just as an input into production or something we use in daily life, but altogether, as part of a system with users of many types who need water in many different ways -- including the natural world (of which we are a part). Generally, we see water in terms of water for households (rural and urban) and water in agricultural production and they are treated separately, requiring different types of development interventions. This depiction, what Falkenmark and Rockstrom describe as a ‘blue water bias’, results in a contradictory narrative of ‘get more’ but ‘use less’. But both getting more and using less are deeply political issues. How to see water differently? How to ensure that the right people are at the decision-making table? 

WHO ARE THE KEY STAKEHOLDERS IN NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT? HOW CAN WE IMPROVE OUTCOMES?

There is a massive literature on ‘stakeholder participation’ for integrated and adaptive resource management, be it water or forests or protected areas, or coastal commons. This language can be found in today’s Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG6, SDG14, SDG15, SDG16 and SDG17. Development practitioners have long known the answer to the two questions I ask immediately above this section. Part of the problem continues to be unequal capacity among stakeholders. Let’s take the Okavango Delta Management Plan, of which I was a part. In the ODMP, four types of stakeholders are identified: Primary (those ‘ecosystem’ people immediately dependent on the natural environment for their livelihood, e.g. fishers, hunter-gatherers); Secondary (those who derive their livelihood from the indirect use of the resource, e.g. tour operators); Tertiary (those whose livelihoods depend on providing necessary services, e.g. restaurants, doctors, dentists, panel beaters); and ‘Key’ (those who make the rules in relation to resource access, allocation, use and management, i.e. different levels of government).  Two things are worthy of note here. First, when hosting and attending meetings to devise the ODMP, it quickly became clear that the most powerful actors in government and the private sector rarely showed up at meetings. This, it seems to me, is because they consider themselves on another level of decision making and influence. Second, that those who are physically furthest from the resource are labelled as ‘key’ actors suggests the difficulty of getting the most powerful actors to act in the direct and immediate interests of those most directly dependent on access to the resource, i.e. the ‘primary’ actors. How to improve outcomes, then? Clearly, devising appropriate stakeholder engagement platforms at the most appropriate scale is of paramount importance. Related to this is an agenda that puts the last first is important but extremely difficult. When I say ‘last’, I am not only talking about primary stakeholders but about the natural environment itself. The recent controversy of the Botswana government awarding oil exploration contracts within the Okavango River catchment area to a Canadian multinational is exemplary of this difficulty.

ARE THERE EXAMPLES OF POSITIVE CLIMATE ACTION?

While there are so many problems associated with pathways of influence and dependency, there are nevertheless many positive examples of effective climate action. These can be divided along technical, economic, legal/institutional and social lines. For example:

• Technical: e.g. moving away from oil-based products - biomass based packaging for example; renewable energy systems at scale such as micro-hydro, micro-solar, micro-wind.
• Economic: innovations in ecosystem servicing; financial incentives for renewables; R&D attached to renewables and job creation
• Legal and Institutional: collective action from the local to the global in support of e.g. protected areas, forests, commons, and communities 
• Social: change in public discourse; social movements

In my view, we should not undervalue social movements as a climate change success. Greta Thunberg and the youth movement are far more important to sustainable development and effective climate action than are self-driving cars and geo-engineering. For the former is about changing mindsets -- they are about transformation, not reformation, not doing the same thing only 'a little bit greener'. 

HOW CAN THE PUBLIC AID ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AND CLIMATE ACTION?

As I said earlier, a primary challenge is getting influential actors to move in new directions. Old dogs learn new tricks only slowly if at all. Social movements are very important in this regard. We need organized groups to press for the collective good. At the same time, there are allies inside powerful institutions. We must find them and work for change from the inside. What can the public do? Too often, ‘Joe and Jane Q. Public’ feel disempowered. Climate change in particular feels like a phenomenon far beyond our individual control. But I would argue that we in so-called ‘mature democracies’ owe it to the billions of people who reside in states where they have no voice, to exercise our voices and to make effective choices. What is the ‘public’ anyway? The public is not a singular thing. Rather, each of us members of the public may be sub-divided in terms of at least four categories:

• We are Citizens
• We are Consumers
• We are Individuals who are part of families and communities
• We are members of groups in pursuit of our interests, aka ‘civil society’

As citizens, we must engage with government. As consumers, we must lessen our environmental footprint. If you think that £3 Billion of UK taxpayer money is a lot, consider that British pet owners spent an estimated £57 billion in 2018 on their dogs. We can make deliberate choices safe in the knowledge that we do not act alone; we are part of a movement united in support of sustainable, equitable and less wasteful forms of development. As individuals, our actions reflect our values. Too many of us continue to see ourselves as apart from nature not a part of it. We must educate ourselves, our children and our neighbours. We must reflect on our values and take decisions in support of both our individual but also our familial and collective interest. Lastly, 

as part of civil society we must join in — every little bit helps, from local to global. 

Pandemic Pandemonium: Calling Malcolm Gladwell!

Two questions lie at the heart of this post: (1) Are we sacrificing mental health in pursuit of physical health? (2) If so, what are the likely short, medium and long-term consequences of our actions, well meaning though they may be?

One year into the global coronavirus pandemic it is increasingly clear that, with only a few exceptions, leaders cannot lead and followers cannot follow. To be sure, forty years of neoliberalism hasn’t helped with its ‘shrink the state, expand the market, now off you go on your own now’ mantra. Each of these elements of the mantra have led to pathological outcomes: states incapable of forcefully and effectively taking the coordinated national, regional and global action necessary to ‘flatten the curve’; markets that have collapsed, including many delivering ‘essential services’; and people running off madly in all directions, from anti-maskers to dutiful citizens ‘staying the blazes home’. Indeed, many more nefarious elements have raised their ugly heads: vaccine nationalism, black markets for (often fake) vaccines, vaccine tourism for the rich, and widespread social protest. In some states, ‘leaders’ have simply used the pandemic to squash civil society. The private sector has done the one thing it knows how to do: respond to demand by developing a wide array of more or less effective vaccines. What this seems to have done, however, was to fuel a type of euphoria - there are clear skies ahead - quickly followed by a turn toward nihilism - there is no way out - due to the fiasco of many vaccine rollouts. And let’s not forget the stock markets which are, as usual, wildly out of step with reality and well on their way to another crash, the impact of which will be havoc for the average to poor, and a shrug of the shoulders for the one percent.

What is missing here is Malcolm Gladwell. Why Mr. Gladwell? Because what the world needs now more than anything is someone who can see outside of the scientific-rational box we’ve gotten ourselves into. One year into the pandemic and we average and well-meaning folks around the world are still being counselled to do the same things that clearly are not working: stay home, wash your hands, wear a mask, social distance. Don’t get me wrong; I am doing all of these things and am faring very well thank you kindly. But, like the ‘leaders’ of the world, I have options unavailable to almost everyone on the planet. I am able to work from home. It is not ideal but it is also not terrible. I continue to pull my weight and I get paid well for it. So does my spouse. We live in a rural area with lots of natural open space both on our property and all around us. For the first 60 days of the pandemic I did not leave my property but had a grand old time with my chain saw and assorted yard tools getting ready for summer. We also have no children, and we have a very strong marriage where prospects of '24-7' gives me shivers, but primarily of delight. We like being with each other. We have enough space to be on our own if necessary. The only hassle is the 20 minute drive to the shops for provisions. I suspect that all world leaders have a wide range of options similar to mine. Maybe not the ability to fly between personal golf courses on a government plane, but probably not too far off from that either. 

If those at the top were able of walking a mile in the shoes of those at the bottom - or in the middle - they would most likely not be so wedded to rational thought informed by science. They would feel the emotion of cramped quarters, fraught gender relations (intimate partner violence and binge drinking are way up), and children of varying ages with differing capacities to process the logic of restrictions and adapt. Households in many parts of the world are multi-generational, and the responsibility for holding this all together falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women. They would also feel the emerging, unwelcome rise of mental illness. They would begin to see that isolation and lockdown is tantamount to a trade-off between physical and mental health: you are safe from the virus but slowly going mad as a consequence. The revolving door of lockdown, partial opening, red, yellow, green zones and so on makes things worse. Uncertainty goes hand in hand with high levels of stress. Will the market solve this problem too? Wellness apps are all the rage. We are constantly being counselled on how to get creative at home. And people are trying their best to be rational and to do their part for the common good. Are we better off? Amazon and Netflix most certainly are. But what of people? A simple scan of the global social environment reveals people in the streets protesting against lockdown; protesting against not only the loss of their livelihoods but also of their sanity. Governments respond with a combination of water cannon and charts showing vaccine delivery and roll out plans. It’s a powder keg ready to blow. Since ‘Plan A’ is not working, how can the answer to ‘solving’ the pandemic be more ‘Plan A’, or ‘Plan A prime’. We need a fresh approach. We need clear eyed thinking. We need Malcolm Gladwell? 

Remembering Kenneth Good (1933-2020)

Remembering Kenneth Good

My good friend, Ken Good, passed away yesterday, 2 October 2020 at the ripe old age of 87. He had a long career as a Professor of Political Science, teaching in a wide variety of settings. We spent 7 years together at the University of Botswana. He was the author of many articles and books with a consistent focus on democracy, development, and social justice. He is perhaps most well-known for his book Diamonds, Dispossession and Democracy in Botswana

I first met Ken Good at Rhodes University in South Africa. It was 1994 and he was spending the day with us in the Politics and International Studies Unit, then directed by Roger Southall. He delivered a paper, the topic of which has long been forgotten. But not the man. When we next met, it was 1996, this time in Gaborone, Botswana, where he was a Professor in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies. This time, the shoe was on the other foot, as I was giving a paper about prospects for democracy in Nigeria. At the time, I was working in Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria for Adebabyo Adedeji at his African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS). Ken’s primary area of interest is democracy in theory and practice. He helped organize the event and the large room was packed to the rafters. The temperature was also up — this was February, mid-summer in the sub-continent — and so was Ken’s tail. He loved nothing more than a frank discussion about prospects for democracy anywhere. I spent the night at his home, met his young daughter Clara, and we drank Irish whisky and talked politics long into the night. Later on that year, when I left Nigeria, it was to take up a job at UB, largely because of the prospect of working alongside Ken Good. 

I consider Ken to be a friend, mentor, and inspiration and will remain so in death as he was in life. When he was unceremoniously kicked out of Botswana, I had moved on to the Okavango Research Institute in Maun, so didn’t have regular contact with him or any of my colleagues in the department. Nevertheless, several students approached me regarding their plans to organize protests in support of him and I offered them what I hope was ‘wise counsel’. T-shirts were printed up and marches were organized, but as is not untypical of the Botswana government, their minds were made up and he was deported once and for all. That was 15 years ago, so the memory fades and plays tricks.

I think of him often and use several of his publications in my graduate seminar at the University of Waterloo. We had one abiding argument between ourselves. For Ken, ‘critique is its own justification’. I am quoting him directly. Tell truth to power and let the cards fall as they may. He was very good at drawing lines in the sand, lines he would never cross. In contrast, my argument was that having laid out the critique, what is your advice for action? Critique was not enough. There must be a plan to move forward — and by forward I mean in a progressive direction, a direction that improves outcomes for all affected stakeholders, no matter how difficult or divisive the issue. A revolutionary at heart, Ken had little faith in reform. You had to choose a side and fight for what you believed is right. In his case, he only ever and always stood on the side of the oppressed, the marginalized, the dispossessed. He had an obsession with the Spanish Civil War and what might have been. I believe that in his teaching he tried to prefigure preferable futures and encourage the students to move beyond received wisdoms and dominant discourses, be they national or global. Don’t buy their bullshit, as he might say.

When I think of him, what first comes to mind is his serious nature. As the saying goes, he did not suffer fools lightly — or at all for that matter. Not that he wasn’t fun. Fun for Ken was a good argument about serious things — generally accompanied by good food and good drink. He loved intimate dinners. When the party got beyond 4 or 5, he tended to shrink away as the face-to-face element was generally lost in a more boisterous atmosphere. He loved to read and his house in Gaborone appeared to rest on a foundation of books. He was always pressing upon you a new book that he found of particular value. He loved nothing more than to have you come by his office and sit for an hour to discuss important matters of the day. And he always put the news of the day into a theoretical framework, filtering it through his political philosophy. Everything had its place. There were lessons to be learned everywhere and always. 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a curmudgeon is ‘a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man’. No doubt, some people feel that this was an accurate description of Ken. From my point of view, when he was like this — as he often was — it was generally for good reason. He had time for neither frippery nor frivolity. Surrounded by the shallowness of consumerism that had engulfed post-1994 Southern Africa, he railed against pointless distractions. I have fond memories of him unceremoniously walking out of dinner parties that he felt were a waste of his time. With a wave of his hand, he would rise and bid us good night. You could only shake your head and respect him for his unwavering convictions. Being a man of principle only too happy to call you out as warranted, was bound to make him an enemy or two here and there. It got him thrown out of Botswana. How many people have the courage to say what they believe despite the likely consequences? As I said, he gained and deserved our respect.

He dubbed me a ‘Canadian lumberjack’ and said that I was ‘more larrikin than Larry’ — a larrikin being ‘a mischievous young person, an uncultivated, rowdy but good hearted person’, which I took as a complement and an indicator of his equally mischievous and good hearted nature. Under that gruff exterior was a big-hearted man. He had wonderful nicknames for all the rogues that ruled the region. Calling Mangosuthu Buthelezi, ‘Brutalezi’ for example. The toilet at his house in Gabs was adorned with newspaper clippings and photos pasted to the wall — a veritable look inside the head (and heart) of Ken Good. And when I imagine his head and heart, I see quite clearly that Kenneth Good was indeed very good. I will miss him very much. He will never be forgotten.

Larry Swatuk, Doctors Brook, Nova Scotia, 3 November 2020