Post-water political-economics

Abstract

Existing concepts of water political economy focus on political bargaining within relatively static institutional and climactic environments. This article adds ‘post’ to water political economy to explore how non-stationary climate interacts with endogenous political institutions to create and magnify policy and behavioural uncertainties. These post-water political economy ideas are then applied to food security to explore potential future scenarios. The implications are terrible for poor people living in water-scarce, food-importing countries, but not much better for everyone else.