Unintended Consequences: Water Inequality in an Agricultural Development Program
Date & Time: November 29, 2018 | 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Location: 133 Sparks Building
Professor Elizabeth Ransom will deliver this Rock Ethics Insititute Colloquium program at 2:00 p.m. on November 29. Free to attend, but space is limited. Please register online in advance.
Abstract
With the renewed focus on agricultural development programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a focus on increasing agricultural productivity. Like programming of the 1960s and 1970s, much of the emphasis has been on providing newer technologies and inputs to farmers on the continent to increase productivity. This talk analyzes the unintended consequences of a dairy development program that encourages individual households to adopt a water intensive technology, crossbred dairy cows, in a setting where water is communal and, at times, a scarce resource. Drawing on recent science and technology (STS) research focused on water, I explore distributional questions surrounding water and propose that agricultural and development ethics approaches should be integrated into future development programming to mitigate harmful unintended consequences.