Landscapes of a National Natural Resource in Lesotho, the World’s First Water-Exporting Country

FAIN: FEL-272966-21

Colin Hoag
Smith College (Northampton, MA 01060-2916)

Research and writing leading to a book on the complex social, economic, and ecological factors involved in the South African water crisis and Lesotho’s role as an exporter of this precious commodity.

For a century Lesotho acted as a labor reserve for South African mining industry. As mining employment collapsed in the 1990s, Lesotho signed a treaty with South Africa to build a series of dams and divert water to arid Johannesburg. Lesotho had become the world’s first water-exporter. As water rose in national importance, however, its very nature came into question, inciting debates about how it flows across the landscape. Conservation experts worry that soil erosion and reservoir sedimentation might imperil this massive water project. They blame rural livestock owners who turned to livestock production in the absence of mining jobs. Rural people, by contrast, blame soil erosion on climate change, citing increased drought and destructive thunderstorms. In effect, Lesotho’s water-export economy has exposed a crisis of environmental interpretation. My research scrutinizes this debate, showing why humanistic insights are crucial to emergent water regimes in the Anthropocene.

Associated Products

The Fluvial Imagination: On Lesotho's Water-Export Economy (Book)
Title: The Fluvial Imagination: On Lesotho's Water-Export Economy
Author: Colin Hoag
Abstract: Landlocked and surrounded by South Africa on all sides, the mountain kingdom of Lesotho became the world's first "water-exporting country" when it signed a 1986 treaty with its powerful neighbor. An elaborate network of dams and tunnels now carries water to Johannesburg, the subcontinent's water-stressed economic epicenter. Hopes that receipts from water sales could improve Lesotho's fortunes, however, have clashed with fears that soil erosion from overgrazing livestock could fill its reservoirs with sediment. In this wide-ranging and deeply researched book, Colin Hoag shows how producing water commodities incites a fluvial imagination. Engineering water security for urban South Africa draws attention ever further into Lesotho's rural upstream catchments: from reservoirs to the soils and vegetation above them, and even to the social lives of herders at remote livestock posts. As we enter our planet's water-export era, Lesotho exposes the possibilities and perils ahead.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520386341/the-fluvial-imagination
Primary URL Description: University of California Press webpage
Secondary URL: https://luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.134/
Secondary URL Description: UC Press Luminos Open Access webpage
Access Model: Print and Open Access
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520386341
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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