Dry Sicily

Review: Dry Sicily – The One-Handed Economist

The PR people for this documentary asked me if I wanted to screen it, but they wanted to charge a fee (quite reasonable for any documentary, given non-trivial costs). When I said LUC had no funds, they came back with an “offer I couldn’t refuse”:

Apparently your work and the book “Living with water scarcity” are among the reasons that inspired [Mauro Mondello (one of the directors)] to start working on this documentary, which is why he is keen to go on with the screening independently by the funding.

Well. Now, I often complain that I cannot see any impact of my work, but this email was a very nice reminder that some people find it useful!

So we set up a screening at LUC. I was disappointed at the student turn out, but certainly NOT with the documentary, which covers the existential challenges that Sicily faces in 45 beautifully filmed, empathetic, and very perceptive minutes.

The issue, in short, is that water demand has grown and “hardened” at the same time as groundwater was depleted and reservoirs were drained. There’s no space here to speak of a “perfect storm” as growing scarcity and looming shortage are the result of bad management. Roughly 90 percent of the water distributed from reservoirs is lost before it reaches customer taps. Farms and business that need water deliveries must downsize. Even farmers who rely on rain for water must fallow land and sell livestock, since climate change is heating the land and reducing the rain.

The most galling example in the movie is when civic leaders in Enna must do their own calculations to guess how much water is left in the reservoir because Siciliacque — the reservoir manager — will not share that data!

Humans have lived on Sicily for thousands of years, but they cannot live without water. I am guessing that the current population of 4.8 million will need to drop to around 1.7 million (same as 1800) if they are to live “within their means.” Agricultural activity will need to drop by even more — 80 percent, I would guess.

I give this documentary a rating of FIVE STARS. Watch it. [trailer]