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#AcademicValentines or the elusive quest for love in academia

After reading a tweet from @NeinQuarterly (a Twitter account actually written by an academic, Eric Jarosinski), I couldn’t help but smile and attempt to contribute to the romanticization of February 14th through the lenses of an academic.

So I started tweeting a few pithy quotes from romantic comedies adapted to celebrate Valentine’s using academic wording and hashtagging it with #AcademicVAlentines. Because I started on February 11th, my fear was that the idea of Academic Valentines wouldn’t take off.

Strangely enough, the idea of #AcademicValentines did resonate with many people. Florence Chee, my colleague Brian Phillips, William Adler and a few other academics I follow and who follow me started tweeting their own. 2 hours later, Brian had the top retweeted tweet, a spot he held for a solid day or two.

#AcademicValentines has taken off alright, so much so, that it’s February 14th today (Happy Valentine’s!) and it is still going strong. This clearly shows that we are a nerdy, sometimes lovelorn bunch. I make fun of Valentines today because last year’s Valentines’ (a day that actually has a lot of meaning to me), I spent it talking over Skype with my (now former) partner. This year, for Valentines’, we are no longer together. While I can’t deny that it hurts (we were together for 8 years), I can’t also dwell on it.

Academia is a many splendored thing, yes. But it also has tremendous drawbacks. The two-body problem is not a small one. I have tried to solve the two-body problem issue twice, and both times, I’ve lost the battle. And while I love the accolades, seeing my name on published journal articles, books and book chapters, travelling the world for conferences and research fieldwork and to give seminar talks, I still am a human. A human who like any other, needs and wants to love and be loved in return.

Whenever I share my story with other colleagues (within and outside academia), the thing I say is “when considering a career in academia, you need to make sure to constantly communicate with your loved ones“. Be it parents, children, siblings, friends or partners/boyfriends/girlfriends, like in everything else, communication is key. Your goals need not only be aligned, but also talked about. If you are a PhD student, you need to a support network, and you have to tell your support network what you need, how you feel and where you are going. If you are going on the tenure-track or up for tenure, or seeking alt-ac career pathways, you’re going to need a support network, and you’ll need to communicate with them openly, clearly and directly.

Many fellow academics have reached out to me and said that they love my being frank, candid and open even on my academic/professional social media accounts. I appreciate the kind words, but more importantly, I think it is important for me that my fellow academics, my own PhD students, and the world in general can take a glimpse into academia that goes beyond the perception of individuals who live in ivory towers and are unreachable. I, for one, am never unreachable. If anything I do, write or tweet can help other fellow academics in their struggles to find balance in their academic and personal lives, it’ll be all worth it. Let’s call it “Contributions to Service to the Discipline and the Academic Community” 🙂

Happy Valentine’s, everyone.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 14, 2014

The value of handwritten notes in academic research

I have no shame in admitting that I’m completely old-school. I take handwritten notes. Despite my inherent interest in, and continued use of, technology tools (particularly online ones, like Mendeley, Evernote and Dropbox) I write my To-Do lists by hand. Not only that, but also when I am editing a paper (or writing a first draft), or conceptualizing research ideas, I always do them by hand.

I find that unless I write by hand, my thinking always drifts away. There is something to the physical component of jotting down my ideas. I also edit journal articles, manuscripts and grants by hand. And obviously, I grade by hand. When I was doing my PhD I used to write down all my notes in handwriting, and then typing my notes, and saving them as Word documents.

Someone recommended (and I actually agree with this idea) to write down by hand your notes, but then to type them and save them on Evernote, which allows you to index them properly. Some of my students (a vast majority) type notes in computer, but I find that when I do this, my notes aren’t as solid.

Besides, I also like to write on my whiteboard and map out how I am thinking about a particular research problem.

I also find that when I work from home, handwritten notes actually flow much more easily than when I have my big whiteboard available (I have a small one with a little corkboard at my home office, but I only note my To-Do list there). I tend to map out research ideas in a whiteboard when at my campus office.

All the tables that I usually create to accompany my journal articles or to help me think through my ideas are usually written by hand, then typed, then printed and THEN edited on paper (usually with red or purple ink). I know, old school, but incredibly effective.


Do YOU write your research notes by hand? (excluding, of course, fieldwork notes, which I suppose EVERYONE writes by hand!)

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 8, 2014

The politics of water privatization in Mexico

Whenever people ask me why I avoid some research questions I remind them that there are policy areas where I don’t think we can do much or where I feel that I cannot contribute. For years, I shunned the literature on water privatization because I was (and still am) in the politics of wastewater governance. I thought to myself that water privatization would never need to be part of my research agenda. I felt that this body of scholarship was incredibly politicized (just read some of the research that this Google Scholar search yields to see what I mean)

I used to avoid this body of work particularly on the one hand because I had other research interests, but also because the vast majority of publications on the human geography field on this topic point to neoliberalism as “the root of all evil”, as I often write in jest. Well, I will be damned (and I may have been assimilated by The Borg), because I am currently working on a project on privatization of water supply in Mexico, and my literature review has proven interesting to say the least. The links between my research topics are quite obvious, if one looks beyond the surface. Wastewater treatment is part of the infrastructure provided by municipalities. Infrastructure includes water supply, treatment and distribution. Water supply can be public, private or a mix. And privatized water supply is a really interesting topic. So there you have it, I’m finally studying water privatization.

Several Mexican municipalities have privatized their water supply in one way or another. Some of them, like Mexico City, have allowed for foreign interests to participate in an alternative service delivery model where some components of water supply are offered by private companies. Others, like Aguascalientes (where I live) have offered a transnational consortium (Veolia Water) a concession contract for public water delivery through a joint venture, Proactiva Medio Ambiente. There is, as you can imagine, strong resistance from Mexican activists to the privatization of water supply (mirroring the worldwide tendency to fight against corporatization of water resources and for a global right to water).

While obviously private companies will deny any wrongdoing or inefficiencies, several analyses I have found point out to a sad reality: water privatization doesn’t always work. Mexicans are quickly advancing towards reaching the top place as bottled water consumers. Making inferences in this case isn’t hard. If Mexicans feel that they can’t drink their tap water even under conditions of water privatization, then efficacy isn’t reached and thus, would probably be better to resort to remunicipalization (or public water supply).

I can understand that some times, in order to provide a better service to the public, you need public-private partnerships. Surely there are some places where privatization does work because it provides much needed infrastructure, particularly in urban contexts where municipal governments cannot provide it. But from what I have been investigating, private intervention in the Mexican water sector doesn’t seem to be a case study in good public service delivery.

This leads me to the main issue: I can now understand how neoliberalism as a philosophy of work can have (and possibly has had) an impact on how water supply processes are designed, and why does it get such a bad reputation in the human geography scholarship. Because market solutions don’t always mean the best solutions.

Posted in academia, bridging academia and practice, water governance, water policy.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 4, 2014

Prioritizing tasks in academic life

Given my physical and personality traits (I get tired incredibly fast, have enormous amounts of energy, love focusing on a broad variety of tasks and projects), I have designed my days in such a way that I can focus on doing the stuff I need to get done and still maintain some degree of sanity and balance. As you may notice in my weekly schedule, I prioritize writing above almost everything else with the exception of napping, taking time off and exercising. and before I do anything else during the day, I write (by hand, as you can notice in the photo) my to-do list.

Every morning, I write from 4:30am to 6:30am religiously. I often combine this writing with reading journal articles, books and book chapters. I don’t actually take the 2 hours to read. What I do is I write notes as I read, and then, during my writing time, I use my notes to fill up paragraphs in the paper I am currently writing. I have also recently taken to write down my successes on an every day basis. That is, I write what I have accomplished during the day. This helps me stay focused on my work.

Writing down my To Do lists by hand, and at the end of the day (and end of the month) summarizing my achievements and accomplishments lets me see the overall picture of where I am going and what I am doing. There is a reason why I do this: I am well aware of how easily bored I can get, and how fragile my body can be sometimes. I know I can accomplish a lot if I work on a broad variety of projects, and if I can see how much progress I am making. Be it doing fieldwork, creating new datasets, reading about new concepts and ideas, or doing service to my institution and the discipline, I need variety.

I also know that I can work long hours only if I also take breaks during my day. I also require time off and being settled, which is hard to do when you travel as much as I do. Last year, when I travelled for conferences and fieldwork extensively (9 countries in 6 months), and for family visits (Calgary in Canada, and Los Angeles in the USA), I realized I was getting more and more tired. I started 2014 sick with a cold, and I quickly fell sick again in less than two weeks because I travelled from Aguascalientes to Mexico City each week of the month of January.

I have found that reading articles on productivity tips actually helps me gain focus and learn some tips that I may integrate into my own tool-kit. The 8 tips for highly productive people that are linked in the list attached have actually proven quite useful for me. There is a lot to be gained by self-examining and adopting techniques and strategies from people who are highly productive and successful. One striking similarity in all productivity tips I have read is the concept of focus and the idea of prioritizing. You need to prioritize what will bring you the most success, or what will sustain you in the long run. For me, success is measured in many ways, but one of the ways in which I want to be successful is publishing more, in both languages (English and Spanish). Therefore, I stay focused and prioritize writing.

I make sure I make time for writing before I make time for just about everything else. I have been saying NO to so many events, conferences, talks, seminars, workshops, I have actually lost count. I feel bad, of course, but my own academic success is my priority, above anybody else’s excitement about having me come and give a talk or present a seminar. I am sticking with whatever commitments I made last year, but working really hard at prioritizing travel for conferences and fieldwork, and not accepting invitations that will yield very little in terms of productive writing or bringing new ideas.

Prioritizing is something that I struggle with on a regular basis, but I am disciplined at doing. There is no other way to be successful in academia, I believe, other than actually being disciplined. 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration, someone said!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 3, 2014

The challenges of being a public policy professor and a public intellectual

Ever since I began my PhD, I realized that my work was supposed to have policy implications. I am lucky to have had a PhD supervisor whose philosophy was to train students who wouldn’t dare to make claims without empirical support. Who would be interested in solving analytical puzzles with an interdisciplinary tool-kit. Who would be focused on asking policy-relevant research questions. Who would create theoretically-informed, empirically-sound, analytically-robust research designs. In my view, my dissertation was always meant to have a public impact.

At the same time, I have always thought that part of my duty is to be a source of wisdom for public policy-makers. I believe that my research is supposed to be publicly available, widely-disseminated and policy-relevant. I’ve always believed that I should engage in what some people call public intellectualism. As Craig Calhoun aptly said, a few years ago: “Public engagement was a strong feature of the social sciences from their birth”. In fact, the discipline that I’ve called home (Political Science) for the past decade or so, has been seen as having a duty to contribute to the public sphere (read these interesting essays from a collection organized by the Social Science Research Council of the United States).

The mere concept of public intellectual and the heated discussions around it fascinate me. What exactly is a public intellectual? An academic who advises policy-makers on a regular basis? A professor who publishes opinion editorials every week? A scholar who appears on TV? Or someone like me, a professor who has a social media presence (read this interview by Melonie Fullick about my use of social media in academia)? I do not claim to be a public intellectual (I loathe self-aggrandizing, so much so that I’ve criticized the mere notion of calling oneself an expert), but I do believe that my duty is to communicate my research to the broadest audience possible and to ensure that it is used to design robust policy options to improve societal welfare.

Public intellectuals face a number of challenges, however. This is perhaps one of the reasons why I probably wouldn’t want to be a public intellectual. As Melonie Fullick aptly indicates in her piece for University Affairs,

It’s because once you’ve been labelled, there’s no winning: you can’t self-identify as a “public intellectual”, or you’re automatically either shot down, accused of “failure” to achieve unwieldy political goals, or simply assumed unworthy of the title.

Something like this happened to Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, tenured and full professor at Tulane University, and someone whose work as a public intellectual I really like. Harris-Perry also leads a TV show, and she has been touted as America’s foremost public intellectual by Ta-Nehisi Coates, praise that was quickly debated and in some cases, blatantly shut-down). I think the biggest challenge to someone with such a large public profile is that, with visibility comes an unavoidable cost, which may include losing your credibility as a scholar.

Interestingly enough, a recent proposal by the International Studies Association (ISA) to ban journal editors from blogging (full disclosure: I sit on the Executive Committee of ISA’s Environmental Studies Section), coupled with the debate around Harris-Perry’s public intellectual status also led me to ponder on the hindrances of being public, having an online presence, and sharing my thoughts and research to a larger audience. I would like to think that many political scientists and public policy scholars would like their work to be publicly discussed, widely available and to have policy impact. But as Richard French reminds us on his article in The Political Quarterly “The Professors in Public Life” (French 2012, p. 538),

Limitations of time, information, and analytical capacity require fast and frugal forms of rationality which sacrifice any pretence to optimisation. The ability to use these forms of rationality in a given domain distinguishes neophytes, and journeymen from experts. Experts perceive and select information from the environment more efficiently and faster than others; they recognize patterns or similarities from situation to situation; they resort to conscious analysis only rarely; they perceive problems and courses of action as parts of a single intuition. It takes unique gifts to adapt this form of expertise successfully over time to the inexhaustible variety of ‘wicked’ ‘messy’ problems which public life unfailingly presents to politicians, under the constant pressure of publicity and competition.

How I read French in the paragraph above is that we (academics) can have the gift of analysis, but it is hard to make sure that politicians absorb this knowledge and make good use of it to inform their policy decisions. French makes an excellent analytical summary of the challenges that professors face in wanting their research to inform public life. As French indicates, competition, publicity and uncertainty are three cardinal facts of public life, and how these factors influence politicians’ decision-making is relevant to any scholar wanting to have their views heard. To the extent that academics are able to successfully understand these challenges and frame their work in such a way that it can support robust decision-making, they will also be (in my view) making headway towards becoming successful public intellectuals.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 2, 2014

Writing policy content: Tips for students and educators

Last term was my first time in more than 6 years that I taught in Spanish. During Fall 2013 I taught State and Local Government (Gestion Estatal y Municipal) at CIDE. Originally, my plan was that I was going to teach the course in English, but ended up having to teach it in Spanish, a fact that greatly hindered my ability to offer many more recent readings in English. The topic of local governments is heavily studied in Mexican Spanish-speaking academia, but given how many years I have been out of the country, I was rather unfamiliar with the authors, and with what was being researched. It was way easier to just go into the English-language scholarship, and the typical journals that cover this specific topic (State-and Local Government Review, Local Government Studies, etc.)

While I had to rewrite the entire syllabus, I still remained intent on teaching my students skills that would get them hired. My courses at UBC were always applied and I made sure that my students completed their coursework feeling that they had learned something practical, something that would be useful for them once they had already completed their degree. At UBC I taught in the department of Political Science, although I always had students from many other disciplines (who were mostly attracted to my courses because they saw the practical applications). Here I teach in an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, a Bachelors of Government and Public Finance. Of course, I am also required to teach in the Masters and PhD programmes at CIDE (in the Santa Fe campus), but for now, I am on a very low teaching load (1-0).

Given that I have a low teaching load, I have had time to ponder and think what I want my students to gain from my courses. In the past few years, I have received numerous emails from students who were happy I taught them how to write briefing notes, case studies and policy memorandums. They always keep emphasizing what I already had in my mind when I started teaching Public Policy: in our current job market, it is IMPERATIVE that our students learn to write stuff that will be valuable to them, that may help them get hired or that may help them in their current job, if they are already working. Recently, I tweeted about these three different types of policy documents I teach my students: policy memorandums (or memoranda), case studies in public policy and briefing notes (or briefing cards – in Spanish the name is “tarjetas informativas“).

Case Studies in Public Policy

Case studies, in the form I use them, present a particular situation, provide background and a description of a situation that can be solved through public policy analysis. For me, case studies are 10-15 pages summaries that outline a case that can be used as a teaching example.

The case method has been favored as a teaching strategy in business schools for decades. I have an MBA, I should know! Harvard School of Business has made its case study teaching method almost a trademark. They have even published on the Core Principles of Teaching with Cases. When I did my MBA, I worked on HBS Cases for homework, and thus I became determined to transfer what I learned to my own teaching in public policy.

When I first started teaching Public Policy, I thought that nobody had thought about my brilliant idea of teaching public policy analysis with cases. Well, obviously I was wrong, as the following resources can indicate:

One of my goals in 2014 is to edit last year’s student case studies to actually build a handbook of case studies in public policy specifically for the Mexican academic market.

Policy Memorandums

Policy memorandums (or memoranda, if you want to be picky about grammar/spelling) are short documents that provide policy makers with advice on a particular situation. While briefing notes and policy memorandums may sound similar (and in some cases, they are used interchangeably). For me, policy memos are action-oriented analytic summaries. The best description I can give can be found on this document (from MIT Planning).

A policy memo is a document that provides analysis and/or recommendations for a particular audience regarding a particular situation or problem. A well-written policy memo reflects attention to purpose; it is well organized; and it has a clear, concise style.

For me, policy memoranda can be longer than briefing cards.

Briefing cards (Tarjetas Informativas)

Briefing cards, or briefing notes, which in Spanish are translated as “tarjetas informativas” – the difference between briefing cards and policy memorandums, the way I conceptualize it, is that the latter can be longer, whereas briefing cards are short, to the point, and provide talking points for bureaucrats, politicians, etc.

  • A model of briefing card that also approaches or is intermediate between policy memorandum and briefing card can be found here.
  • A good resource on writing briefing notes can be found here

Posted in environmental policy.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 24, 2014

Academic writing tip: Hit “Submit”

Last week I participated in a 3-day long workshop on transboundary water governance and transboundary river basins (I will be writing about it later this week or today). I really enjoyed having an intimate conversation with my colleagues. However, one of the things that I reflected on the most as I was participating in the workshop, as well as writing my goals for 2014 was my desire to increase my conference-paper-to-journal-article conversion rate.

Of course, I feel thrilled to have 4 publications in press this year (2 journal articles, one in Spanish and one in English, and 2 book chapters, also one in Spanish and one in English). That will also be complimented with two additional book chapters in Spanish, and hopefully four other journal articles (they’re already under review).

I am obsessed right now with my conference-paper-to-journal-article conversion rate. And there’s a simple reason for that. I have way too many conference papers that, at the time, were fantastic, and were a theoretical and empirical contribution, and I just didn’t have the mental or physical energy to push them to become journal articles. Luckily (and strangely) enough, the fields haven’t moved forward so much that I still have got a chance to publish those as journal articles.

But as my good friend Jeremy J. Schmidt tweeted a few days ago, the secret in academic writing (as in ANY writing) is to hit “SUBMIT”. I know it is scary to send your paper (which you crafted so thoroughly) to be judged by two, three or sometimes four reviewers. But you will never get anywhere if you don’t send the paper out.

Mariana Medina summarized one of the biggest challenges (and pet peeves) of academic peer review quite well: there’s almost always one reviewer who makes our lives difficult. Or rejects our paper!

But the truth is, if we don’t get our work through peer-review, we probably won’t get it published. So one of My Goals 2014 is to Hit Submit often.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 19, 2014

My 2014 manifesto: Peace and balance

2012 and 2013 were great for my research in that I got to create new datasets, explore new field sites, undertake new fieldwork, and write, write, and do even more writing. The second part of the semester, though, was simply insane. I travelled to 9 countries, presented papers in Ireland, Uruguay, Portugal, Canada, the United States and of course Mexico (i.e. attended conferences or workshops in 6 countries), and taught one undergraduate course. This contributed to a deteriorated health state and an unhealthy situation where I ended the year (and started 2014) sick.

There were a number of great gains. I have not actually summarized what I accomplished in 2013 (even though I actually submitted an annual research report, but I can recall that I wrote my accomplishments on Twitter (my best note-taking device). From what I read there, I realize that I wrote (from scratch) five journal articles, 5 conference papers, got one journal article published, 2 journal article and 2 book chapters accepted and in press for 2014. I am supervising two PhD students, 1 undergraduate and will start with a postdoctoral researcher in 2014.

I have been struggling with finding the right balance. I have not been alone in the process of finding the right amount of work, and self-care, however, and I am getting a lot of feedback and advice. Senior professors at CIDE, colleagues from universities all over the world, and my family and friend all have been extremely helpful and they’ve all suggested that I need to take better care of myself and stop travelling so much and working so hard. Thus I decided to start saying “NO”.

Saying NO to opportunities for additional writing, projects and collaborations means that I will be able to focus on what I think needs to be done, and having some time to research stuff that while not my main focus, I still find interesting. It’s always a challenge to balance between focus and diversification in academic life. I am hoping to work only Monday through Friday and not work on weekends or holidays, as it is often the norm in academia. I still plan to write on a daily basis, and from January through August, I will be focusing on spending the vast majority of my time on fieldwork and research and writing, as I will only have to teach one undergraduate course in the fall.

I am very disciplined with my weekly schedule, and I have built in self-care on a daily basis. My 2014 will mean staying within the boundaries of what I am physically capable of. My 2014, both academically and personally, will be seeking peace and balance.

Here’s to a great 2014!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 12, 2014

New year, new projects, new datasets, new life

The end of the year was even more hectic than I thought it would be, so I really didn’t have much time to actually sit down and write what I had learned in the past semester, let alone the entire year. I started the year hitting the pavement running, so I haven’t had much time for self-reflection, something I promised myself I would seek to engage in on a regular basis (as I also promised myself I’d seek balance in my academic and personal lives). But I’m glad that I always write notes while I travel (usually for research, fieldwork or conferences). I scribbled the following few paragraphs on my trip from Lisbon to London, and they are a solid reflection of my state of mind towards the end of the year.

Even though I did not report my datasets on my CV nor on my annual report, constructing them was actually the part that I absolutely loved about this 2013. Actually from July 2012 onwards. I spent the vast majority of this and half of last year doing new fieldwork, collecting new data, examining potential field sites for future research. And building datasets. For the past little while I had felt that I needed a renewal. There is only so much you can do with data from your PhD dissertation.

The only way I have gotten away with publishing anything out of my PhD thesis has been updating the data and reexamining the methods. I do not regret having spent these few years post-PhD writing on other subjects, collecting new data and opening new project arcs. I do regret that I didn’t do this as systematically as I would have liked. There are people I admire and are way more prolific than I am. Since I am not teaching until August 2014, I will be using the first 7 months of the year cranking out research and publishing. I’ll also be doing a lot of fieldwork and so I will spend a few weeks in Vancouver (with side trips to Seattle). I do intend to travel less, and more targeted.

What I found incredibly useful in 2013 was participating in small, targeted workshops. These more intimate venues provide a context where more in-depth intellectual discussions can be had. I wrote three papers from scratch and I am ready to work on them and submit them with views for publication next year. I am incorporating all the feedback I have received from other colleagues at the workshops I participated and I am sure the final product will be a much better version of the previous paper.

The final published article will definitely be much stronger.

Collecting new data doesn’t mean that I throw out the old ones, it does mean I need to systematize it all. This 2014 will be all about systematizing, analyzing and publishing new data. I will also extend project arcs beyond what I originally thought. For example, when I started working on intractable water conflict, I thought I’d have this project done and completed by the end of 2013. Once I participated in a workshop on water politics, I realized this will probably be a 5 year project. And that’s fine, since I have interest in moving towards understanding conflict (seeing as I’ve studied cooperation for so long).

This will be a great year, with new data, moving forward projects and focusing on publishing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 12, 2014

The politics of wastewater governance

My recent conversation with Dave Karpf, Mariana Medina, Mervyn Horgan and Andrew Biro on “the political” made me think about “the political” in sanitation and wastewater governance. I’ve written before here on why I study sanitation. The size of the problem is huge, and it is such a basic necessity. Yet almost a billion people still defecate in the open, because they lack the dignity of a toilet to do their most basic necessities.


Photo credit: Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Secretariat

The work of Susan Chaplin, Sarah Jewitt, Lyla Mehta, Kathleen O’Reilly, Matthew Gandy and mine, of course, are all relevant to the questions that I grapple with on an everyday basis: why, when we have the technology and the means to provide almost-unparalleled, universal access to sanitation, we lack political will and institutional factors that ensure that this basic need is met?

I’ve written before about how I think that this kind of research (sanitation, wastewater, human waste all viewed through a social science lens) is not “sexy”. Scholars in the water world seem way more interested in understanding patterns of (and lack of) water access, whereas wastewater treatment is seen more as a public health problem, if that. Understanding the politics of sanitation requires us to have a multidisciplinary perspective. We cannot write about sanitation if we fail to understand that water is not only a natural resource but it is also inherently political.


Photo credit: Ton Haex on Flickr

It is a little bit more than overwhelming to think that in some countries, more people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Bewildering, no? This phenomenon is not limited to India or China, Africa or any developing economy. Lack of basic sanitation is a fact of life even in developed countries. Hence why I stay on course and I keep studying this topic. Because there is something inherently political in the governance of sanitation and wastewater. And these questions on how can we solve the global sanitation crisis can’t solely be answered through a technical (engineering) or managerial (economics) lens. We need to look at it from a global, truly interdisciplinary perspective.

Posted in academia, environmental policy, wastewater.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 22, 2013