Planet B: Everything Must Change – Water

A splash of blue in a Green New Deal.

How have we come to see our oceans as either a vehicle for trade or a site of limitless resources? In the fourth episode of Planet B, we ask why water, the most basic necessity of life, always has a price.

Harpreet Kaur Paul finds out how capitalism has fundamentally changed our relationship with water, from the commodification of the seas during the age of exploration to the international race to discover deep-sea oil and gas reserves.

Instead of treating the ocean as a space for frictionless accumulation, can we imagine a “blue new deal” that refuses to carve up water into routes and resources controlled by the most powerful?

This episode features insights from Tina Ngata, an advocate for environmental, Indigenous and human rights based in Te Ika A Maui (the North Island of New Zealand), Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, Elif Saracan, an activist for the Kurdish Womens Movement, and Elizabeth Johnson, a Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University.

Look out for two extended interview episodes with Ngata and Khalili before the next episode lands.

Planet B is a six-part series from Novara Media and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung London about the crucial issues facing our heating world: work, land, infrastructure, migration, water and debt. It’s based on the illustrated book Perspectives on a Global Green New Deal – order a free copy from the book’s website.

Produced by Freddie Stuart.
Music and sound by Ben Heyderman.
Illustrations by Tomekah George.
Design by Pietro Garrone.