Storage as security: Damming water in Pakistan

Geographies of storage

“…For instance, the spatial and social stakes of such storage labor are central objects of analysis in Colin Hoag's ethnography of Lesotho's emergence as a “water reservoir” for urban South Africa (2022, p. 9). As he details, sediment flows threaten the grand Lesotho Highland Water Project, an extensive array of water storage reservoirs and pipelines developed to serve water‐stressed Johannesburg across the border, highlighting the importance of storage as a geopolitical arrangement in some contexts (see also Folch, 2019; Hayat, 2022). In response, the state has developed a mix of public works and social engineering projects directed toward curtailing erosion—but that, in practice, tend to function more effectively at redistributing state resources than holding soil still.…”