Funder: Kone Foundation
Duration: 2025-2029
Water is a precondition for all life. However, water is unequally distributed, and used, by those with access, in an unsustainable manner. To an extent, unequal access to water is a geographical issue. Yet, it is also impacted by political and economic ideas, structures, and institutions, all of which are conditioned, produced, and maintained through law. Law is thus not a neutral tool, but a major battle ground for different discourses on water, often linked to specific expert regimes and institutions – discourses that have material consequences in the distribution of authority, expertise, resources, profit, and power. Starting from these premises, THIRST aims to understand how law shapes the political economy of thirst by structuring the competing discourses on water. Drawing from discourse analysis of academic literature, international organization reports, treaties, and legal cases, combined with critical legal research, and law and political economy research, THIRST scrutinizes the legally constructed political economy of water and aims to make visible the ways in which discursive battles over water have material and distributive effects.
The THIRST team include Ukri Soirila (co-PI), Kati Nieminen (co-PI), Kerttuli Lingenfelter (postdoctoral researcher) and Susanna Kaavi (doctoral researcher).