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"Water is the blue soul of the planet": a Spanish economist on things that can''t be bought or sold.

Article Excerpt
From a distance, economist Pedro Arrojo Agudo looks like the stereotype of a professor: trim beard, glasses, a crisp white shirt. Get a little closer, though, and the image begins to blur. Maybe it's the bracelet of colorful strands woven around his wrist, or the way he quotes Spanish song lyrics as easily as he cites statistics from government reports. Face to face, he seems less like an academic and more like the activist who has turned a dry trickle of interest in water policy into a tidal wave of protest.

In the mid-1990s, Arrojo, a professor at Spain's University of Zaragoza, conducted an economic analysis of the country's $25 billion National Hydrological Plan and its impact on small villages in the Pyrenees. He found that the more than 100 proposed new dams would flood villagers' homes, displace mussel and rice farmers, and damage the biologically rich Ebro River delta, a nature park frequented by night u herons and flamingos. It also didn't make sense financially: Crops irrigated by the scheme wouldn't be profitable without large government subsidies. Arrojo concluded that the water plan was a disaster and opposed public funding of dams designed for private use. Spain already has 1,200...

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