Red Talks -'Stressed (stressing) socionatures: Urban metabolism, water scarcity and seawater desalination in Chile under a neoliberal paradigm

Dates:	5 May 2022
Times:	16:00 - 17:00
What is it:	Seminar
Organiser:	Global Development Institute
Who is it for:	University staff, External researchers, Alumni, Current University students, General public
Speaker:	Dr Maria Christina Fragkou

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The Resources, Environment, and Development (RED) Research Group –formerly known as the ‘Agrarian change and Political ecology’ group– in the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester invites researchers and practitioners from across disciplines to join us in our “Red Talks: on the Politics of Resources, Environment and Development” seminar series.

Throughout this series, we hope to unpack the causes of injustice and inequality that both structure and emerge from diverse interactions with resources, environment, and development, and to discuss potential avenues towards achieving more socially just and environmentally sustainable actions. We invite attendees from across disciplines to join us for engaging and thought-provoking discussion as we explore diverse social-environmental challenges to global development.

In this talk, Dr Maria Christina Fragkou will be sharing her research on the current water crisis in Chile, and the hydro-social implications of desalination (widely promoted as a solution to the crisis) from an urban socio-economic metabolism perspective. The increasing water shortages along Chile, and the consequent pressure on the country’s continental water sources, has resulted in the consolidation of seawater desalination as the Chilean State’s main strategy for supplying drinking water to coastal populations in arid areas. Despite the growing expansion of this technology, the social implications of desalinated water distribution for human consumption in Chilean cities have not yet been studied.

This will be a hybrid event. You can join either in person (ALB Boardroom) or online (via this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcpceiuqj4uH9XutgJFnRG7DDwbjIB9yPeN).

Speaker

Dr Maria Christina Fragkou

Role: Associate Professor

Organisation: University of Chile

Biography: She has a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College, London.