Yi-Fu Tuan Geography Lecture Series

It is hard to imagine water scarcity in a tropical rainforest. But, since the 1970s, Panama Canal administrators have worried that the famous waterway might run dry. Water supply concerns have reemerged in recent months during a long drought, leading the canal authority to propose restrictions on the draft or depth of passing ships. Carse analyzes how managing Panamanian water for shipping—long the domain of engineers—became an ecological and anthropological problem for canal administrators.