The combination of a severe drought and leaky infrastructure has led to a severe water
shortage in the town of Agrigento, Sicily. This has led the government to impose
restrictions limiting the amount of water homes and businesses are allowed to use.
These restrictions, in turn, have wreaked havoc on one of the town’s primary industries:
tourism. Since regulations require hotels and guesthouses to have a certain amount of
water for each guest, owners are forced to decide between importing water tankers from
the mainland or turning guests away. While some large hotels have the money and
storage capacity to import water, most small hotels do not.
The water shortage is also hurting the town’s other main industry: agriculture. Goat
herders do not have enough water for their animals to drink, and the lack of rainfall has
resulted in there not being enough grass for them to graze on. Similarly, citrus farmers
do not have enough water to irrigate their crops, resulting in a much smaller harvest.
While the government has plans to replace the leaky pipes and build new desalinization
plants, these projects will take many years to complete. In the meantime, the residents
of the town are left thirsty.
Discussion Questions:
- Construct a Production Possibilities Frontier that illustrates Agrigento’s production of tourism and agriculture before the drought. Then show how the PPF changes after the drought.
- Suppose the government wanted to prioritize one industry over the other. How would an economist decide which industry should get the water?
Sources| CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/06/climate/italy-sicily-water-shortage-drought-
tourism-intl/index.html; Unsplash: Photo by mrjn Photography on Unsplash