Tony, I'd like to ask you about your virtual water concept. Really, it's a kind of intellectual innovation. But before I start and give some ideas about that, I'd like to ask you, what's your idea, your thought about what innovation means in the study of water policy around the world? >> Well, they're tendency in most water policy makers to concentrate on the physical water and not on the politics. And since my journey has been from that side, and as I've worked more abroad and even in this country I find that the role of politics is so important. That it's essential that we try to get scientists not to be brilliant political scientists, but to be aware that announcing the truth is not enough. It's got to be announced and shared in a way which is communicable and welcome. But the thing is we press me, I've come across over as many managing directors of consulting water engineering companies. And they weren't in that position until quite a way through their career seven or 20 years or more. And during the first 20 years, they were doing many technical things, and then they had to learn how to think politically, both because they were in private sector organizations. They had to be taking so many other things into account, big budget and various other things. And they could quite easily do it, but they weren't encouraged to think about it in the early parts of their career. And that's, I thought both in the professional world as well as in the academic world. It was a pity that there was not some awareness amongst the engineering community. That there were a political factors to take into account that could stop everything. >> And in your own career having come from geography, but still in the sort of science part of it, did you have to go through that journey yourself? Where you were at when you started with ritual idea? Have you changed your kind of orientation that in all into discipline then you were? >> Well, I have always been and if you going to do more in a developing certainly you've got to be aware of the economics and you've gotta be aware of the hydrology, you've got to be aware of politics. So from first when I came back into the university world I had to adjust to that. What I have discovered over the intervening over 50 years are worst, because one is a generalist and not a specialist. And you are always engaged with specialists. You've got to be able to offer connections which matter. Otherwise, you're always in this subordinate position of being a second-rate economist or a second-rate hydrologist and so on and so on. So it isn't having the label of geographer is a big disadvantage, that I'm Tony Allen that's made a contribution to water. Any thinking is significant. [LAUGH] I can go into meetings with that, but if I was to be measured by my competence in economics and hydraulic engineering, I would find it hard to get a hearing. >> And how have you managed then to make those kind of intellectual connections yourself between these different areas that you have to address? >> I think it's just by partly, anything that you do you need a bit of courage. [LAUGH] You've got to be prepared to knock on doors. And if you need an answer to a question, and you know that it's in the mind of a person in that organization. You've just gotta have the courage to go and persuade them that it's necessary, that there would be a productive result from this encounter. So I'm in a position now that one goes to any meeting and I'm able to converse in the ballot of well in the necessary standards of economics, political economy, and water science and engineering that it is a progressive conversation. I've been lucky in being in long enough to become a reasonably successful interdisciplinarian, but that is, and sometimes people, as I indicated when I talked about senior engineers becoming managing directors and CEOs. They have to suddenly become interdisciplinarians, because there's one thing about the private sector, it doesn't. If you get big corporations they can be in silos, but if you're going to solve a problem in the private sector, you've gotta get on and do it. And relate to the issues that count you can't just say, because I'm interested in this this is where the solution lies. That is one thing about being having an early career in geography is that you pick up the idea that the answer will not necessarily be in economics, so I [INAUDIBLE] actually. It might be in something completely different. And one feels entitled to go into those other areas. >> And so, you have a prize-winning idea associated with your name, as you've said. And you've hinted at the sort of impact of it maybe being not just in one field, but how do you kind of see it in your own terms? Is it a kind of incremental development of something that was already there, say in Marxist ideas or other places, or was it a real breakthrough, and if so, how did you understand that yourself? >> Well, I grafted on the Marxist ideas afterwards, because obviously, [COUGH] the idea, [COUGH] was a bit like it. And then it laid there, which is something which was since the value of labor inputs wasn't valid in Marxist and Kelly. The environment wasn't very much value towards that stage, but it's because of the at little effort in labor value was in fact addressed and lost totally not the fair system put in place, but a much better system. So all I was saying for a time and as I said I could say it at least this was the second failure of capitalism, but unfortunately capitalism fails in different ways over labor and the environment in different ways over centuries. >> And so, do you think that it's hard to the idea of have more impact in say some areas of practices or some areas of academia than others? You think that, there were critics and economics and so on, where do you think it's had the most impact? >> Just in general understanding that water isn't what you thought it was. If you think that water is just in the suitcase of waters that I talked about, then that's very weak analytical position to be in.
