Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the economist, writer, member of the French Academy, Erik Orsenna. He publishes “The Earth is thirsty. War and peace in the kingdom of rivers”, published by Fayard.
Erik Orsenna is an economist, writer, member of the French Academy. His pen doesn’t usually stay dry. He received the Joseph Kessel Prize for The future of water (2010) and the Grand Prize of the Geographical Society for all of his work. Prix Goncourt also and Goncourt for high school students for The Colonial Exhibition, in 1988, he is also very committed and concerned about the future of our planet, aware of the importance of water. He also chairs the association Initiatives for the future of large rivers.
This commitment, mixed with a strong concern, gave birth to the last work of Erik Orsenna, The Earth is thirsty. War and peace in the kingdom of riverspublished by Fayard.
franceinfo: Is this book a warning signal, a cry from the heart, a call for help to accelerate precisely the preservation of what keeps us alive?
Erik Orsenna: Sure. Fifteen years ago I wrote The future of water, but water is a matter. It’s a bit abstract, even if it is necessary. I said to myself : how to make these issues understood ? And so I turned to the streams.
“Any river and every river is a living being that we can adopt, that we can love, that we can fear, therefore with whom we can have relations. It is not abstract.”
Erik Orsennaat franceinfo
I said to myself: I am going to tell the story of the rivers. And since I’ve been sailing since childhood, both on the sea and on the rivers, I said to myself: I’m going for a walk. So it lasted basically about thirty years. I took all my notes and I made the portrait of 33 rivers : the largest are the Amazon, the Mekong, the Nile, the Yellow River. And then the very small one, at home, which is called Trieux, 72 km, a little before Guingamp and just opposite Bréhat.
Opposite Bréhat, there is the Kerpont. This is where you learned to sail, where you boarded your first boats. You have always been passionate about water, salty, fresh, even drinking a cup several times!
Yes, by the way, it happened to me again last summer. I know water intimately.
The sea, the rivers, the water. I have the impression that it is also a beautiful invitation to poetry.
Sure. It’s poetry, but first of all humility, it’s bigger. You know, my little boat is a sailboat. In my sailboat, I’m almost bottomless in the water, I’m in the elements and I’m weaving between the wind and the sea. And between the words and who can read them, my other river, c is the French language.
You say that “the earth is thirsty“, in this book. You give figures that are chilling. The latest United Nations report, in 2022, explains that four billion people live in areas that experience severe water shortages for several months a year. This water exists, but is contaminated with impunity. 80% of used, industrial and urban liquids are discharged into the rivers, whereas since the 1980s, drinking water consumption has finally increased by 1%. find this water?
There are solutions. Me, I don’t just like alerting without there being solutions. ‘Cause if our planet sucked, why would we fight for it ? We’d be like those morons who think they’re going to take a spaceship and move to Mars. She is absolutely marvelous and I tell what a sunrise, a sunset, going fishing on one of the rivers, going for a walk, it’s magnificent. It’s marvelous, so we have to alert because it’s fragile. The solution is first to treat it well, that is to say not to pour filth into it. Then, of course, you have to economize and then make differences between the situations. You always have to mix history with geography.
Is this book made to further open your eyes? You also say through him that you remain a student forever. Is it important for you to learn constantly?
I am an economist. I knew economics, at a given time, where we withdrew history and geography because we wanted to make an exact science of them. So we gave finance with traders and all that deadly bullshit. And so we have to reintegrate history and geography. And economics is a human science, it is our home, our common home which is the planet. People say I’m a jack-of-all-trades, but it’s life that touches everything, it’s Godard who said that.
“The more I learn, the more I love, the happier I am. It is joyful knowledge, it is joyful knowledge.”
Erik Orsennaat franceinfo
At the French Academy, I am in the chair at the same time of Cousteau and Pasteur, that is to say two explorers of life, one under the surface and the other to try to find the cause, the serial killer responsible for infectious diseases, it’s not bad !
How do you view the passage of time?
It doesn’t worry me at all. I like my ages. I see my grandchildren, four years, six months. They are one age, I am another age. Try to be at each age without cheating in that age. And then, when it stops, we will change our mode of existence. If in front of you, I collapse struck by a heart attack, frankly, I will have lived to the fullest!