Martin Keulertz, King's College London, , martin@acquacon.com.br
Water has gained increased interest in the past few years by the private sector (McKinsey, 2009; Porter, 2010) and economic aspirants from the ‘global south’. Drawing on Kondratieff’s ‘long wave cycle theory’ and Kuznet’s ‘twenty-yearscycles’ (Rostov 1975), it will be argued that we are now at the beginning of a new economic cycle where the water/food/trade/energy nexus will be crucial to understandfor its analysis. Whether there will be an ‘Asian age’ in the global economy will be heavily determined by sustainable applications of the nexus. For the purpose of this paper, I will first provide a brief overview of the ‘economic wave cycles’ literature and then apply it to a new Asian ‘tiger economy’, Qatar. I will argue that Qatar has understood its enormous challenges to harness its revenues from gas in order to lead its economy from a mere rentier state to an active global player in international food and raw materials trade. The most crucial challenge will be however whether the Qatari decision-makers will be able to leverage their economy by making use of a sound application of the water/food/energy/trade nexus.