After Bond and Camille escape by plane and parachute into Greene’s Bolivian eco-park, they find evidence for the real reason for Greene’s establishing nature preserves: “They used dynamite,” Bond exclaims. “This used to be a riverbed. Greene isn’t after the oil. He wants the water…. It’s one dam. He’s creating drought. He’ll have built others.” With control of water, Greene and Quantum, the clandestine company he fronts can charge exorbitant prices for the resource.
When Bond and Camille walk through a nearby village, they see firsthand the results of this manufactured drought—an empty water tank and a line of peasants coaxing drops from a dry faucet. The film’s action-filled plot resolves in conventional ways. Camille kills Medrano to avenge her family, and Bond saves her from a series of fantastic explosions and fires. Greene tries to escape, but Bond leaves him in the desert with nothing but a quart of motor oil to drink. His organization ends up killing him.
The eco-plot, however, is resolved in ways that again highlight the film’s connection with the Bolivian Water Wars: “Well, the dam we saw will have to come down,” Bond declares. “And there’ll be others too.” Ultimately, however, Quantum of Solace most effectively illustrates the repercussions of the appropriative doctrine and its solution: a water democracy like that established in Bolivia after the recent water wars there.
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